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Urgent Action Needed: Quick Links WATCH Tales of the San Joaquin on CyberTVNow.com WATCH Power Point Presentation on San Joaquin River Basin Storage. (Large File, please be patient) San Joaquin Historic Settlement Information
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Valley conservationist Hallowell receives national service awardThursday, June 23, 2005WASHINGTON — Coke Hallowell has spent years nourishing the San Joaquin River Parkway. Now that labor of love has brought her national recognition. On Wednesday, Hallowell returned to her Fresno-area home as one of six national winners of the annual Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Award for Outstanding Public Service. The bronze medallion puts her in sterling company. "That was such a wonderful surprise," Hallowell said Wednesday. "It's not that I've done so much, but it's to recognize the progress made by the San Joaquin River Parkway." Actually, it's both. The nonprofit American Institute for Public Service presents the Onassis Award to a handful of activists for service benefiting local communities. The Onassis Award winners amount to the top tier of the Jefferson Award for Public Service, presented to 82 men and women nationwide this year. Hallowell knew she was among the previously announced Jefferson Award winners, which is why she and her husband, James, flew to Washington for the week's festivities. It wasn't until the gala dinner Tuesday night at Union Station, however, that Hallowell knew for sure she had also been honored with the Onassis Award.
"I had a hint, and a little hope, that it might work out that way," she said. The other Onassis winners are a cross-section of patriotism in action. There were two Indiana police officers who raised $130,000 to build a community playground. A Dallas woman forms a club for disadvantaged children, a Louisiana man supplies food and pharmacy services for the poor, and a Chicago man provides multiple social services from late-night security to child care in his neighborhood. "It was so touching, and really tear-jerking, to hear these stories from around the country," Hallowell said. Onassis and then-Sen. Robert Taft founded the American Institute for Public Service in 1972, with talk of creating a Nobel Prize equivalent for volunteer activism. While it has not achieved that level of visibility, the program does attract big names, with the likes of comedian Whoopi Goldberg; Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.; and politically connected California businessman Gerald Parsky listed among the selection board. "It is quite a wonderful thing," Hallowell said, although at first she acknowledged that "I thought it was some kind of a scam." Hallowell said she nearly threw away the letter that first advised her she had won the Jefferson Award. It was only on further investigation, she said, that she realized the nonprofit program based in Delaware was entirely legitimate. A former elementary school teacher and founding member of the Sierra Foothill Conservancy, she lives with her husband on a 700-acre cattle ranch in Madera County. They have placed a conservation easement on the property to protect its open space virtues. The American Institute for Public Service says the awards are meant to honor "unsung heroes;" though, to be sure, Hallowell's good works have previously been well-trumpeted. A board member of the San Joaquin River Parkway and Conservation Trust, which she helped found in 1988, she is the inspiration for the Coke Hallowell Center for River Studies on Old Friant Road. She also is well-known among San Joaquin Valley lawmakers, such as Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, who while serving in the Legislature, helped carry bills funding the river parkway. This week, she assured Costa that she was ready for more. "I told him I feel charged up to come back and continue the work," Hallowell said. http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/10742586p-11522636c.html
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