A lifetime of service to the Tri-Cities
Many community volunteers fly under the radar of the public eye, and Pam Mann of St. Charles was one of those - until Thursday night.
TriCity Family Services honored Mann with its 24th annual William D. Barth Award for a lifetime of volunteerism and community service to the Tri-Cities region.
"I am so pleased with this honor," said Mann, a retired lawyer who was one of the first women to work in the Kane County state's attorney's office. "We have lived in this area for 40 years now and I feel like I have done a lot of little things - and I guess they add up."
Mann has an impressive list of "little things" that have helped shape the communities she has served.
She was instrumental in getting the free legal services of Prairie State Legal Services off the ground; volunteered for Kane County CASA; a leader in the Girl Scout Council; a past president and current member of the St. Charles Library Foundation; president of the Literacy Volunteers of the Fox Valley; and president of the Fox Valley Associates, a group devoted to expand appreciation of the arts.
In accepting the award during the dinner banquet at Riverside Reception and Conference Center in Geneva, Mann told the story of how she was involved in the early roots of the organization that was honoring her.
"I was involved with the Tri-City Youth Organization (the forerunner of TriCity Family Services) when I was approached and asked if I could help the agency put together its application for 501(c)3 (tax-exempt) status," Mann recalled. "It was (former Congressman) John Grotberg and other gentlemen in the community who came up with the idea 35 years ago to form this agency."
Mann used the opportunity of accepting the agency's most prestigious award to make a plea for more volunteers to step forward in the Tri-Cities.
"There are so many needs, and the need for help changes all of the time," she said. "We need more people to come forward to do these things."
Carol Vander Weyden, a friend of Mann's who nominated her for the Barth honor, told those in attendance that Mann's willingness to give went beyond her list of community volunteer efforts.
"When my husband was ill with Parkinson's," Vander Weyden said. "Pam would come over and sit with him for hours and talk and play cribbage; this is the kind of giving and caring person she is."
Vander Weyden orchestrated the effort of getting Mann's family and friends together, and also to get Mann to the event without telling her she was the recipient.
Mann said her friend played the role perfectly by telling her someone else was being honored. "When we were driving over here, I asked Carol if she knew what the Barth Award was, and she said no," Mann said. "So I explained what it was and that it was a very prestigious award, and Carol never cracked a smile or gave the secret away."