Reflections on my Personal 'Bests'
by Cecilia Green

• Meeting an incredible 29-year old man who began a group at his university to meet the needs of mixed race students, which has grown in 10 years into a nationwide nonprofit association with a slick magazine Maven.
• Getting encouragement for my delayed project from Nancy Beasley from Virginia, who wrote an amazing book Izzy's Fire: Finding Humanity In The Holocaust. It took years of interviews and research and I couldn't put it down because I felt I was right there with them. At the same time I was reading this, I was hearing the sad stories of evacuees from New Orleans who were homeless, separated from their families, hungry and going without baths. But that was no comparison to Izzy's family and relatives who had survived the ghetto and lived in a hole they dug in the ground for months, hiding from the Nazis, surviving on little to eat and no baths or clean clothes for months on end.
• Getting the first-hand report from our Louisiana affiliates about the devastation in their area. The Baton Rouge newspaper opened its doors to the Times Picayune to help them at least do a newspaper on the Web. We passed the "hat" (an umbrella the affiliate brought for the silent auction) and gathered more than $3,000 from those present for the affiliate to use in whatever way they choose.
• Having a record number - 11 - from IWPA attend the conference.
• Learning what a blog is and how to use it
• Hearing of all the Communicator of Achievement nominees' impressive accomplishments - including our IWPA nominee, Val Ensalaco. They were such a varied group that the judges must have had a difficult decision in naming one. Ree Strange Sheck of Santa Fe, New Mexico, was selected as the NFPW COA. She is editor of a weekly arts and entertainment magazine and wrote a travel guide to Costa Rica where she has worked for eight years with a nonprofit to preserve rain forests and reduce rural poverty.
• And BEST OF ALL, seeing Val Ensalaco elected in a hotly contested race for secretary of NFPW. We all campaigned, passing out "forget me not" buttons and brochures and Val took 60 percent of the votes. I stepped down from co-director of marketing to be appointed to the advisory council of our new president, Meg Hunt, directing special projects.
• Next year--- Denver!

Back to Nov, 2005 Issue | Back to Pen Points