[Durham INC] Herald Sun on INC Heroes Awards

[Richard Ford]

Heroes at the grass roots

Feb. 17, 2015 @ 06:49 AM

Monday, we applauded on this page two high-profile community leaders honored last week by the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce.
Sunday evening, the Inter-Neighborhood Council reminded us that community leadership exists not just at the pinnacles of industry and government, but throughout our city at the grass-roots level.
The council, a coalition of the city’s many active neighborhood associations, has been honoring “neighborhood heroes” since 2000, with new ones named every couple of years. This year’s 31 heroes constituted the largest slate the group has recognized.
Mike Shiflett, who with fellow former INC president John Dagenhart launched the awards, summed up their premise:
“We’re looking for regular neighborhood people who are just doing it not for their own benefit, but for the betterment of their community,” he said Sunday. 
The heroes honored Sunday offered a wide gamut of service. 
One was Lisa Richmond, who found time to be volunteer director of the Birchwood Heights while raising four of her own children, plus foster children, and working as a detention officer at the Durham County jail.
Other heroes included Jacqueline and Richard Morgan, whose Morgan Imports has been a retail Mecca for Durham residents for a half-century and who helped found the Trinity Park Neighborhood Association. 
There was Dan Jewell, another Trinity Park resident whose landscape architecture talents have helped shape Durham Central Park and whose service with Durham Area Designers has aimed to positively shape our burgeoning city’s sense of urban design.
Tania Dautlick from Forest Hills has worked tirelessly as head of Keep Durham Beautiful to do just that – keep our city looking better while evangelizing for community appearance. 
All of them and their fellow heroes have helped to embody the mission of the INC, which President Phil Azar described Sunday as to “promote the quality, stability and vitality of Durham’s residential neighborhoods.”
The INC has done just that during its three decades, all the while exemplifying the exuberant involvement that is a significant part of Durham’s special character. Many communities struggle to get their residents to take part in the civic process – in Durham, that participation is organic.
We’re indebted to people like Bob Ingram, named by the chamber to the Bull City Hall of Fame, and to Sylvia Kerckhoff, given the group’s Civic Honor Award.
But so, too, are we indebted to those honored Sunday. Sen. Mike Woodard, D-Durham, whose own civic involvement is legendary, captured the evening’s spirit.
“The core of what has made Durham so successful is the neighborhoods and those neighbors that have been there doing incredible things.”
For those incredible things, they are indeed grass-roots heroes.
http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/editorials/x988820143/Heroes-at-the-grass-roots

 

 
 
 
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