Jefferson Award for Public Service - New Name. Same Goal.

Jefferson Award - 1983

Among many honors that I've received over the past 40 years was the SunTimes Jefferson Award for Public Service, which I received in 1982.

I wrote about this a couple of times in the past. Here's one article, with a link to the original Chicago SunTimes article.

I was leading the volunteer-based tutor/mentor program at Montgomery Ward at that time, and still holding a full-time retail advertising management role with the Montgomery Ward Corporation.  Much has changed in the many years since then, but I'm still trying to support tutor/mentor programs and kids in poverty, by trying to influence others to get involved, and in how they use their time and talent.

I received an email today saying that the foundation that makes this award is changing their name to MultiplyingGood.  They included this short video with the newsletter. I hope you'll look at it.



I don't come from a high profile or wealthy family, and never have risen to high levels of personal fame, so having the Montgomery Ward Corporation as a program sponsor for my efforts up till they went out of business in 2000, was really valuable in opening doors. Things have been a bit more difficult since then.

My Jefferson Award was presented to me by Governor Jim Thompson of Illinois. That's us in the photo at the right.  I've added an annotation to the photo, which sums up the frustrations I've had for the past 40 years.

While I've rubbed elbows with rich and famous people few have made an effort to consistently share news about the work I've been doing, so others would get involved.

I think the MultiplyingGood organization is attempting to do that.  As the Jefferson Awards for Public Service they maintained a blog, and in 2014 wrote an article about me.  I hope that as they change names, this archive of recognition will remain in place, or will be moved to a new web address.

Otherwise, I'll need to take some tips from my #clmooc friends who have been talking about content curation and web archives, and find a link to this on the "WaybackMachine" which is where I go to search for links to web sites that no longer are available.