Two MPM Community Heros Honored

Elizabeth Hane

Sandy Reeks

     Mountain Pride Media, publisher of Out in the Mountains, has designated two volunteers as its Community Heroes for 2001. Elizabeth Hane and Sandy Reeks will be honored at a volunteer recognition playday and dinner in mid-January
      Elizabeth Hane, Ph.D., moved to Vermont 18 months ago from Norman, Oklahoma, by way of Texas and Rhode Island, and within a few weeks was volunteering at OITM mailing night “stuffing” parties. As her partner, Dr. Stina Bridgeman, put it, “We lived just down the street from the OITM office, so it seemed silly not to volunteer.”
      It wasn’t long before Elizabeth volunteered to be a community member of the Mountain Pride Media Technology Committee, which acquires and maintains the hardware and software that make publishing possible. As a volunteer for the Archive Project, she began typing in articles from back issues of OITM and coding them for an eventual online searchable archive. Then she became the project’s coordinator, all on top of her full-time job at the University of Vermont’s Proctor Maple Research Center.
      “Elizabeth is an absolute joy to be around,” according to MPM Board Vice President and Publishing Committee Chairman Roland Palmer. “She has rarely missed a stuffing since her first one. Elizabeth researched and updated our web site’s links section, which was desperately in need of revamping and updating, and has also been key in getting copies of OITM converted to electronic format to build our online archive. Elizabeth is dedicated, organized, and a pleasure to work with.”
      MPM Board President Carrie Rampp agreed. “Elizabeth has been an immediate asset to our organization, from her first arrival. Perhaps most importantly, she has taken on the important role of Archive Project Director. She’s taken on the large, often thankless job of coordinating the preparation of old issues of OITM for publishing on the web. Her enthusiasm for this project, and MPM generally, has been intoxicating – and I hope it spreads to those around her!”
      Both board members fondly recalled the night Elizabeth volunteered to bring dinner for the Technology Committee, and instead of the pizzas the committee expected, they were served a four-course meal with home-made spanikopita as the main course. “I believe Elizabeth’s willingness to take on any task, large or small, is perhaps what I have come to respect most about her,” concluded Carrie Rampp.
      Sandy Reeks, the Classifieds and Calendar Manager, came to Mountain Pride Media and Out in the Mountains through being volunteered by her partner, Pam Kinniburgh. “There was a distribution route open, so I contacted Roland and said I could do it. Of course, then it turned out that the route was really on Sandy’s way to work, so she ended up doing it instead.” Sandy’s work on the Calendar began when Pam volunteered for it, then found it required an ease with software and an organizational skill she did not have. When Pam joined the MPM board, that just cemented the volunteer relationship. And when the Classified manager left, and Sandy took on that role as well.
      “Most of Sandy’s work is done off-site,” said Board VP Roland Palmer. “We may not see her much but her excellent work is evident each time you open a copy of Out In The Mountains or log onto our web site. Sandy is really an unsung hero as she organizes all the calendar and classified requests, makes sure that all the information is accurate, and then submits it all by deadline each month. She has been doing this very detailed, often frustrating behind-the-scenes work for over a year.”
      Sandy arrived in Vermont nearly seven years ago from Scotland (“But she’s English,” Pam clarified) by way of Cambridge, England. Recognizing that her degree in Medieval History wasn’t much help in finding a job, she attended Champlain College for a degree in Information Technology. Currently she works for a firm specializing in software for hotels and casinos (“This is not the work of her heart,” said partner Pam, “unlike her work that helps support the GLBT community through OITM.”).
      The job takes six to eight hours a month, “if nothing goes wrong,” reported Pam. Often, Sandy has to track down incomplete information. “She tries to do it in one big chunk near deadline, so she has gone home early from social events in order to get the Calendar and Classifieds done on time. This job can really be a pain, because the online Calendar site was down, or the software was bad.”
      So why does she do it? “Sandy believes in supporting the GLBTQ community. And this is a way she can do it from home,” said Pam, herself now a community volunteer member of the MPM Outreach Committee.
      Board Vice President Roland Palmer concludes, “I hope people recognize the significant contribution Sandy makes to MPM and OITM. I also think that Sandy should be commended for having to deal with our free calendar service which is often down or unavailable, which means she has to do her updating late at night or early in the morning. I think the greatest gift we could probably give Sandy is a new online calendar program.”