SERVICE TO MANKIND AWARD

   This award is the highest honor Sertoma can bestow on a non-Sertoman. The award honors outstanding volunteer service to the community. Past winners have included educators, foster parents, volunteer camp directors, activists...people who make a significant volunteer contribution to those in need. Adopted in Asheville, NC in 1954, the first International award was presented in 1955.
   Every Sertoma Club may present a Service To Mankind Award. The two Decatur clubs work together to make a local selection, then create a written entry to submit to District, Regional and possibly Sertoma International.
   International sends the award winner and a guest to its International Convention for award presentations, then sends them to Washington, D.C. for recognition by the U. S. President.
Decatur entrants have won several District and Regional awards, and in 1979 the local winner, Henrietta Armstrong, was also the International Service To Mankind Award Recipient.
   After making the local selection, the Decatur clubs organize a banquet to honor the award winner in March or April with a handsome plaque. The two clubs, in addition to presenting the annual Service To Mankind Award, presents a Sertoma Youth Service Award to one or more high school students for outstanding volunteer service in the community.

       David Roberts

        The Decatur Sertoma Club and Decatur Breakfast Sertoma Club are pleased to present their 2009 Service-To-Mankind Award to Mr. David Roberts of Decatur, Illinois. David is a retired salesman who enjoys helping people by volunteering in numerous organizations such as the Golden K Kiwanis Club, DOVE, Relay For Life, Race For The Cure, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and Decatur Memorial Hospital Hospice. He and his wife Shirley are members of Resurrection Life Church.

PERSONAL

            David was born in 1933 and was raised in the Chicago area.  In 19­­51 he graduated from Oak Park High School where he played basketball and ran cross-country track.  He attended Beloit University and Bradley University.  He served from 1953 - 1955 in the U. S. Army, and was discharged as a corporal while stationed in Stuttgart, Germany, as a radio operator.  He moved to Decatur in 1963.  For over thirty years he was a successful salesman and manager in Decatur for PYA Monarch, a division of Sarah Lee Food Products, retiring in 1983.  He continued his interest in running for exercise for many years, but following stent-implant surgery in 2003, he restricted his running to several days each week in cardio-rehab at Decatur Memorial Hospital.  In 1956 he married Elise “Dolly” Segroves and they had two sons, David, Jr. and Gary, and two daughters, Gail and Lori.  Dolly passed away in 2003.  In July, 2008, David married Shirley Pryczynski, the mother of four sons, Mark, Gale, Ronald and John.  Shirley was raised in Macon County and graduated from high school in Argenta, a small town near Decatur.  She was the office manager for Western Southern Life Insurance Agency in Decatur for two years.  She loves to travel and notes that she has been in nearly all of the fifty United States as well as visiting a few countries in Europe.  Shirley and David are avid, competitive duplicate bridge players.  Altogether they have nine grandchildren. 

COMMUNITY

  David has always been a “people person.”  During the 1960’s & 1970’s he coached Little League Boys’ Baseball and church league basketball.  In 1973 he was one of the founders and board members of the Borg Warner Softball Sports Complex where later several World Champion Men’s Fastpitch Softball tournaments were held; the Decatur ADM Team won that tournament in 1993.  As a dedicated runner, David became active in two fund-raising events for cancer research, Race For The Cure and Relay For Life.  He was a team captain for First United Methodist Church in the Relay and on the advisory board for the Race.  During his long and active membership at First UMC David contributed wisdom to many committees, including Finance, Staff Parish, Membership, Evangelism, and Education.  Following his marriage to Shirley last summer, he transferred to her long-time church, Resurrection Life.  However, he still volunteers in the office of his former church.  In addition to Shirley’s active involvement in her church, she is also a community volunteer.  She has been a ‘Big’ match to a ‘Little’ girl through Big Brothers – Big Sisters and has been since 2000 until now a money manager helping clients of the Senior Services Department at the Macon County Health Department,

