Contests & Awards - DPA Communicator of Achievement Awards

2008 DPA Communicator of Achievement

Barbara C. Roewe

Teacher, mentor, facilitator and musician, Barbara Clancy Roewe was named the 2008 Delaware Press Association Communicator of Achievement at DPA's Holiday Luncheon at the Delaware National Country Club in December.

Barbara was an English teacher for 27 years and the award-winning journalism adviser at Alexis I. du Pont High School for 11 of those years. Barbara says, “Teaching journalism classes is where I realized my life's professional mission, which is summed up in the words of Kahlil Gibran: ‘The teacher, if indeed wise . . . leads the students to the thresholds of their own minds.’”

Barbara and DPA member Carol Kipp were the dynamic team that taught A.I.'s J1 and J2 courses. While Carol worked with the students on the finer points of layout and graphic design, Barbara helped them learn to analyze what made a news article good, to understand bias and how to run their newspaper as a successful business. She inspired her eager and capable students to use their computer skills and budding journalistic abilities to put out a well-written, great looking, thought-provoking newspaper.

“Those classes were a teacher's dream,” Barbara says. “I planted the seeds of critical thinking. The students fertilized those seeds and produced our school newspaper, Tiger Pause, which received top awards from Quill & Scroll, the Columbia Scholastic Press Association and Delaware Press Association.” In 1993, she entered the DPA Communications Contest in the category of Faculty Adviser of a Student Publication, took first-place honors and went on to win a national first-place award in the National Federation of Press Women's Communications Contest.

Barbara received the Distinguished Service Award from the A.I. du Pont Parent Teacher Association, was twice nominated for Teacher of the Year in the Red Clay School District and was selected Teacher of the Year by the Wilmington Lions Club in 1990.

Although retired from the classroom, Barbara continues, as a volunteer, to work with young people and adults in many settings. She's a facilitator for YWCA-sponsored High School Study Circles at A. I. du Pont and Brandywine high schools to help youngsters explore race relations and how to achieve understanding and respect for one another. For that effort, she was named a YWCA Community Winner for the 2003 Jefferson Awards.

Barbara has been a Sunday School teacher at First Unitarian Church, has served on their Board of Trustees and was chair of the Social Justice Working Group. She has served as the music committee chair at First Unitarian, and she's also been on the board of directors of the Mid-Atlantic Chamber Music Society.

A talented musician herself, Barbara says, “When I was growing up, we had a piano that was the focal point of our small living room. My teenage brother played the saxophone and had a jazz band that rehearsed there. The piano player would hold me in his lap and let me, at age 4, touch the piano keys as he played. I studied classical music until I was 16. Many times my piano playing was my best means of communication. It opened doors for me. I played for family gatherings, for school programs, at USO shows for servicemen during World War II and for residents in nursing homes. It always has seemed to make people happy.”

Barbara took up a new instrument in her mid-60s, and she is now the trombone player for the New Castle County Community Band, for the Happy Rhinelanders German Band and for the University of Delaware's Academy of Lifelong Learning Concert Band. She is also the piano player for a number of musical groups, including the Upbeats Dixieland Band.

Barbara served as president of Delaware Press Association for 2 two-year terms — from 2000 to 2004 — and ably guided the organization through the years when the members worked to put together the “Brave New Media World” national communications conference, held in Wilmington in the fall of 2003.

For six years Barbara has been DPA's Vice President of Student Activities. She and Gloria Galloway, DPA's 1996 COA, annually run the First State High School Communications Contest, co-sponsored by DPA and The News Journal. Barbara says, “Through the contest, open to all Delaware public and private schools, I continue to enjoy working with high school journalism students as well as with the journalism advisers. In one way or another, I always will be a teacher, a mentor and a facilitator.”

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2007 DPA Communicator of Achievement

Katherine Ward

When DPA executive director Katherine Ward—freelance writer, editor, writing coach, educator, author and leader—received the 2007 Communicator of Achievement Award at DPA’s annual Holiday Luncheon, she said, “I’ve been a member of DPA for nearly 20 years and am delighted to have received this great honor. And what could be cooler than to be the DPA 007 Communicator of Achievement!”

