For the sixth year, the alliance honored members of the community with the Unsung Hero Award. This year they also added a new category, the Rising Leader Award honoring a high school student who leads with integrity, faith, and purpose and stand for fairness, inclusivity, and service while inspiring others to do the same.

 

The Unsung Hero recipients are those who "would normally not be recognized nor would expect to be recognized, who aren't working or serving in an executive position of a business, organization or service club that serves others.”

 

DR. STEVEN MOFF is a professor at Pennsylvania College of Techonology was recognized as an Unsung Hero for his dedication to those with special needs. As the father of special needs children, he has found many ways to improve the lives of individuals with special needs, and their families. One way to be helpful is through the Challenger Baseball program. He is a founding volunteer for the Little League Challenger Division which has developed locally, nationally, and internationally, expanding to 950 leagues. He has fond memories of those initial program games and White House visits. Each year he continues to manages the two teams selected to come to Williamsport to participate in the annual Challenger Exhibition game during the Little League World Series.

 

As an historian, Steve has traveled to Germany for many years speaking with and sharing stories of Holocaust survivors. For decades he has taught us all to understand and value one another.

 

BREANNA NIXON is the first recipient of the Rising Leader Award. She is a senior at Saint John Neumann Regional Academy. Born in the Bahamas, she moved to Williamsport when she was ten and has attended SJNRA since she was in sixth grade. She is a dedicated student and is active in school events and many school organizations including the National Honor Society, the National art Honor Society, Key Club, Student Council, the Be a Force for Good Club, and SADD.

 

Breanna’s senior project is to work with Dwell, an organization that supports foster parents and children. She has helped to organize a donation drive to provide teenage girls at Clear Vision in Montgomery, with essential items and gifts for Christmas. It was one of the ways she sees the importance of compassion, service, and community. She plans to find many ways to continue serving others and make a difference as she attends Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, where she plans to major in Biology.

 

DIANA LOGAN was recognized as an Unsung Hero for her dedication to making those with diverse abilities feel welcomed in our community. She began her efforts as she participated in the YMCA Superstars program which originally ran weekly on Saturday mornings. Encouraging each participant to grow and shine, the program has bloomed and is now offered multiple days a week. Soon she created Music from the Heart, a singing group composed of individuals with diverse abilities. Participants find confidence, friendship, a sense of belonging and having a voice, as well as a way to share their gifts with others.

 

Diana’s kind and loving spirit has transformed lives and created lasting opportunities for inclusion and joy within our community.

 

CHRISTINE ATKINS was recognized as an Unsung Hero for the concern and care she shows for others through her passion for needlework. She makes and donates approximately 150 quilts each year to bring comfort, joy and hope to breast cancer patients as the endure treatments, nursing home residents, and hospice patients (and often then go home with families as a source of solace in their grieving.) Quilts are also given to children in area hospitals or programs such as Wise Options. Quilted colostomy bag covers are also gifted to area patients.

 

She crafts one-of-a-kind elephants, stuffed with love, that provide hope and comfort to both children and adults amid stressful health issues, and/or as a joyful reminder of a special event or interest. She also sews scarfs for the National Giving Association to provide to school children in our community. Each person who receives her needlework, knows they are special, important, and loved.

 

MARIANNE AND MARC TUPPER are some of our community care givers. They have devoted many hours caring the Newberry community and for their congregational family and property. Living across the street from their church, they spent more than fifty years being on call when something needed done; letting someone in, picking up what was dropped off, and answering questions. Always ready to lend a helping hand they’d be walking behind a lawn mower, picking limbs up in Colonial Park, shoveling snow, providing secretarial services and handyman skills. They are always willing to bring someone to church, take someone to the doctor, the grocery, the airport.

 

The Newberry Lions is also close to their hearts. Marc’s special projects include delivering walkers, wheelchairs, and hospital beds to folks in crisis; and helping to maintain the three Welcome to Newberry signs he proposed and helped build some years ago. Marianne, and later also Marc, volunteered at the West End Community Center (most recently with the backpack program to help children who were food insecure) and delivered for Meals-On-Wheels. Marianne became involved with Big Brothers, Big Sisters, being a “big” for a “little” who soon adopted the entire Tupper family as her second family.

 

Cody Hoover, the Lycoming Brotherhood Alliance President, summed up the evening, noting that it has been a night to honor unsung heroes, who labor under the radar day after day without asking for recognition. They don’t do it for any other reason than that is their heart and soul – their character. The best things about all the recipients is that tomorrow they will be back doing the same old thing again!