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2024 Outstanding Service Awards

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Community Members Honored for their Service at

152nd Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce Annual Meeting and Banquet

sponsored by Pacific Power

 

About 200 community members attended the 152nd Annual Meeting & Banquet for the Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce on Saturday, January 25, 2025. As a chamber of commerce, we offer a variety of services to new, old, large & small businesses in the Astoria Warrenton area and our annual meeting is a way to celebrate all the wonderful things happening in our community. Pacific Power is the presenting sponsor of this annual meeting.

Learn more about our event here.

“A major part of this gathering is to celebrate some remarkable businesses and individuals with the announcement of the winners of the Richard Ford Distinguished Service Award and the George Award. Our community thrives because of the involvement of our residents and business leaders. These awards are among the most prestigious, highest honors our community can give to the super-volunteers in our midst.  It is more evidence that we live in a truly special place that we have dozens of worthy nominees each year. The selection committees have an extraordinarily tough job to narrow that list down. This year’s recipients are deserving of this recognition and so much more.” shared AWACC Executive Director David Reid.

See a list of previous George and Ford award winners here.

Several individuals and businesses were recognized for their contributions to the community during the evening’s program. Join us in congratulations and appreciation to:

The information below is an excerpt of the announcement script for the program. 

Award Winners Group 
 Left to Right: Jack Ficken, Marian Soderberg, David Reid, Bill Fritz, Brian Alsbury. (not shown: Columbia River Bar Pilots)
Award Winners Group Left to Right: Jack Ficken, Marian Soderberg, David Reid, Bill Fritz, Brian Alsbury. (not shown: Columbia River Bar Pilots)

Bob and Irene Baltimore Leaders Circle Award: 

Columbia River Bar Pilots

Our Leaders Circle program continues to support the Chamber with many of the things that made our Ambassadors so impactful, like engaging members at the various networking events.  They also continue recruiting new members and supporting event attendance.  Professional and leadership training for our Leaders Circle participants is a critical piece and helps make the program more prestigious, fun, and engaging.  But tonight, we’d like to honor the recipient of an award named for two long-time and dedicated Ambassadors.

The Irene and Bob Baltimore Award is presented each year to a business that has gone the extra mile to serve the communities of Warrenton and Astoria.

The business we’re honoring tonight is Columbia River Bar Pilots.

The job of bar pilot is a highly technical one, requiring deep knowledge, vast experience, and sound judgment, not to mention a big dose of courage.  Now put that job at the mouth of the Columbia River in a place known as the “graveyard of the Pacific” and every one of those job requirements becomes more important, more intense, and more difficult to meet.

Since 1846 – longer even that this chamber has been in existence -- the Columbia River Bar Pilots have been the best of the best.  Their contribution to our nation’s economy can be measured in the billions of dollars.  The value of their protection of property, goods, and human life is impossible to measure.

By any measure, that work and the professionalism behind it would be more than enough contribution to the community.  But every year the Columbia River Bar Pilots take the extra steps of generous donations throughout the region.  They are consistent and significant donors to the wishing tree program each winter, among other charitable contributions.

And at fundraising auctions year-round you will often find a “Day with a Bar Pilot” experience on the menu.  These auction items garner thousands of dollars to support charities for education, the animal shelter, theaters, and other nonprofit groups.

We know that these donations entail a fair amount of logistics and effort to fulfill, but winners tell us that the pilots do it with glad hearts and create a truly unforgettable day for the auction winners.

For these reasons and more, it is my pleasure to award the Columbia River Bar Pilots with the annual Bob and Irene Baltimore award.

Board President's Choice Award: 

Knappa School District

Over the past few years, the chamber has called for voter support of school bonds.  That’s because good education is critical for a working economy.  And it’s because in every case, we had full confidence in the district to use the funds to its highest and best use.   In every case, that confidence proved to be well-founded, with each district leveraging bond funds for additional investment and delivering meaningful improvements to schools, student security, and education for years to come.

That confidence was never warranted more than with the Knappa School District’s recent bond measure.

Knappa Schools undertook an ambitious set of projects that included a new middle school and gym, significant improvements to both the high school and Hilda Lahti Elementary, and critical upgrades to fire protection district-wide and bus safety.

With leadership, vision, and a strong sense of purpose, the board of education, and bond oversight committee, and the district set out to make the most of the dollars invested for the benefit of future students without negatively impacting education for current students.

They achieved more than that, creating unique and powerful learning opportunities for students during construction and building a strong sense of school pride.

The district’s commitment to utilize local contractors where possible was obvious, with 44% of subcontractors coming from the immediate area, including sitework, electricians, flooring, plumbers, surveying, asphalt, and construction companies.