“Katherine is so very accomplished,” said DPA’s 2006 COA Karen Galanaugh when presenting the award. “In 2006 alone, she had two books published: Write Home for Me: A Red Cross Woman in Vietnam (Random House Australia), for which she was editor for author Jean Lamensdorf. Within two weeks of its release, it was #1 on the bestseller list in South Australia. And she was the editor of The Legacy Endures, a 25th anniversary commemorative book on the 92 women in the Hall of Fame of Delaware Women (Delaware Commission for Women). She also was co-author/editor of Delaware Women Remembered (Modern Press, 1977), the first book to chronicle the lives of Delaware women, and of A Legacy from Delaware Women (Middle Atlantic Press, 1987).”

Katherine, who serves on the NFPW President’s Advisory Council, was director of NFPW’s national communications conference, “Brave New Media World,” hosted by Delaware Press Association in Wilmington in 2003. She has held numerous DPA board positions, including two terms as president, and is the central communicator for the organization. For many years she has written copy for and edited the DPA newsletter and Web site, and she has written a history of the organization (founded in 1977), which was published in Women’s Press Organizations, 1891 – 1999 (Greenwood Press, 2000). As DPA historian, she is organizing a celebration of DPA’s 30-year anniversary in April.

Katherine developed curriculum for and taught writing classes and humanities seminars for the gifted and talented and for several years was director of the enrichment program for a number of schools in Northfield, Minn. She also worked as the publications director/newsletter editor for The Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, Va.

Active in the work of Christ Church Christiana Hundred, Greenville, Katherine has been a lector and communion assistant for many years. For several years she was president of the Prison Arts Advisory Board for the Delaware Department of Correction. She also serves on the University of Delaware’s Sea Grant College Advisory Board and is a member of the Delaware Coalition for Open Government.

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2006 DPA Communicator of Achievement

Karen Galanaugh

Karen Galanaugh, APR, is a 25-year veteran practitioner of public relations and owner of Galanaugh & Company Public Relations and Marketing Communications, based in Wilmington, Delaware. Named the 2006 Delaware Press Association Communicator of Achievement, she is the first public relations professional to have received DPA’s highest honor.

Karen provides counsel and strategic communications for businesses and individuals. She has worked with Alan Dershowitz, Christopher Reeve, and with the Atlanta Committee for the 1996 Olympic Games. National clients have included Tandberg Worldwide (video conferencing technology in Norway), HNC Software, Retek Retail Software Solutions, Frontier Media, and Hyperon/Brinks Internet Security. In Delaware, clients include Christiana Bank & Trust Company, CBIZ Business Solutions, Bastianelli Group, MySherpa Computer Technology Services and the Brandywine Zoo.

She is accredited by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) with earned and tested recognition that signifies an experienced, knowledgeable and ethical PR practitioner. Over the past 12 years, she has served in numerous capacities in the Delaware Chapter of PRSA, including a two-year term as president. She was the Professional Liaison to Public Relations student chapters in Delaware, and she was honored with the “Educator’s Achievement Award” for working with college students who wish to pursue careers in public relations.

Karen also has contributed her professional skills to civic and cultural organizations over several decades. As a founding board member of the Delaware Art Museum Expressionists Club, she organized activities to increase museum membership of young urban professionals and introduced film series and themed art events. Prior to moving to Wilmington, she founded the Blooming Grove Historic Commission, a New York organization that inventoried historically significant structures and landscapes for preservation, raised money to preserve and restore them, and worked to educate the community about the importance of historic preservation. She was recognized in 1985 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as the “Most Effective Community Organizer” for her long campaign to preserve a Frederick Law Olmsted landscape and historic hospital complex in White Plains, New York.

Prior to starting her PR business in New York, Karen worked on the production crews of feature films and television commercials and also on the editorial staffs at Scholastic Publications and OMNI/Penthouse Publications.

Karen’s volunteer work over the years includes co-founding the Animal Welfare Project, an organization that finds homes for animals and raises money to certify “Animal Cops,” and working with the Reins of Life Therapeutic Horseback Riding Program for children and young adults with special needs, where she volunteers as an equine handler. She served for four years on the board of the National Transplant Assistance Fund, a trusted resource in the transplant community that raises funds for support, education and expertise for transplant and catastrophic injury patients, their families and communities, and conducts public education campaigns on the importance of organ donation.

