Mario D. Zamora Distinguished Service Award

The Distinguished Service Award, the briefer name by which it was formerly known, was renamed in honor of Dr. Mario D. Zamora, who was Professor of Anthropology at the College of William and Mary until his untimely death in August 1993. Born in Pampanga, Philippines, Dr. Zamora earned his doctorate in anthropology at Cornell University with top honors. He returned to the Philippines for some years before joining the faculty at William and Mary. His life was filled with honors: he was a University Scholar at the University of the Philippines, an Exchange Scholar to the Delhi School of Economics, a Fulbright/Smith Mundt Scholar to Cornell University, a Graduate Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Cornell, and one of nine Adlai Stevenson Fellows to the United Nations selected from all over the world. He published 14 books and nearly 100 articles. He served as President of the Virginia Social Science Association in 1986–1987. The Mario D. Zamora Distinguished Service Award is presented to a VSSA member who has contributed to the Association in outstanding ways over a period of years.

Prior to its renaming in 1995, a similar award had been made intermittently in the 1960s and 1970s and every year beginning in 1981.  In some years between 1967 and 1987, however, it appears that the Distinguished Service Award was presented in a manner more akin to what in 1998 was reconstituted as the Public Service Award or even, as given in 2007, the Distinguished Career Award.

The first Distinguished Service Award, in 1963, was given to William E. Garnett, of Virginia Polytechnic Institute, who served as the VSSA’s very first president, in 1926–1927.  Some subsequent awards also went to early VSSA presidents, including Richard L. Morton, of William and Mary (president, 1930–1931), in 1964, and Belle Boone Beard, of Sweet Briar College (president for two successive years during World War II, 1942–1944), in 1973.

 

 Distinguished Service Award Recipients:

 

2007

Donald Zeigler, Old Dominion University

2004

Lea Pellett, Christopher Newport University

2001

Mary Ferrari, Radford University

1997

Bernard Levin, Blue Ridge Community College

1996

Peter Wallenstein, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University

1995

Vinson H. Sutlive, The College of William and Mary

1988

Charles Lane, Longwood College

1987

Alice Andrews, George Mason University

1987

Emmanuel Peleaz, Philippine Ambassador to the USA; former Vice-President of the Philippines

1986

Annie S. Barnes, Norfolk State University

1985

Barbara Knight, George Mason University

1984

George Blume, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University

1983

Weldon Cooper, University of Virginia

1982

Curtis W. Macdonald, Northern Virginia Community College

1981

Albert L. Sturm, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University

1977

John Malcus Ellison, Virginia Union University

1975

Virginius Dabney, Richmond Times-Dispatch

1973

Belle Boone Beard, Sweet Briar College

1969

Robert D. Meade, Randolph-Macon College

1967

Colgate W. Darden Jr., University of Virginia

1964

Richard L. Morton, The College of William and Mary

1963

William E. Garnett, Virginia Polytechnic Institute