Even the choice of materials had a local purpose.  Unlike the existing buildings, the new middle school was constructed of wood.  Wood that was harvested in Knappa, milled in Warrenton, then donated to the district by Hampton Lumber.

When a significant tree had to be removed to make room for the new building, the district made its wood available to students to repurpose into furniture, signs, and more through shop and art classes.  You can see the results throughout the campus.

In short, the district, the students, and the community of Knappa capitalized on every opportunity afforded to them by the taxpayers of the Knappa School District.  Great job!

Knappa School District. Superintendent Bill Fritz, accepted the award.

Richard Ford Distinguished Service Award: 

Brian Alsbury

This year’s Richard Ford Distinguished Service Award is being presented to someone who is in a position of service.  Their job is service to the citizens of Warrenton.  Now, we wouldn’t usually choose someone whose job is to serve.  We’d choose to honor that in other ways and reserve the Ford award for volunteers.

In this case, though, we have a person who is in a job of service as part of a continuum of service.  Someone who started out volunteering for nearly everything, including the work he was eventually hired to do.

Someone with a heart of service who serves all of us every day for long hours at their job and still makes time to serve beyond that role.  He even finds ways to make the job do more for his fellow citizens than they have reason to expect.

And he does this because it is who he is.  For that reason, he is the perfect candidate to receive this year’s Richard Ford Distinguished Service Award.  Ladies and gentlemen, Brian Alsbury.

George Award: (multiple winners) 

presented by the City of Astoria & the Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce

Marian Soderberg

Our next community service award, the George Award, has been presented by the City of Astoria & the Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce since 1960 and is so named because the recipient is someone who didn’t wait for someone else to act.  They didn’t “let George do it”, they saw a need in our town and acted to fill it.

Our 2024 George Award winner is one of those volunteers that seems to be exactly where she’s needed before you even know you needed her.

Following a long and distinguished career as a counselor at Warrenton High School, she quote “retired” end-quote to a life of giving to her community.

At Hope House she counseled children and families in the most difficult circumstances with grace and kindness.  In her church, she filled multiple leadership roles, again leading and contributing wherever there was a need. One of her many nominators described her as a true leaders who understands the value of teamwork, collaboration and compassion.

She was one of the first 12 Clatsop County Cruise Hosts and through her leadership and contribution, that group has grown to over 150 individuals, welcoming visitors from around the world to Astoria. She guided the efforts for the cruise hosts to become a nonprofit 501©3. Today, our cruise host program is the envy of ports around the country and are a big reason that cruise lines love to come to our town.

Meanwhile, she found time to join the Assistance League of the Columbia Pacific and started its Duffel Bag program for children going into foster care in 2009.  Her professional experience and her innate compassion made her the perfect coordinator for this meaningful program.

Recently, she has become a cornerstone for a program called Santa for Seniors at Peace First Lutheran Church, combating isolation among our senior population by providing year-round contact and creating intergenerational connections.

And I could go on, but, since many of you have already solved the mystery, and I suspect that she is actively looking for a way to escape this stage, please join me in thanking George Award winner Marian Soderberg.

George Award: (multiple winners) 

Jack Ficken

We have such a strong community volunteer ethic that sometimes it’s impossible to just choose one person for the George Award.  2024 was one of those years.

So, our second George Award winner is someone who has spent a literal lifetime in service to his hometown and neighbors.

Very few of us can say that we have attended a single event every year of our lives, but this person has attended the Clatsop County Fair every year of his life.  As soon as he was old enough, he was contributing to the fair, first as a participant and later as a volunteer, leader, and fair board member.

It would be impossible to calculate the number of young lives positively affected by 4H, FFA, and other aspects of county fair life.  This year’s George has been at the heart of the fair for as long as he or any of us can remember.

Today, he also serves on the board of Clatsop Community Action, Clatsop Community College Foundation and, the Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce.  Fellow board members and staff will tell you that he doesn’t just “sit” on the board. He’s always an active contributor of work, ideas, energy, and leadership.

He makes time to serve as a member of the Astoria Rotary Club and Clatsop Working Watershed Cooperative.  And those are just some of the organized groups he works for.  You’ll also find him at nearly every meaningful fundraiser in the county either cooking or rolling up his sleeves where he’s needed.

Just last weekend he cooked Portuguese steak for 550 attendees at the Natural Resources Dinner, helping to raise over $140,000 for fishing, FFA, forestry, CTE, and other programs at every high school in the county.  All of that steak was donated by Warrenton’s Main Street Market, by the way.

The bottom line is that this award winner is everywhere he’s needed and he does it because he believes in his hometown.  That is worth celebrating.  Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in celebrating George Award winner, Jack Ficken.

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