Mending Waters Montana -- a nonprofit serving the well-being of veterans through fishing and boat trips and recently received a custom donation made by Capital High School students.
Designing and creating metalwork is not an easy task, and according to Capital High School machining student August Nelson, "it was a real butt-kicker."
After many fixings and hundreds of hours of work throughout the school year, Nelson and other students finished the final product, a trailer hitch insert honoring a local nonprofit veteran organization, Mending Waters Montana.
“This community has been enormously supportive of everything we've done. This is an example of it,” says Randy Dix, Mending Waters Montana Founder. “But it resonates throughout the whole community, through the whole state of Montana to be honest with you. We receive donations that are not even requested."
That is how this donation came to be. Nelson says he first created this design in the Fall 2020 semester as a fun hobby. Little did he know at the time.
“I'd machine one out and it looked really good and so we showed [Mending Waters] and they said they wanted to order, I think they said they wanted to order 50 of them. We said that was a lot," laughs Nelson, a senior at Capital.
The students were able to create 20 inserts for the organization. They will be sold to help the group serve more vets, a task the students say is a big honor.
“I feel very honored to get to do this for these veterans,” says Nelson. “It's something that I always want to do for them. If you have a chance to do something for your community and anything for the military, I definitely go for it. It's something that makes you feel good on the inside."
The relationship between Mending Waters Montana and the Capital High students is not over. They are in talks of possibly creating fishing rods for trips during the 2021-2022 school year.