Karen has won many first place awards in the NFPW Annual Communications Contest in the categories of Speech Writing, Website Writing, Information For The Media, Radio Campaigns, Print Advertising, Direct-Mail Marketing, and Public Relations and Marketing Campaigns. She was enthusiastic about hosting the 2003 NFPW “Brave New Media World” Communications Conference in Delaware and contributed hundreds of hours of her time and professional expertise to help insure its success. As chair of the PR/Promotion Committee, she created a timetable and coordinated the development of brochures and publicity, beginning more than 18 months in advance, and arranged nationwide press releases focused on Keynote Speaker Jim Axelrod, of CBS Evening News, and on Delaware’s U.S. Senator Joe Biden, the featured speaker at the NFPW President’s Roundtable Discussion. She was an active force in the pre- and post-conference tours, and throughout the entire event she provided visual documentation of each day’s activities to the delight of the participants.

“I’m too young to be awarded a ‘lifetime' achievement honor!” complained Galanaugh during her acceptance speech. “However, now that I’m older, I better understand how George Burns felt when I first sat down with him for an interview for Penthouse Magazine. He said, ‘Honey, why would Penthouse be interested in me? I'm so old I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.’”

Upon accepting the Communicator of Achievement award, Karen joked, “You guys must be dredging the bottom of the barrel here for a press association to give its highest award to a PR practitioner . . . given the stereotypical antagonism between the two.” She continued, “It makes this honor even sweeter.”

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2005 DPA Communicator of Achievement

Lynn Troy Maniscalco

Lynn Troy Maniscalco, of Wilmington, has won many statewide, national and international awards and honors for photography and has given slide presentations and judged international photographic exhibitions throughout the US, Canada and Europe. She was the first woman to achieve the master photojournalist rating from the Photographic Society of America and was named PSA’s photojournalist of the year for 2002. Lynn is the first photographer to have received the Communicator of Achievement Award (COA) from Delaware Press Association. “This award is probably even more meaningful to me than my photographic honors,” she says, “because recognition by my DPA word colleagues indicates an acceptance of photography as a comparable means of communication. I am truly honored.”

Lynn’s work has been published in numerous books, newspapers and magazines over the years. She has handled many advertising, editorial, and theatrical assignments, and has specialized in location shots at events and activities—the kind of work she did for nine years for Community News, Inc. and for other local publications over a 15-year period. Lynn has established a custom photo business and uses her creativity, experience and enthusiasm to produce quality photographs to help editorial, advertising and corporate clients communicate their message and to realize their objectives. She accepts a variety of freelance assignments.

“Anyone can be taught the technical aspects of photography,” Lynn says, “but there is a big difference between a camera operator and an effective visual communicator. Although it “takes expertise to get in the right position, frame the image and shoot at the right moment to get the best pictures,” Lynn suggests that modern equipment makes it easier for anyone to get properly exposed and focused shots. “Photography, however, is not about the equipment we use,” she says. ”It is about what we see around us and how we depict it; it’s the ability to recognize a compelling image and the skill to capture it. The camera is a tool and the photographer is a visual storyteller who shows something meaningful that words alone cannot convey, thus drawing the viewers into the situation and allowing them to share the emotion and intimacy of the moment.”

A passion for photography began when Lynn spent rainy days as a child viewing her grandmother’s stereopticon card collection, which years later she inherited. Fascinated by the stereo images, which were all the rage in the 1800s, she made a hobby of 3-D photography and plans to devote more time to it.

Lynn first became interested in journalism in high school, where she edited the newspaper and yearbook. She became an educator after earning an undergraduate degree at Penn State and a master’s degree in Reading and Learning Disabilities at American University. Her understanding of the problems children can have with reading has influenced her photos and has earned her many honors including the “International Understanding Through Photography” award in 1996 from the Photographic Society of America.

Lynn has been a member of DPA and the National Federation of Press Women since 1993. She has served on DPA’s board of directors, has been membership vice president and, for many years, has served as a judge for the photography categories in the annual High School Journalism Contest co-sponsored by DPA and the News Journal. Lynn has won numerous state and national awards in the annual communications contests sponsored by DPA and NFPW. A PSA fellow, Lynn has served on the society’s national board for nine years. She is also a professional member of the National Press Photographers Association.

