The Moore County school system has been fortunate enough to have a strong core of volunteers throughout the district.
On Tuesday, Volunteer Coordinator Linda Hubbard and Superintendent Susan Purser recognized the Volunteer of the Year for the 2003-2004 school year with the presentation of the inaugural Eileen Vansant Volunteer of the Year Award.
Pam Frye, who has been volunteering at Elise Middle School for five years, received the award during a ceremony and luncheon at the Weymouth Center in Southern Pines.
She was honored to receive the award named after Vansant, the 2001 Moore County Schools Volunteer of the Year, who died in April. Frye was named the Volunteer of the Month in May 2003 for her efforts at Elise Middle.
“I am very surprised, and I’m happy,” Frye said. “I’m much more surprised than I was in May.”
Frye said she helps wherever she is needed.
“I help them with their reading,” she said. “I help them with their math. Just whatever it is that they need. I help a lot with ball games. I’m pretty much all around. I try to do anything that I can. We’re all for the kids and that is the main thing.”
Frye said she was fortunate enough to briefly meet Vansant while both were attending the Governor’s Volunteer Award ceremony in 2003.
“I’m very honored to receive an award named in her honor,” Frye said.
Hubbard began Tuesday’s ceremony by addressing an audience that included teachers, principals, school system senior staffers and school board members.”
“Today marks the beginning of a very special tradition in Moore County Schools,” Hubbard said. “We are here to honor the volunteers of the month for the past year and to celebrate the life of Eileen by presenting the Eileen Vansant Volunteer of the Year Award.”
Vansant was an educator and principal in Pennsylvania and New Jersey for 39 years before retiring to Southern Pines. Her volunteer efforts have been recognized across the state. She received the Mary Jane Kistler Award, one of four major awards presented to outstanding volunteers by the North Carolina Association for Community Education at the Annual NCACE Awards Ceremony in Raleigh on April 10.
In 2003, she was honored by being one of five recipients of the Governor’s North Carolina Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service.
Much of her volunteer work was done at Southern Pines Elementary School, where she visited Jane Kschinka’s third-grade class.
Burgin Beale, principal at Southern Pines Elementary, said a tree was planted on the school’s campus in Vansant’s honor.
“Eileen Vansant was a very special person,” Beale said. “I knew Eileen as a church member until I went to Southern Pines Elementary in 2001. Then I got to see some glimpses of her as an educator. More than anything else, she was a volunteer that really cared about the children.”
Beale said he could always count on Vansant being there twice a week and recalled how the children loved to “ride in her big old car” when she sometimes took them home after school.
“After she passed, I spoke to Ms. Kschinka, and we wanted to look at a way to memorialize Eileen for what she has done, not just for our kids but for her life in general,” Beale said.
Vansant’s efforts as a teacher and volunteer would live on in those she has touched through the years, Beale said.
“So we came up with the idea of a living memorial in the way of a tree,” he said.
At the conclusion of Tuesday’s award presentation many of those in attendance traveled to Southern Pines Elementary to see the tree. A bronze plaque is being made that will mark the tree and recognize Vansant.
Hubbard recalled meeting Vansant after Kschinka called and asked her to stop by the school.
“Little did I know I would meet a volunteer in her early 80s who wore leg braces and walked with the aid of a cane, sometimes two,” Hubbard said. “She managed to volunteer two days a week, tutoring children who needed her special touch in helping them to master reading and math skills.”
In 2003, Vansant became housebound and could no longer visit the school. Hubbard recalled finding two children who needed tutoring who had the means to visit Vansant at home so she could continue to do what she loved — help children learn.
“What a difference it made,” Hubbard said. “Eileen was once again a happy camper and the children began to excel in the classroom.”
Her son, Russ Vansant, and daughter, Linda Damron, attended the award ceremony.
Afterward, they emotionally expressed their gratitude.
“I was surprised by what we saw today,” Vansant said. “It means a great deal. “I want to thank Linda Hubbard for her efforts and Jane Kschinka. As I’ve gone through life, I’ve learned that teams are very important. Husbands, wives and their children, business teams and school teams — people working together can do greater things than one person working by themselves. That’s what Linda Hubbard and Jane Kschinka did with my mother. They were a great team.
“Linda promoted my mother and gave her a lot of pride and motivated her even more, I’m sure. Jane allowed my mother to get back in the classroom when she was in her 80s, which my mother dearly loved.”
Damron said she wasn’t surprised because her mother “did so many wonderful things.”
“She always said she didn’t do it for the recognition,” she said. “She said she did it for the love of doing it.”
