Recapping the 2022 Annual Awards
The 2022 Awards Banquet was held via Zoom at the May 7, 2022 general meeting.
The Heritage Preservation Award was presented by Samantha Barnes to the St. Louis Genealogical Society
The Historic Preservation Award is presented annually to an individual a group or an organization in recognition of contributions to preserve conserve house or collect family history. Past recipients in this category cover many varying types of genealogical and historical preservation endeavors. This year the Dallas Genealogical Society is happy to present the award for historic preservation to the St. Louis Genealogical Society and their volunteers who have endeavored to preserve and most importantly share the valuable religious records from their area. They have worked diligently to scan digitize and index all types of records including baptisms, confirmations, marriages, deaths, and membership lists from more than 100 congregations on their website and with more than 1700 possible congregations in the future. The project is ongoing. The congregations represented at this time include the Baptist, Catholic, Episcopal, Jewish, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and United Church of Christ. Some of the records are only available to their members but many are publicly available on their website.
I have the great honor of formally presenting the award for historic preservation to the St. Louis Genealogical Society Projects Director Carol Whitton.
Director Whitton replied: Thank you so much. On behalf of the St. Louis Genealogical Society I’d like to say we’re astonished that other people are recognizing our our society and we hope that in the future everybody will take note of what we have done, and do the same for their localities because it’s really a very useful thing to preserve records for the churches. We give each church a flash drive with the index and the original records copied on it. They can do with it whatever they – store it off site, make copies, whatever they want to do, but it is a helpful way to preserve their records for them, as well as to get genealogical research material on our website for our members and for the public well. Thank you so much.
The Volunteer of the Year Award was presented by Karen Marshall to Ann Broihier
The Volunteer of the Year Award recognizes a volunteer who has done much more than was asked. Even though we have many volunteers there’s usually one or two people who really stand out in a particular year.
The 21-22 year the awardee joined DGS only in 2019 but she quickly brought the organization up to date with the newest technology. She also had a strong desire to create a German Genealogical Interest Group with the within DGS but she wanted to make it a hybrid group in order to increase participation and this was in 2019, before the pandemic and before we realized how much more inclusive a lot of our events if they were virtual.
The awardee worked with Bernard Meisner, Tony Hansen, Kathleen Murray and others, conducting a survey of interest in participation and leadership in the group. There were some organizational meetings held, a mission statement written and the first formal meeting was held on November 2nd, 2019.
The group continues today with an attendance range between 9 and 30 persons with an average attendance of 18 persons.
Our awardee also urged the DGS to master technology so that our general meetings could be offered in a hybrid format. We succeeded in doing that and the first hybrid meeting was held in January 2020 before the pandemic introduced all of us to virtual and hybrid meetings. I was amazed when I learned that the organization would not have been so ready to offer virtual meetings or so confident to commit to making all of our future general meetings and seminars hybrid without this person’s vision and initiative.
In addition, she serves as Secretary of the DGS Board of Directors. She prepares minutes quickly and accurately, and she’s hyper attentive and responsive to questions that we get via email and voicemails.
It is with pleasure that the Dallas Genealogical Society presents its Volunteer of the Year Award for 2022 to Ann Broihier.
The Lloyd Bockstruck Award was presented by Jean Larson to the late Debbie Parker Wayne
The Lloyd Bockstruck Award is presented to an individual for outstanding contributions to the genealogical community on a national level. This year differs from the past in that it’s being presented posthumously to Debbie Parker Wayne.
Debbie died January 17 this year. It was a great loss to the genealogical community. Debbie was one of the pioneers in the field of genetic genealogy and she generously passed on her knowledge to other genealogists through teaching writing publishing books and journal articles and working with the media her professionalism was evident in her certifications as a certified genealogist and a certified genealogical lecturer and her service on the boards of committees a professional organizations.
Debbie had a degree in computer engineering and was one of the first women to do well in the field, working for motorola for over 20 years. She would put these analytical skills to good use when she began doing genealogy using traditional methods first and then adding DNS when that became available in 2011. Debbie and CeCe Moore, another pioneer in the genealogical society community, began looking for ways to pass their knowledge on and to train genealogists in the techniques of genetic genealogy.