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2004 DPA Communicator of Achievement

Rita Katz Farrell

Rita Katz Farrell, a Reuters correspondent since 1987 and Delaware Bureau Chief from 1999 until the bureau was closed in 2002, is an adjunct professor at Wilmington College teaching communication, serves as a guest panelist for the PBS affiliate WHYY-TV, and continues a 20-year stint as a correspondent for Variety. Now stringing part-time for Reuters and Agence France Presse, she continues to freelance and also does consulting for the University of Rhode Island and the Newspaper Guild, among others. She specializes in speech/presentation writing, editing, and delivery. And she is a ballet instructor at the Academy of the Dance.

A native New Englander, Rita initially worked as a DuPont research chemist for several years before resigning to raise a family. She returned to work as a dance writer for Metropolitan Opera publications. She became a dance critic for the Wilmington News Journal and freelanced for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the L.A. Times and Boston Globe. She has taught business communications and ballet history and technique at the University of Delaware. And she’s been Bureau Chief for Bloomberg Business News and a trial tracker for Court TV. A longtime business writer for the Associated Press as well as Bloomberg Business News, Rita covered corporate litigation, bankruptcies and shareholder meetings primarily, but also politics, high-profile criminal trials and government.

A member of Delaware Press Association since 1982, Rita’s other affiliations include serving as a board member of the University of Delaware Friends of the Performing Arts, a member of the Delaware State Arts Council (appointed by Governor Thomas Carper), a member of the Bar Bench Media Conference since 1996, a founder of Dance Critics Association and of Journalists Association of Delaware, a member of the program committee for YWCA, and board member of the Delaware Chamber Music Festival.

When DPA orchestrated and hosted the NFPW “Brave New Media World” national communications conference in Wilmington in 2003, Delaware Governor Ruth Ann Minner, Attorney General Jane Brady and DSCYF Cabinet Secretary Cari DeSantis agreed to be present for a public press conference with questioning led by the national award winners of the NFPW High School Journalism Contest and their colleagues from Delaware. Rita was the lynchpin of the committee that organized the student awards luncheon and the press conference. Prior to the luncheon, to prepare them for the extraordinary opportunity, Rita held a session for the student journalists on proper protocol at a press conference.

As a member of the Brave New Media World Conference program committee, Rita organized and moderated a panel discussion titled “Investigative Reporting or Life as a Mole: Digging through Public Records.” She brought together experts who discussed how to negotiate the obstacle course of politicians who spin, leaders who dodge, figures that lie and reporters who fictionalize. The discussion ranged from how and where to conduct research needed to shape pubic policy to how a court administrator handles “public access” demands for anything from files to courtroom seating to cameras in the courtroom. Panelists talked about everything from how to cut through the public relations fog and the opaqueness of financial reports to dealing with the “no comment” mantra and the territorialism of court clerks.

In 1986, Rita served as project director for a DPA-sponsored public forum titled “The Free Press in a Democracy: Messenger? or Meddler?” She obtained substantial funding and enlisted the University of Delaware journalism program as a co-sponsor and presenter. The daylong forum featured Ben Bagdikian, award-winning journalist and chair of UCLA’s journalism department, as the keynote speaker. James B. Steele, Pulitzer Prize winner and investigative reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, David Hoffman, White House reporter for the Washington Post, and distinguished representatives of government, industry, labor and the University of Delaware faculty were among the speakers and panelists. She even got the flamboyant Frank Rizzo, then Mayor of Philadelphia, to participate. Rita was executive editor of a 30-minute documentary on Free Press, with Ed Asner as narrator.

Known for always asking tough questions and for telling truth to power, Rita received high praise from U.S. Senator Joe Biden (D-Del.) who said, “Rita Farrell is the biggest pain in the ass . . . but the best reporter in the State of Delaware.”

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2003 DPA Communicator of Achievement

Lise Monty Receives DPA’s Highest Honor

External Affairs Manager for the Delaware Art Museum, former editor of Delaware Today magazine and one-time Tokyo correspondent for Women’s Wear Daily, Lise Monty received DPA’s highest honor when named Delaware Press Association 2003 Communicator of Achievement at the annual Holiday Luncheon on December 7, 2002.

