Search and Rescue Volunteer Finds WBT

CELEBRATION, Fla. – An Oklahoma cattle rancher who volunteered in the search-and-rescue efforts after the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001, has signed up to fish the 2006 Mercury Marine Women’s Bassmaster Tour presented by Triton.

Kitsy Cunningham of Eufaula, 48, said the tour provides her an outlet to release the stress of working search and rescue. “I am forever grateful to BASS for starting the WBT. It’s the best thing that has happened to women anglers.”

While Cunningham raises registered Texas Longhorn cattle on her ranch, she has, for the last 26 years, also volunteered for search and rescue missions, finding lost children, Alzheimer’s patients, nursing home residents and locating drowning victims.

After the World Trade Center attack in 2001, Cunningham and her search dog Roxanne traveled to New York and worked for seven nights sifting through debris both on site and at the Staten Island landfill. “I was proud to serve our country, but I hope I never have to do that type of search again,” she said.

Cunningham found wallets, jewelry and other personal belongings that helped identify some of the victims. “I helped give family members closure on their loss, and that was very important and gratifying.” Still, the work takes its toll. “Search and rescue is very stressful, and fishing provides a release.”

Cunningham learned to love fishing as a young child, when her parents took her to farm ponds and she made casts into the water. She still owns a jitterbug her father gave her 40 years ago. But she was only introduced to bass fishing after she became a widow and met Clayton, who she would marry in 2001.

The couple moved to a farm across from Lake Eufaula so they could fish and raise cattle. Clayton encouraged Cunningham to enter her first professional tournament as a co-angler in 2004. “They ran short of boaters at that tournament and a couple of women weren’t going to get to fish. My need to help nudged me into changing my registration to boater. I turned pro that day and haven’t looked back,” Cunningham explained.

Today, her sponsors include Lakeside Long Horns in Eufaula, Okla. and Esox Fishing Rods, based in Richmond, Ind. Cunningham said she hopes to give them plenty of exposure when she weighs in her fish at each of the Women’s Bassmaster Tour events.

From BASS