In 1997 David became active with DOVE, an ecumenical organization that began in 1973 as a shelter for women and children victims of domestic violence and later became the coordinator of its Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP).  He has been on DOVE’s Advisory Council for many years and served as its president in 1998-1999.  For seven years he has volunteered four hours each week in RSVP’s Recycling Program that collects and crushes aluminum cans; it netted DOVE $30,000 last year.  He reports all of his volunteer hours to RSVP to help with its grant-writing and to the Golden K Kiwanis Club, a large service organization of retired men and women that he joined in 1995.  He has been chair of many Golden K committees and was its president in 1999-2000.  As of October 31, 2008, he has recorded 4735 volunteer hours of community service during his thirteen-plus years of membership.  He helps with the club’s Arbor Day Project that gives a small tree to every third-grader in Macon County, around 1900 this past year.  One personally rewarding Golden K project in which he proudly participates is the ‘Reading To Kids Program’ that involves one-on-one mentoring in schools.  Other organizations that benefit greatly from his volunteering include the Salvation Army Food Bank, Decatur Memorial Hospital’s Hospice Program, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and United Commercial Traveler’s ‘Seeds of Hope’ Fund, the latter two that help kids in need.  David firmly states that he volunteers not for awards but for personal pleasure.  However, Golden K members have appropriately recognized him six times as their Golden K ‘Volunteer-of-the-Month.’ 

CONCLUSION

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Brittney Tulak

          The Sertoma Club of Decatur and the Decatur Breakfast Sertoma Club are proud to present Miss Brittney Tulak with their tenth annual Sertoma Youth Service Award.  Brittney is a senior at St. Teresa High School where she is an outstanding scholar, volunteer and athlete.  Through her school’s Serviam Club she volunteers at several local agencies and is active in sports, theater and music.  She attends the Community Church of Christ in Harristown.  Her confident and helpful nature make her highly esteemed by all her associates.

PERSONAL

            Brittney Tulak was born April 11, 1991, in Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Her parents, Patrick and Donna Tulak, moved to Decatur in 1996.  Brittney has two sisters, Courtney, 15, and Danielle, 10.  Last year Donna and her three daughters moved to Argenta, but Brittney chose to remain at St. Teresa High School to complete her senior year.  Brittney enjoys traveling but she really loves to read, sew, and sing, especially in ensembles.  Each year she prepares a solo for critique by Millikin University faculty members. 

SCHOOL ACTIVITIES

            Brittney attended grade school at Our Lady of Lourdes School in Decatur and then advanced to St. Teresa High School.  Her favorite class subject is English.  A highly motivated thespian, she has performed in nearly all of St. Teresa’s theater productions since she was a freshman and has even directed a one-act play.  Twice she was in the cast of “Annie.”  She has been on the track team all of her four high school years and now runs several distance track events and cross-country.  As a junior she was voted the most improved cross-country runner.  As a freshman she also played volleyball and basketball and sang in the school choir.  She has been on the high honor roll throughout high school and is a member of the National Honor Society.

VOLUNTEER ACTIVITIES

            When our joint-club committee met with Brittney and her mother to discuss her volunteer activities, we learned that she first became interested in volunteer service during eighth grade when her class went several times to help at the Good Samaritan Inn.  At this local “soup kitchen” in downtown Decatur, that serves a noon meal to up to 300 persons every day, she helped to prepare and serve food and talked to the clients.  On a few Saturdays she helped the director, Kathleen Taylor, organize supplies for the following week.  This experience of helping people in need was especially meaningful to Brittney because she recalled how her mother needed help when her youngest sister, Danielle, was born about a week after Brittney was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes in 1998. 

            When she entered high school she immediately joined the Serviam Club whose members do community and school service projects.  During these last four years she has helped at least a dozen times at the Good Samaritan Inn where she continued to sense the sincere appreciation of the clients as they smiled while chatting with her.  She also helped with the DOVE Angel Tree, went caroling at two nursing homes, and assisted at St. Teresa by gathering recycled paper and other items.  In addition, her National Honor Society required participation in one large service project.  This year her group worked on “Coats for Kids,” donated coats that they delivered to DOVE, an ecumenical agency that manages a domestic violence shelter and provides food and clothing baskets at Christmas for needy applicants.  These types of service projects also fulfill the new Illinois Education Department’s graduation requirement for some service learning.  Following graduation Brittney plans to attend a nearby college to become a secondary-level schoolteacher.

CONCLUSION

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NATIONAL HERITAGE 

National Heritage is a project whereby a committee of club members choose from a variety of  ways to create awareness of the privileges of living in America.  Our two Sertoma clubs typically deliver an attractive facsimile of the United States Bill of rights to every fifth grade student in all Macon county schools.

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