Lise has worked at the Delaware Art Museum since 1994 and, as external affairs manager, is in charge of marketing-communications, tourism, community outreach and visitor services.

While at the helm of Delaware Today from 1987 to 1994, Lise won three prestigious national awards for the magazine’s “general excellence” from the William Allen White School of Journalism, University of Kansas, and the City and Regional Magazine Association. She worked for several years as a freelance writer for The News Journal before joining Delaware Today, and is the author of Images of Delaware, a coffee-table book featuring photographs by Mike Biggs. Lise was the first woman Bureau Chief for Fairchild Publications in its Boston Bureau and worked as Tokyo correspondent for Women’s Wear Daily.

A long-standing member of Delaware Press Association, Lise serves on the board of The Wellness Community-Delaware and is a member of Wilmington Rotary.

As Delaware’s 2003 COA, Lise will compete for the National Communicator of Achievement Award at the NFPW Communications Conference in Wilmington in September. Lise is head of the conference tours committee and has organized pre-conference tours of Wilmington and the Brandywine Valley and a post-conference tour of historic Philadelphia.

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2002 DPA Communicator of Achievement and 2002 NFPW Communicator of Achievement

Kay Wood Bailey

Kay Wood Bailey, the 2002 DPA Communicator of Achievement, received the National Federation of Press Women’s highest honor when she was named the national COA at the 2002 NFPW Communications Conference in Bismarck, N.D. in September. Kay was chosen from a group of outstanding journalists and communications professionals representing their state affiliates who individually were recognized for a lifetime of outstanding achievement in the field of communications and for service to their communities, to humanity, to their state affiliates and to NFPW.

Not only an artist who has exhibited her work statewide and nationally, but a writer, inventor, civic leader, historian, administrator, church worker, wife and mother, Kay Bailey grew up in Delaware in a family that always has cared for the underdog.

Named the first statewide Prison Arts Program Administrator for the Delaware Department of Correction in 1986, Kay developed innovative, life-changing arts and literacy programs for inmates in domestic and international institutions. She teaches traditional art classes but also offers such varied series as the theory of jazz, Chinese brushwork, and traditions of American ethnic groups. A spokeswoman for the Prison Arts Program both nationally and internationally, Kay has raised funds for this program and for the International Correctional Arts Network (I-CAN), which she founded in 1989 and for years has been the editor of the trilingual I-CAN Journal.

During twenty years in Washington, D.C., Kay was outreach chairman of the National Capitol Law League, served on the citizens' committee of Lorton Prison, the D.C. Mayor's and Fellowship Foundation's combined committee to improve inner city housing and, for four years, hosted a weekly radio interview show for Christ Church of Washington while doing public relations work for the Women's Board of the National Symphony and for the Women's Republican Board of D.C.

On returning to Delaware in 1978, Kay served on the Wyoming, Delaware, Town Council, founded and published the Wyoming Gazette, and founded and remains president of the Wyoming Historical Commission. She hosted a television program on the arts and politics in Dover for five years, writes a column for the Smyrna-Clayton Sun Times and published the history of Wyoming. She has served on the boards of the Delaware Symphony and the Grand Opera House. She has been president, secretary and program chairman of Delaware Press Association.

Awards:
Trailblazer Award, given by Agenda for Delaware Women, 1991
She Knows Where She's Going Award, given by Girls, Inc., 1992
Delaware Mother of the Year, given by American Mothers Association, Inc., 1997
Art Educator of the Year, given by Art Educators of Delaware, 2000

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2001 DPA Communicator of Achievement

Allan R. Loudell

Allan R. Loudell Honored as DPA’s 2001 Communicator of Achievement
By Mary Lou Ponsell, DPA COA 1999-2000

Allan R. Loudell, program manager of 1450 WILM NewsRadio has been named 2001 Communicator of Achievement by the Delaware Press Association. The award was announced December 16 at DPA’s annual Holiday Luncheon, where Allan as given a framed certificate and a working replica of a vintage ‘50’s style microphone. He will be entered in the NFPW CPA Contest for a national award to be announced in September.

