At the 28th annual Bernie Fowler Wade-In, Bernie Fowler, along with his grandchildren, and several state reprensentatives, including Congressman Steny Hoyer and State Senate President Mike Miller, waded into the Patuxent River at Jefferson Patterson Park.

The layout of the wading in is that Fowler, wearing white tennis shoes, will walk into the water, and say stop when he can no longer clearly see his tennis shoes clearly.

At last year’s wade in, he said to stop when he had gotten 23 inches deep. This year however, they reached the 2 foot mark, and kept going. As they continued to wade into the river, the cheers from the shore grew louder. After a few more feet of wading, Bernie Fowler lost sight of  his shoes and said to stop. They then turned around, and went back to shore. Once on shore, Hoyer measured how far Fowler had gone into the river. The tape read 44 inches. The most since he waded 44.5 in 1997.

Prior to the wading in, several county council members made speeches. Among those who made speeches included Calvert County commissioners Steve Weems, and Tom Hejl. There were several other speeches that were given. Miller spoke a few words, and the biggest thing from his speech was “ The environment is our little mustard seed. It starts the smallest, but then grows and encompasses everything else we tried to put there.”

Hoyer made a speech after this, and said “ I will go to dinner with my family tonight, and look at everyone there, and look out on the river that my home overlooks, and tell them that they need to look out over the river, and thank this man [Fowler]. Because this man has raised so much awareness about this river that this is why we can sit down here, and eat this food looking over this river.”

After Hoyer’s speech, the gathering got up, went to the beach and waded into the water. After he had waded in, Fowler told The Bay Net that he will do this event as long as he can walk, and has no intention of not being able to walk anytime soon.
Fowler celebrated his 91st birthday earlier this year.

Contact Max Tayman at news@thebaynet.com