Mary Ann Conrad Volunteer of the Year Award
Mary Ann Conrad was a long-time active member of the Arlington Genealogical Society. Mary Ann served on the Board continuously from 1989 until her death in January 2020 for a total of thirty-one years. She served as President for three years, First Vice President for three years, Parliamentarian for two years, Newsletter chair for six years and Collection Development chair for 21 years from 1999 through 2020.
Mary Ann gave very lovingly and willingly thousands of volunteer hours to our society. The Arlington Genealogical Society honors her memory with a Volunteer of the Year Award. This award will be given to an AGS member who has gone above and beyond to make our organization a better society.
The committee will consist of 3 members. They will serve for a term of three years with at least one member of the committee going off each year. Therefore, annually one person will rotate off at the end of In the late fall meeting annually, the President will appoint the members of this committee. If someone on the committee is nominated, then they should step down for the current cycle of voting. And the President should temporarily appoint a replacement member to maintain an odd number of committee members.
Applications for the Volunteer of the Year will be accepted each January. Download it here. The deadline to turn in your entry to the Volunteer of the Year Committee will be noon of February 1st annually. The committee will collect the nominations, review each nominee's service to AGS, and make their selection. The winner will be announced at the March general membership meeting.
The winner will receive an AGS Certificate of Appreciation for being the Mary Ann Conrad Volunteer of the Year.
Recipients
Apr. 13, 2021 - Sylvia Hoad, Volunteer of the Year
Sylvia was recognized for her devoted efforts, in the Inaugural Year of this award, chairing and leading the Collections Development Committee. She inherited a very large backlog of books obtained before the death of Mary Ann Conrad. She and Mark Dellenbaugh worked relentlessly tracking and reviewing those books for selection into our Genealogy and Local History collection, including the submission for binding when necessary, and submission to cataloging, etc.
(Thanks to Sylvia for her great efforts. She is a valuable member of our society!)
As the recognition was in a COVID year, an in-person presentation was made at a later date.
Mar. 8, 2022 - Mark Dellenbaugh, Volunteer of the Year
Mark was recognized for his devoted multi year efforts as 1st Vice President in charge of programs and his several other efforts. With the advent of covid, the whole dynamic of genealogy related program search and selection changed. Mark quickly recognized Zoom Virtual Meetings would provide the remote access needed to keep our society meetings going. He jumped in to support the web admin technical needs.
He quickly became a society co-zoom-master and successfully got us through several technically challenging meetings. Since it was remote virtual connection, Mark expanded his program search and selection to outside our immediate area. He arranged zoom presenters from Arizona, Florida and more.
Mark is employed as the Arlington Public Library Librarian for their Genealogy & Local History Collection and is their liasion to our society. As such, he labors with our society Collections Development Chair in our annual book acquitions.
(Thanks to Mark for his great efforts. He is a valuable member of our society!)
Checkout our Chairperson's, Sylvia Hoad, full award presentation here. Also, checkout what one of our longtime members, Cherry Williams, had to say about Mark in our April 2022 newsletter page 10.
Mar. 14, 2023 - John Anderson, Volunteer of the Year
Besides being an active Society President and continually maintaining our society website, John is recognized for his efforts forming and leading several Special Committees this past year.
Moore Funeral Home Records, Phase 2 attempts republishing our MFH book as Edition 2. The purpose is to add paragraphs to alert readers of where the collection is located; UTA Special Collections library and to give AGS credit for providing the information. John personally scanned all 33 volumes of the MFH books and the team developed a proto-type website that hopefully either UTA or MFH will support.
Wreaths Across America yeilded a small AGS donation and recruited several of our members to participate in the event; which is the 1st annual at the Parkdale Cemetery sponsored by the local DAR chapter.
Parkdale Street Signage attempts influencing Moore Funeral Home to place signs in the Parkdale Cemetery. As it turns out, his visit with MFH yielded that effort is in progress with a 2023 target.
(Thanks to John for his great efforts. He is a valuable member of our society!)
Checkout our Chairperson's, Sylvia Hoad, full award presentation here.
Mar. 12, 2024 - Pete Jacobs, Volunteer of the Year
The Mary Ann Conrad Volunteer of the Year award is being presented to a person who has been a member of Arlington Genealogical Society for many years and has served in almost every capacity within AGS.
He has held the positions of President, Facebook Administrator, Treasurer, and Financial Committee Chair. He juggles several positions and responsibilities at one time because of his organizational skills and dedication to each of those responsibilities. He is always willing to answer any question or to help resolve any problem that arises, and he always has the correct answer, or on the rare occasion that he doesn’t, he will work hard to find the answer.
He was chosen for this award because he is always willing to go above and beyond what is expected by dedicating his time and energy to anything that needs to be done. He steps up to the plate when others can’t and always has a positive attitude about anything he does.
As you may have already guessed, this year’s winner is our current Treasurer, Facebook Administrator, and Financial Committee Chair, Pete Jacobs.
He has been invaluable as treasurer of AGS and ensures that our funds are properly managed and that our financial wealth is secure. He introduces each president to our financial advisor and ensures that account authorization is obtained. He also administers our PayPal account and monitors the transactions.
Pete gathers forms, takes payments of dues, and transfers the new member forms to the Membership Chair and the Web Administrator, and always does so in a timely manner. To quote one of the nomination applications, “he comes early and stays late at every meeting helping to set up and clean up”. Pete brings pamphlets of genealogical interest and forms to help people get started on, and keep track of, their genealogy research. He then makes sure these materials are returned to the library storage room after each meeting.
In addition to his other responsibilities, Pete helped the Arlington Public Library Service with the move of the genealogy collection. He was there to help organize and shelve the books during this time. He also serves as the District F representative for the Texas State Genealogical Society, representing six counties of north Texas. He also volunteers to work at the AGS information table at the Family History Seminars that are held each spring.
It is my great pleasure to present the 2023 Mary Ann Conrad Volunteer of the Year Award to Pete Jacobs. Congratulations, Pete!
(Thanks to Pete for his great efforts. He is a valuable member of our society!)
Thanks to all members for their support to our society!