A newscaster as well as program manger at 1450 WILM NewsRadio, Allan anchors the morning and midday newscasts and oversees 20 or more reporters covering local and regional news. On weekdays at noon, he hosts a one-hour live broadcast, interviewing experts from the US and abroad on current affairs. WILM is the only 1,000-watt AM station in the US in markets of fewer than 1 million to have a primarily locally originated all-news-and-information format. Both Allan and the station have won many awards for a mixture of in-depth local reporting and far-ranging international coverage.

Born in Chicago, Allan made his first commercial radio broadcast at 12 and started a schedule on his high school radio station at 14. He majored in communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, with minors in political science and history. After graduation, he went to Memphis, where he was newscaster, talk show host and news director for 10 years before coming to Wilmington.

Allan’s public service activities include: speeches to civic groups, churches, synagogues, and students at high schools and colleges. He works with student journalists and has helped the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership Board identify students with leadership potential. For the past two years he has worked for and been Honorary Chairman for Delaware United Nations Day.

He is currently Vice President, Programs DPA. He lives with his wife Barbara and children Allison and Michael in Bear.

Note: Allan is head of the program committee for the 2003 NFPW Communications Conference and is orchestrating the effort to line up outstanding speakers, workshop facilitators and panelists from around the US and throughout Delaware.

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1999-2000 DPA Communicator of Achievement

Mary Louise Ponsell

DPW Charter Member Receives Highest DPA Award
by Marion K. Rechsteiner, 1998 DPA COA

Delaware native Mary Louise Ponsell, who has devoted her professional life to the pursuit of information, with careers in print and broadcast journalism, in public relations and librarianship, was named the DPA Communicator of Achievement for 1999 at our annual holiday luncheon on December 5, 1998.

While a student at Syracuse University, she worked summers for the Wilmington Suburban News and the Wilmington Journal Every Evening. Her first job out of college was with radio station WDEL in Wilmington as continuity editor, and that experience led to jobs in New York City with trade journals focusing on advertising for radio and TV.

Having had good jobs in the Big Apple for several years, Mary Lou felt she'd earned a spectacular vacation. After a three-month sojourn in Europe fulfilling a lifelong dream, she came back to Delaware and took a job as a copy editor at the News Journal. In 1967, she became co-publisher and editor of Delaware Today magazine.

In the 35th anniversary issue of Delaware Today (April 1997), editor Marsha Mah, wrote: “When Mary Lou took the reins, she set out to establish a cultural identity for the magazine and to build up its stable of freelance writers.” After five years editing features, coordinating layout and selling advertising, she sold the publication to John W. Rollins Associates and made another career move.

Upon earning a degree in library science from Drexel University's College of Information Science—a natural for someone so fond of information, research and the written word—she became librarian for the fledgling Wilmington College. During a 25-year career there, she saw the school advance to awarding graduate degrees and helped design its People's Library—high tech all the way.

In 1976, Mary Lou was recruited by Mary Sam Ward to help edit Delaware Women Remembered, a book that was one of the biggest Bicentennial projects in Delaware concerning women and their accomplishments, and the first of its kind in Delaware publishing history. She and Katherine Ward worked together for almost two years on that book.

By the time Mary Lou retired from Wilmington College in 1997, she had been listed in two editions of Marquis’ “Who's Who in American Women.” Now she has time for her many interests. The former editor has become a freelancer who plans to write about travel. She'll keep her green thumb very green, she'll enjoy music and boating--she used to have her own sailboat, and she will continue to give her all as board member and treasurer of Delaware Press Association.

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1998 DPA Communicator of Achievement

Marion Kallfelz Rechsteiner

There is no one more youthful and full of zest for life and spirit of community than the 80-year-young Marion Kallfelz Rechsteiner, award-winning journalist, freelance writer, attorney-at-law, and past president of Delaware Press Association. Her contributions to DPA are legion.

During Marion’s two-year term as president of DPA, she shepherded such activities as an outstanding First Amendment workshop for high school journalists and their advisers (former NFPW president Marj Carpenter was the keynote speaker), professional communications contests, a high school journalism contest, and various lectures and seminars. She was one of the organizers of the major regional conference (NJ, MD, PA, and DE), "News, Information, and Technology: Redefining the Media in the 21st Century," held in October 1993.

