Book of Golden Deeds Chair Alan Peczkowski presents the 2022 Exchange Club Book of Golden Deeds Award to Patti Ark, of Springfield, Ohio for her volunteer work with the Clark County Historical Society’s Heritage Center. Patti’s father, Harry Ark, was presented with the 1973 Book of Golden Deeds Award from the Springfield club!
Book of Golden Deeds
Volunteer efforts are very important to our society and should not go unnoticed. The National Exchange Club’s longest running project, the Book of Golden Deeds Award, recognizes dedicated volunteers who give endless hours of their time and talents toward making their communities better places to live. Ever since the Exchange Club of Huntington, Ind., sponsored the first award in 1919, thousands of unsung heroes and heroines have been recognized. The Book of Golden Deeds Award exemplifies The National Exchange Club’s beliefs.
Patti Ark
Patti has been an amazing volunteer since the day she started with us. In April 2019 we were faced with the biggest disaster we could imagine. Late in the evening, a pipe broke on the third floor of the east side of the building and sent water cascading down through the third-floor archives, into the second-floor collections storage areas, and down to the first floor of the building. Patti showed up the morning after, unaware of what had occurred, and immediately rolled up her sleeves and jumped in to help. Over the next several months, Patti devoted countless hours (actually, it was 170 hours, we did count!). She helped move artifacts all around the building, getting things out of water damaged areas, helping lay things out to dry, building and cleaning shelves to put items back in their storage spaces, moving boxes BACK into storage, moving hundreds of paintings, boxes, blueprints, and so much more. She never complained about the work and we could always count on her to be there with a smile and encouraging words. In the years since 2019, she stuck with us through a pandemic, coming in to work on processing a HUGE family collection of artifacts and papers twice a week. She always is enthusiastic to contribute to the discussion. She is constantly bringing in new donations that help fill in gaps in our collections and often they relate to the programs we hold. If we ever were to mention in passing “I wish we had *insert item here* in our collection, it seems like Patti would always pipe up, “Oh, I have that, I’ll bring it in!” We are SO lucky to have a volunteer like Patti as part of our Heritage Center family!
Mark Sullivan presides BoGD 2022
Natalie Fritz Archivist addresses BoGD Patti Ark 2022
Alan Peczkowski Chair of BoGD Award 2022
Patti Ark with archivists from the Heritage Center 2022