Keweenaw Community Foundation holds awards dinner, honors citizens for support

The Daily Mining Gazette - Published: Thursday, January 17, 2008

CAPTION: Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette

Keweenaw Community Foundation director Barb Rose, center, and board member Doug Stewart, right, present an award to Paul Hinzmann at the KCF’s second annual Pure Gold Stars dinner. The dinner recognizes volunteers and donors in the community as well as spotlighting grant recipients.

By GARRETT NEESE, DMG Writer

HOUGHTON — The Keweenaw Community Foundation marked another successful year with its second annual Pure Gold Stars dinner Wednesday at the Michigan Technological Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts.

The dinner, which honors some of the volunteers who have supported the KCF throughout the years, also featured testimonials from some of the grant recipients.

Paul Hinzmann received the Pure Long-term Commitment Award. Hinzmann, who taught physics and photography at Michigan Tech University for 40 years, was an “early adopter” of the KCF concept, said KCF board member Doug Stewart. He has been behind numerous endowments for the Portage Lake Youth Fund, the Kiwanis Nailbiters Fund and others.

Hinzmann offered the crowd a roadmap to winning the award.

“Get a good education, pay attention to the various foundations you might be able to support, and live a long time,” he said.

The Herman “Winks” Gundlach Award went to ... well, nobody’s really sure. But the anonymous donor gave $250,000 to the Keweenaw Community Foundation last year to be split between Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly and the Omega House, and a newly created endowment fund for the Copper Country Humane Society.

Julie Gundlach, who presented the award, said the recipients had praised what the money would do for their operations.

“‘Solidity.’ ‘Long term,’” she said. “These are big things.”

Stewart came back to the podium to accept the Pure Gold Volunteer of the Year award. Stewart was a major driving force in establishing the Keweenaw Community Foundation, as well as securing its independence from the U.P. Foundation.

Stewart said he’d built his life on a simple philosophy: “There’s no limit to what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

But he patted himself on the back for one choice: recruiting Jim Bogan, now KCF chair, for the board.

Bogan noted the progress the foundation has made over the years, going from $1.8 million in endowments to $4 million, and from 28 endowments to more than 50.

“That’s a credit to our community, to our organization, in terms of what they can accomplish,” he said.

Some of the KCF’s recipients also spoke about what their grants have meant.

The $931 grant for the Michigan Tech Northern Ski Club helped pay for hundreds of lessons, said Blair Orr.

“You put us over the bubble so we could have a larger and more productive program, but it’s one we couldn’t have had without that first three years of grants,” he said.

Terry Smythe, the director of the Keweenaw Memorial Fitness Center, said the center has gotten 10 grants from the KCF.

Those grants, she said, have enabled a rowing program that directly led to rowing being added to the Special Olympics, as well as programs that have brought young and old together.

The center has also collaborated with groups as diverse as Copper Country Mental Health, Good Will Farm and Portage Health.

Linda Pelli, local runner of Health Occupations Students of America, said the grants have enabled the growth of the local program, which now has 70-plus students from eight area high schools.

Her surprise guest was Laura Moyle, a HOSA student who delivered the speech that won an award at HOSA’s national competition.

Moyle, who has cerebral palsy, said her interactions with cancer patients led her not to see herself as a person with a disability, but a “warrior.”

In dealing with patients, she said, she’s learned how not to treat them with distance, but relate to them as people.

“If I listen with my ears, it’ll go in one ear and out the other,” she said. “If I listen with my heart, it will stay there forever.”

Brianna Bogan, chairman of the KCF’s Youth Advisory Committee, spoke about the committee’s work, including grants to the Tamarack City Volunteer Fire Department and Keweenaw Krayons. The group, which has members in Houghton, Hancock, Calumet and Jeffers high schools, is looking to expand to more high schools.

“Being involved and seeing all this is doing, you can really tell it makes a difference,” Bogan said.

Garrett Neese can be reached at gneese@mininggazette.com