Prior to her term as president, Marion served as DPA’s vice president for membership for two years, during which our numbers more than doubled, and has been parliamentarian for two years. She has been on numerous program planning committees, has twice served on the nominating committee for bi-annual election of officers, and has been on the bylaws revision committee and the Communicator of Achievement nominating committee.

Marion has received numerous awards in the Delaware Press Association annual communications contest, and those entries have gone on to win several first place awards and one second place award in the NFPW communications contest. She also received a Certificate of Recognition for active and cooperative participation in Legal Aid of Chester County. And she has just completed, gratis, an extensive revision of the Legal Handbook for Older Delawareans. In October 1995, Marion was admitted to practice before the US Supreme Court.

In her career as a journalist during the 1940s and ‘50s, Marion proved--in an era when it was uncommon—that a woman could do a man's job as editor of a weekly and as frequent substitute for the chief editorial writer on a daily paper.

Following marriage and with three young children on the homefront, Marion combined her talent for the written word with generous social service: she did publicity for four Catholic parishes in the Wilmington area, she served as a lector and as a member of the social concerns committee at St. Joseph-on-the- Brandywine, and she cooked casseroles for the Emmanuel Dining Room (serving the homeless). She also worked as a freelance writer for Delaware Today magazine and for the National Catholic News Service, and she was a food writer for the Wilmington News Journal, a Gannett daily newspaper.

In 1996, because of her flair for cooking as well as her outstanding professional credentials and lifelong record of community service, Marion (together with 74 other women) was chosen out of thousands nominated nationwide, to receive the General Mills 75th anniversary “Spirit of Betty Crocker” award. Her photograph was morphed by computer with those of the other winners into the image of Betty you see today on all boxes of Betty Crocker products.

She is a volunteer for the Hagley Museum (history of the founding of the du Pont Company) and Library; she serves on the board of the Delaware Interfaith Coalition on Aging, for which she does multi-media publicity for their annual conference; she is a street representative for the Brandywine Hills Community Association and a member of the advisory committee for a neighborhood group home for people from the state mental hospital.

When asked the secret to leading such a fast-paced and productive life, Marion says it's better to wear out than rust out. "I work hard. I am thorough and reliable and get things done. I have enthusiasm and am a team worker. I can analyze a problem fast and offer solutions. Life is fascinating, and I've loved every minute of it."

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1997 DPA Communicator of Achievement

Sally Rinard

“Do not give people what you think they want. Give them what they do not expect.” That’s the personal and professional creed of Sally Rinard, who has been published in mediums that range from newspaper and magazine articles to fiction, poetry and book reviews.

A contributing editor to Delaware Today magazine, Sally averages two cover stories a year--on everything from hair salon wars to food and fashion to social trends. She is also the movie critic for Out & Abut Magazine and the author of many freelance articles.

Known for her wit and style, Sally honed her talents during 10 years in New York with Women’s Wear Daily and “W,” covering business, fashion and the NY social scene. While working as market editor and social reporter, she interviewed presidents of Fortune 500 companies, major designers--Bill Blass, Givenchy and Ralph Lauren, and celebrities such as John Updike, Henry Kissinger, Barbara Walters, Nancy Reagan and Jackie O.

Sally’s novel Pretensions (St. Martin’s Press), which focused on New York’s fashion/ social/publishing scene, earned a hardcover book club sale in 1986, with rights in the U.K., a paperback version the following year, and promotional tours in both countries.

Active in the local community, Sally has been publicity chairman for Wilmington’s Heart Ball and CHILD Inc.’s Fairy Tale Ball, director and program vice president for the Delaware Literary Connection and event chairman for DLC’s fundraiser gala, a member of the benefit committee of the Literacy Volunteers of New York, and an annual walker in AIDS Delaware’s “Walk for Life” A longtime DPA board member, Sally was director of publicity and served as vice president for programs. She has won a number of first place awards in the DPA Communications Contest.

Of writing, Sally says, “Through our own unique pursuit of syntax, of essay, we summon our powers, chase that story and open the windows of our soul. We are sturdy warriors who tell it like it is, standing alone if we must.”

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1996 DPA Communicator of Achievement

Gloria O. Galloway

Gloria Galloway, who has spent more than 50 years in the field as reporter, feature writer, photographer, editor and freelance writer, never has wavered from her dedication to the people's right to know and the setting of high standards, no matter what the size of the publication.