In July 2014, Debbie, CeCe, and Blaine Bettinger taught the first in-depth course in the world at the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh. Debbie coordinated the course which she led for several years afterwards. She also coordinated course at courses at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy and the Institute of Genealogical and Historical Research. She was a frequent instructor at the Forensic Genealogy Institute of the Council for the Advancement of Forensic Genealogy.
She presented regularly at genealogy conferences and developed the online autosomal DNA course for the National Genealogical Society. Some of the attendees in these courses have gone on to become trainers and leaders in genetic genealogy themselves.
Debbie enjoyed writing about genetic genealogy, and the community is fortunate that she did. She and Blaine Bettinger wrote genetic genealogy and practice in 2016 for which they won second place in the Texas State Genealogical Society writing competition for books by a professional.
She edited and wrote one chapter in the advanced genetic genealogy techniques and case studies in 2019 and for this she received First Place in the Texas State Genealogical Society Writing Competition for Books by a Professional. She also contributed articles to magazines and journals, such as the National Genealogical Society magazine, Association of Professional Genealogists quarterly; and Stirpes, Texas State Genealogical Society Journal. She received Third Place in the International Society of Family History Writers and Editors in 2012 Excellence in Writing Competition. she worked with the media providing research for programs such as Finding Your Roots, Who Do You Think You Are, and a Canadian program, Ancestors in the Attic.
Debbie’s leadership was evident in the boards and committees on which she served. She served as Chair of the Texas State Genealogical Society DNA Committee from its inception in 2011 until her death. She set up the DNA Texas Project on Family Tree DNA. She was also a trustee and a member of the Board of Certification for Junior Genealogists Executive Committee from 2018 to 2020, and was trusted trustee of that organization’s education fund. She was chair of the Advocacy Committee of the Association of Professional Genealogists, and president of the Lone Star Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists. Blaine Bettinger summarized Debbie well in his appreciation on his Facebook page, saying that as a result of her incredible efforts many thousands of people have utilized DNA evidence in their genealogical research. Her work created so many ripples that will continue to flow outward for decades to come
Debbie’s daughter, Amber Gunderson accepted the award on behalf of her late mother.
The Texas State Genealogical Society has set up a fund to give donations in memory of Debbie through their website at txsgs.org.
The President’s Special Award was presented by Jim Thornhill to Ken Johnston
DGS has, in recent years, expanded its reach, partly because of the pandemic, but partly because of our virtual footprint. As we have done that we’ve continued our effort to try to create to present a more professional appearance for our society and we’ve had a lot of people that have worked on that but one person has been the leader in our efforts. He has been responsible for crafting a lot of our graphics, and has been responsible for giving us advice for on how to make things look and how to present things to the public. He’s been responsible for redesigning our promotional materials and also instrumental in doing the graphics for our seminars.
It is my honor to give this year’s President’s Special Award to Ken Johnston for his extensive efforts in creating our graphic arts for the Dallas Genealogical Society.
The Award of Merit was presented by Tony Hanson to Susan Chance-Rainwater
The Award of Merit is presented annually to a DGS member who has consistently contributed time, talent, expertise, and abilities to the society over a period of years. This member’s dedication and hard work in the name of our society usually goes way above the norm. Their contributions really stand out and all that is certainly true for this year’s recipient, Susan Chance-Rainwater.
Susan is currently in her seventh year as a member of our Board of Directors. For five of those years she has served as our treasurer in that role she has worked tirelessly to bring order and sanity to our financial records and our policy documents and she’s filed many forms required by the government agencies that oversee non-profit organizations. She also spent two years as our webmaster helping us collect a few more website awards from the TSGS Annual Website Competition.
Those are considerable contributions but the thing I admire and value the most about Susan is her willingness to jump in and do whatever needs to be done to help our Society move ahead regardless of her title or her position.
Need somebody to document the latest proposed bylaws and standing rule changes? Look no further. Need to update the website to incorporate our new branding style? Consider it done. Add newsletter articles to the blog every month? Not a problem. How about helping with a complete redesign of our website which is our latest project? She couldn’t wait to get started.
Susan has been an active and outspoken participant in every discussion and decision our board has made over the past seven years. She has an extremely rare and valuable set of skills and we’re extremely fortunate to have had the benefit of her knowledge and experience. We don’t always agree, but she has earned my admiration and respect it’s an honor to welcome her to the illustrious group of those who receive this recognition.
