The Pilot News - Culver Lions hold annual awards event

Lion Dan Adams introduced the Organization of the Year, the Culver Relay for Life committee, by describing the Club’s first introduction to the local relay in the fall of 2007, when Culver Academies student Ashley Eberhart addressed the group about the then-upcoming event. Adams noted the spring, 2008 Relay, held at Culver Academies, was the first Relay for Life in Indiana organized by high school students, and benefited from efforts by both Academies and Culver Community High School students. Surpassing regional Relay organizers’ predictions that the Culver event would likely raise some $35,000 and include 25 to 30 teams, the 2008 Relay raised over $100,000 – with the help of more than 70 teams – to help the American Cancer Society fight the dreaded disease.
“And it was done by students,” added Adams. “That was the neat thing.”
The young man accepting the award, Ian Greenberg, was student coordinator of the 2009 Relay, said Adams. “The whole thing was so well run, so well organized by students, from the opening ceremonies to the lap of survivors, to Dallas Clark from the Indianapolis Colts being there.
“In talking about what organization to recognize this year, this was really the only one that came up...it’s an amazing feat to do something like that for a town this size, and it speaks very well for our students coming up, who will be running this world.”
Adams noted Culver Academies senior Greenberg is from Oregon, and he and Adams have become close in the four years Adams – a retired Culver Community High School math teacher – has been tutoring Greenberg in math.
“I think he’s taught me more than I have him,” Adams said, adding Greenberg has become like a son to him. “He’s involved in so many things.”
Greenberg thanked the Club for the award, noting he had no idea it was coming and had prepared a presentation on Africa for the group, which he hopes to give at a return visit in the future.
Lion Barbara Winters introduced the organization’s Citizen of the Year, Alice Wamsley, explaining she used to babysit for Wamsley’s family as a girl in Monterey.
Wamsley, Winters said, was born in Goshen in 1926, the youngest of five children. She attended Franklin College, a campus with few male students upon her arrival due to the war but flooded with former GIs after 1945. In 1946 she met Clayborne Wamsley, whom she married the following year, staying home with her children until the youngest was in school and returning then to her chosen profession of teaching art and home economics.
Although already an experienced teacher, Wamsley was required to attend classes for certification, and Manchester College required of her some time as a student teacher. In an odd twist of fate, Winters said, Wamsley wound up a student teacher under her former babysitter, Winters herself, at Culver High School.
Alice Wamsley would continue teaching in the Culver school system for 25 years before her retirement. During those years, reported Winters, Wamsley taught a unit to Winters’ daughter on vegetables, leading to the inclusion of eggplant at the Winters family dinner table.
“I still don’t like eggplant,” Winters laughed. “It’s a staple at (my daughter’s) house, all because of a class Alice Wamsley taught.”
Following her retirement, continued Winters, Wamsley’s interests and hobbies revolved around family and church, where she was director of the church choir and Winters’ husband Ralph was a faithful choir member. She spends her days, Winters said, “with old-fashioned home making activities such as gardening, cooking, cleaning, sewing, quilting, and making pies.”
She also helps grind feed for the Wamsley’s beef cattle, acts as a reading mentor at Monterey Elementary School, sings with the Pulaski County Extension Chorus, is a Salvation Army bell-ringer…and then there are those pies, 44 of which Wamsley donated to her church’s last Easter bake sale.
“She’s a delegate to the Council of Churches, which has been sponsoring chili suppers to raise money for the food pantry,” explained Winters. “And who do you think brings the most pies? Everyone said, ‘Oh, the pie lady! Yes, she’s wonderful and has donated so much to this community.’ The very least we can do is say ‘thank you’ to her.”
Wamsley, jokingly confessing she dislikes eggplant as well, told the audience she doesn’t feel she deserves the award, but thanked the Club for it.
“We ought to give God the glory,” she added. “It’s only through what He does that I can do anything. Just praise god. It takes everybody to make a community go; you’re all as deserving as anybody else.”
Lion Mike Overmyer presented Wamsley with a home-made cherry pie (her favorite flavor) baked by his daughter.
“And the best thing is,” he added, “it’s still warm.”