Week one is down!

Welcome back, families! We are so excited for a brand new year. Watching the kids of CLS learn, make new friends and grow in God is the highlight for everyone working at CLS.

I want to formally introduce myself to you all. My name is Taryn Plendl. Some of you know me as a parent of a CLS Alumni. Our daughter, Caitlin, attended CLS K-8 and is now a senior at FSK. For those who don’t know me yet, I am also the new Health teacher and I am so excited to get to know each of your kiddos.

In addition to teaching health, I have been asked to work on developing an active alumni association. We have amazing alumni from this school who have gone on to do incredible things. I am looking forward to introducing you to some of them.

We have some great things coming up, but first I want to tell you about someone very special to CLS.

Who is Bob and why is he so important to our school?

Robert “Bob” Fischer, a local developer, was a Godsend to the school. His grandchildren, Tom & Grace Diffendal, attended the school early on. He had a special place in his heart for the school and was determined to use his development skills, as well as bring the many contacts he had in the business world to the table with a CLS expansion. He singlehandedly searched out for available acreage in and around Westminster in 2004-05 and then asked Doug & Kristin Barmoy, parents of school students as well as local developers, to add their expertise to the footprint and eventual construction of Carroll Lutheran School at 1738 Old Taneytown Road by January 2006. In short order, Bob secured the architectural drawings for the school and covered their cost, talked to local real estate personnel about selling off the excess acreage across Route 140 and across Old Taneytown Road, and made the decision to add on the gymnasium to the original schematic for the school.

As some of you may know, Bob passed away at the age of 90 on February 24, 2023, at Bridging Life/Dove House. Memorial gifts were received by CLS in his memory. Our desire is to take those funds and establish a Robert Fischer Scholarship Fund as a living legacy for Bob and his stellar dedication to the CLS campus construction.

Each year, CLS hosts a golf tournament to raise money for our scholarship fund. Beginning in 2024, the golf tournament will be renamed The Robert Fischer Memorial Golf Tournament. This year, the Swing for Scholarship Golf Tournament at Oakmont Green in Hampstead on Friday, September 29, will be in Bob’s memory. All proceeds will go towards this Fischer scholarship fund.

Are you a golfer? There is still time to register to play. We welcome all levels to this fun event where you can give back to the school that means so much to us.

To register, visit clsedu.org/golf or contact Bonnie Higgins at [email protected].

Here is to another fabulous school year with learning, friends, laughter, love, and growing in God.