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On Tuesday, the Tribune Chronicle and the Trumbull 100 co-sponsored the annual Community Star Awards dinner at Packard Music Hall. I had the esteemed honor of attending the dinner, and I am proud to have nominated one of the winners.
If you didn’t get a chance to attend the dinner, or missed out on learning more about it through subsequent newspaper articles, here’s the gist of things: Community Star Awards are given to men and women on the basis of their volunteer work in our community, and the recipients of the award must be nominated by members of our community to be considered.
The heart of the event is summed up in the inspiring sentence on the front of the booklet sharing the stories of each award winner, which read something like, “the Community Star Awards prove that ordinary people do extraordinary things in our community every day.”
As I heard about each recipient’s dedication and passion for their work, I was encouraged to be living in a really amazing community; each person that won the award is doing simply fantastic work to help make our community a better place. As each recipient was honored, and as each shared words of thanks for being nominated and for receiving the award, a few themes were prevalent that are worth noting.
First, each recipient refused to believe what Pastor Todd Johnson, one of the award recipients, would call “the hype.” They refused to believe that the bad in our community outweighs the good, and that the hopelessness is more compelling than the hope we have for what lies before us. This hope and optimism motivated each Community Star to work hard to make our community better in an astonishing variety of ways. Recipients work to fight cancer, to empower youth, to care for the homeless and hungry, to improve education, to aid veterans, and so much more. While the scope of their collective work is diverse, their efforts are unified by hope.
Second, faith and spirituality played a significant role in the work of not a few volunteers. Aside from the fact that two of the recipients were pastors (recognized for work they do outside of roles through which they receive compensation), other recipients shared how their faith strengthens them and gives them a vision for what they do. There is a growing cultural narrative about how religion is obsolete; over the course of our evening, it became clear that participation in a faith community can lead to benefitting the common good in real ways.
Third, the vast majority of the award recipients were Baby Boomers – naturally a reflection of the overall demographics of our community. I’ve written extensively in my columns about the value of empowering the next generation to take the reins of our community, and at times this has made readers get the sense that I dislike or even disdain members of older generations.
This simply isn’t true.
I am aware that our community would not be the wonderful place it is without the lifelong investment of people like our Community Stars. One winner was an octegenarian who has spent most of her life working to make excellent education a priority in our community. Without lifelong investments like this, our community would be infinitely worse off. In short, members of elder generations who have spent their lives working to improve our community ought to be celebrated: frequently, exuberantly and generously.
In a community that has come to believe that there really isn’t anything better on the horizon, and that has decided to wave the white flag in the battle against hopelessness, events like the Community Stars Awards are important shots in the arm. To the award winners: thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for your dedication and compassion and care for our community.
Write Tennant at columns@trib today.com