When she first accepted the position of Executive Editor of Eagle Publications, Inc., in the early 1990s, Gloria became the key member of the management team of two of the ever-dwindling number of independently owned newspapers in the country—the Eagle Times, a daily in Claremont, N.H. with circulation of 10,000, and the Argus-Champion, a weekly in Newport, N.H. with circulation of 5,000.

Gloria's task of directing editorial operations and the redesign of the two marginal New Hampshire newspapers was made more formidable by the fact that she lives in Delaware. A key decision she made early on was to handpick two new editors, both young and talented, with a thirst to make the papers the best they could be. The challenge that kept the mission focused was the shared dream that a newspaper does not have to be big to be good.

"Change is good," she says, "and we realized we had to capture new and younger readers tuned in to the fast pace of today's world. Eye-catching graphics, bigger photos with more impact, layout and design that entices the reader into the page, stories that tell it all in fewer words, stories with heart, and in the case of small circulation papers, the crux of it all—more, more, more local news."

Within two years, both newspapers were winners. The Eagle Times has been honored several times by the New England Newspaper Association as a Newspaper of the Year. And staff members on both papers have won awards for writing and photography from the National Newspaper Association, as well as regional awards.

Gloria’s career began in the summer of 1945, when she worked as a reporter in the Portsmouth Bureau of the Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch in Portsmouth, Va. At the time, she was still three years away from graduating cum laude from the University of Minnesota. In the late 1940s and early 1950s she worked general assignment for the Minneapolis Tribune and served as an editor at the Waterloo Daily Courier in Waterloo, Iowa.

Gloria was a regular feature writer/photographer for the News Journal in Wilmington, Del., for five years during the 1960s and for another two years in the mid-1970s. During the Bicentennial year, her interest in the environment also led to her writing an extensive, nationally distributed report on pollution in the Delaware River for the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. Moving from publication to publication was not a matter of choice. As the wife of a corporate executive, she and her family moved often from locations in the U.S. to Hamm, Germany, to London to Tehran. The move from Tehran was unexpected and hair-raising when the Galloways were forced to flee Iran in the wake of the Revolution.

As a volunteer, for two years she was the sole guiding force behind a monthly page in the Fernandina Beach, Fla. News Leader devoted to news of the local high school. Using high school students as her staff, she taught them what it's like to work for a "real" newspaper—writing, photography, layout, editing, headline writing, typesetting, paste-up—the works.

When living in Seaford, Del., in the early 1960s, she was instrumental in organizing the first adult education program there and served as co-director of the newly instituted program.

Community service always has been high on Gloria's list of priorities. She has prepared and taped weekly news programs for the visually impaired and physically handicapped in Delaware, as well as for those unable to attend regular church services. At the request of elementary schools, she has read books and made classroom presentations, and she has read to disadvantaged pre-school children at a daycare center in Florida.

The communities she has called home all have benefited from Gloria's strong interest in "making a difference." She has served on boards of community associations, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) and regional Girl Scout councils; developed and taught classes in English for German children; and judged, evaluated and critiqued high school newspapers for the Columbia Scholastic Press Association.

She also has served on AAUW college motivation panels; organized school workshops for parents in Seaford, Del., who lacked a PTA; planned and edited a new publication for the women's society of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Del.; and lectured communications classes at Jacksonville University in Jacksonville, Fla.

Gloria was a founder and charter member of Delaware Press Women. She took on a leadership role with DPW and served as treasurer for several years. As she moved from assignment to assignment, state to state, country to country, she maintained her loyalty to the National Federation of Press Women and also was a member of Virginia Press Women, Florida Press Women, and NFPW as a member-at-large while living overseas. Over the years, Gloria has had a number of entries in state affiliate communications contests and has won several awards.

On her return to Delaware, Gloria once again became an active member of Delaware Press Women. She participated in the major regional workshop—"News, Information, and Technology: Redefining the Media in the 21st Century"—jointly sponsored by NFPW press women affiliates from Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; has been a speaker at a DPA general membership meeting; chaired the program committee for two years, and now serves as director of the First State High School Journalism Contest.

Gloria Galloway has left more than a paper trail in her wake. She has built a monument of achievement and service that inspires us all.

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