LETTERS: LOTS OF HELP FOR GOLF TOURNAMENT

To the editor:

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all who helped make the recent St. Francis Heartland Junior Championship golf tournament a success. The tournament was June 7-10 with 122 junior golfers representing four states.

Mike Litzelfelner, the Litzelfelner family and the entire staff at Bent Creed Golf Course hosted a top-quality tournament. They are a fantastic group to work with.

Bill Kiel and Pat Brase from the St. Francis Medical Center Foundation handled all of the details involved in promoting and organizing the tournament. They coordinated the great group of volunteers from the Friends of St. Francis and the SEMO Seniors. These groups helped with any job that needed to be done. The medical center's public relations department, maintenance department and others provided their services when needed.

The sports coverage provided by the Southeast Missourian, Cash Book Journal and KFVS-TV was outstanding.

Prairie Farms Dairy provided the golfers with ice cream bars each day. This was the hit of the tournament.

A special thanks goes to our donors and hole sponsors. This financial support made the efforts of this event complete. The money raised by this and our benefit tournament in August will be used for patient education.

I would like to thank our entire community for the hospitality shown to the golfers and their families and to the junior golfers for participating in our tournament. Your sportsmanship, respectfulness and golfing skills are impressive.

Finally, golfers and families, thank you for giving us the highest compliment we could hope for: "Great tournament. We will be back next year."

DAN BRASE, Co-chairman

Heartland Junior Championship

Friends of St. Francis

Cape Girardeau