Public Service Award
The VSSA’s Public Service Award is presented to a citizen of Virginia for outstanding service to the Commonwealth. A similar award appears to have been given on several occasions in the 1960s and 1970s (see under the Mario Zamora Distinguished Service Award), and in 2007 the VSSA made two Distinguished Career Awards (please see that page), to Oliver W. Hill and Yacob Hailemariam. The following people are the recent recipients of the VSSA’s Public Service Award:
2007 — Leroy Rountree Hassell Sr. has served as a member of the Virginia Supreme Court since 1989 and as chief justice since 2003. He earned his BA from the University of Virginia and his law degree from Harvard University, and governor Gerald Baliles appointed him to the state’s highest court when its first African American justice, John Charles Thomas, stepped down; a second black justice followed the first. Taking as his theme the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, and following as he did a trail of documents dating back to the Magna Carta, Chief Justice Hassell spoke to his audience at the awards session about Virginia’s long history of liberty, from the establishment of the House of Burgesses in 1619 down to the present.
2006 — A. Linwood Holton Jr. served the Commonwealth most notably as governor from 1970 to 1974. Virginia’s first Republican chief executive since the 1870s, Governor Holton distinguished himself by various major initiatives he took in the early 1970s. In contrast to his predecessors of the Massive Resistance 1950s, he committed himself to the support of the public schools and to their racial desegregation. In his inaugural address in January 1970, he declared that no Virginia citizen should any longer be “excluded from full participation in both the blessings and responsibilities of our society because of his race. . . . As Virginia has been a model for so much else in America in the past, let us now endeavor to make today’s Virginia a model in race relations.” Later that year, a front-page photo in the New York Times showed him walking his daughter Tayloe to previously all-black John F. Kennedy High School on August 31, the new school year’s first day of classes. This was sixteen years after Brown v. Board of Education — and not many years after a previous governor, under Virginia’s 1950s policy of Massive Resistance, had ordered various schools closed to prevent their court-ordered desegregation. On environmental matters, the governor sought to make Virginia’s rivers “swimmable again.” He regaled his audience at the 2006 VSSA awards session with stories from his life — in politics and with his family.
2005 — Robert C. Vaughan III is President (CEO) and founding Director of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities; founding Director of the South Atlantic Humanities Center; and a member of the faculty of the University of Virginia’s Darden School, where he teaches in the MBA and Executive Education programs. He earned his BA from Washington and Lee University and his PhD in English from the University of Virginia. His publications include the co-edited volumes The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom: Its Evolution and Consequences in American History (1988, 2003), A New Perspective: Southern Women’s Cultural History, from the Civil War to Civil Rights (1987), and The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures: The South (2005). He is currently President of the National Humanities Alliance, President of the Ash Lawn Opera Festival, Vice President of SOLINET (the Southeastern Library Network), and Secretary of the American Shakespeare Center, as well as a board member of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Commission, the Library of Virginia, and APVA–Preservation Virginia. In addition to these and many other leadership positions in public service, Rob has appeared as such roles as MacHeath in The Beggar’s Opera, Emile de Becque in South Pacific, and Mr. Snow in Carousel. A former Chairman of the National Federation of State Humanities Councils, he has received the Ann Brownson Award for Dedication to the Museum Profession as well as the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Piedmont Council for the Arts. Perhaps it is not too much to say that Rob is — and for a quarter-century has been — the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.
2003 — Robert N. Baldwin is the Executive Secretary of the Supreme Court of Virginia. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Richmond, Rob attended the UR law school and subsequently taught there and then became assistant dean. In 1974 he was appointed assistant executive secretary of the Supreme Court of Virginia and two years later became executive secretary. He served as president of the Conference of State Court Administrators, director of the national Center for State Courts, and director of the American Judicature Society. Always self-effacing, he plays down the scope of his responsibilities, which include pushing through the General Assembly a budget to pay every judge and staff member of every court in the state, and maintaining legislative oversight of proposals that might have a serious impact on the entire system.
2001 — William E. Ward is Professor Emeritus of History at Norfolk State University and mayor of the city of Chesapeake. The son of sharecroppers in Southside Virginia, he became engrossed in books at an early age and was determined to escape the life in agriculture. He earned his BA and MA from Virginia State College (now Virginia State University), taught in the public schools for five years, and went on to receive his Ph.D. from Clark University. Dr. Ward taught history at Norfolk State from 1973 to 2000, chairing the department the last three years. The 2001 recipient of the VSSA Public Service Award has served on the Chesapeake City Council since 1978 and as mayor since 1990.
2000 — Rob Lockridge was chosen for this honor as one of many state employees who have dedicated many years of service to the Commonwealth but who often remain among the "unsung." Rob graduated from Old Dominion University in 1969 with a degree in Political Science, and then he served as a State Government Intern. Subsequently, he entered the Air Force, in which he served in Vietnam and rose to the rank of 1st Lieutenant. He was a Budget Analyst in the Department of Planning and Budget (Virginia's OMB), 1972–84, but served on temporary assignment as Acting Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services in 1979–80; was Associate Budget Director for Health and Human Services from 1985 to 1995; was Associate Director for Budget Operations, 1996–98; and served as Associate Director for Education, 1998–2000, when he retired. He is now Executive Assistant to the President of the University of Virginia.
1998 — Paul W. Timmreck: Those familiar with power in state government in Virginia might agree that among the key positions are: Division Chief, in the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JALARC); Staff Director of the Senate Finance Committee; Director of the Virginia Department of Planning and Budget (the Governor's OMB); and Secretary of Finance. Paul Timmreck, the first recipient of the VSSA's Public Service Award, has held all of those jobs on his way to becoming one of the most respected public servants in the Commonwealth. He served in the Peace Corps in Venezuela, has an MPA from the University of Michigan, served with the president of the National Association of State Budget Officers, and in 1993 was awarded the T. Edward Temple Award for Distinguished Public Service. Leaving the Executive Branch in 1996, he agreed to devote his experience and expertise to academe as Vice President for Finance and Administration at Virginia Commonwealth University.