Lifetime Achievement Award
The 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner is Richard Stoll. Twelve years ago when the Nature Society was first formed, Richard as a friend, was called upon to repair a gate at Tenhave Woods. This earned him the tongue in cheek title of the Nature Society’s Engineer and he has never put down his tools since. He has used his chainsaw to cut up fallen trees so that they could be removed from our trails, operated heavy equipment to move large amounts of dirt, repaired bird feeders, made and installed signage, assembled our arboretum shed along with doing many other things that needed to be done. This year, he designed, machined and helped install posts & wires necessary to add additional height to the fences along Custer and Lexington. This project was necessary in order to keep deer out of the park so that they can no longer destroy Tenhave’s wildflowers. This design saved us $50,000. Without all of Richard’s efforts throughout the years, our nature parks would not be what they are today.
President's Award
The 2013 President's Award Winner is Fred Kaluza. Fred promotes the Arboretum stewardship on Wild Ones list serve and website. He and his wife Linda manage the northwest quadrant of the Arboretum as integral parts of the Ecoscaper team. An Ecoscaper is a gardener who landscapes with regard for nature’s local suite of organisms, their environment, and maintains and balances the local ecology and interactions among those organisms. He has lent his engineering and gardening expertise to the Arboretum's rain garden design, construction, and management. The Arboretum project would not happen without Fred’s help and the assistance of the Ecoscaper team.
Chinquapin Award
The 2013 Chinquapin Award Winner is Kristin Smith. Many attempts have been made by the Nature Society to offer programs to the schools with only marginal success. Kristin, a teacher at Royal Oak Jane Addams Elementary School, asked us four years ago if we could do a pond life program for the entire 5th grade class on the last day of the school year. Kristin apparently felt it was a success and we have been repeating the program yearly since then. She also invited us to put on a program as part of a school assembly in the winter of 2011. This past fall we did a forest walk in Tenhave Woods and an owl pellet program for the entire Addams 5th grade. Hopefully, she will continue to make this an annual event. These programs are among the most rewarding for us, because of the enthusiasm of the children. Kristin is the only person from outside of the Nature Society to actively become involved with our goal of educational programs for children.