Recipients honored for their community service fly special flags during week of ball
Flying from select homes in Columbia this week are special flags with two royal blue stripes and a white stripe in between.
Displayed the week of the Junior Auxiliary Charity Ball, they mark winners of the club’s Citizen of the Year award, a tradition dating back nearly half a century.
Tina Andrews, the Charity Ball chair, said the goal is to recognize someone who excels in the community and goes above and beyond what’s required without expecting anything in return.
“We want them to do it just because they want to do it, not because they get any incentives or publicity,” Andrews said.
The 2019 winner will be announced during the 48th annual JA Charity Ball Saturday at the Columbia Country Club.
The award started in 1972, the same year as the charity ball, and was known for many years as the “Outstanding Citizen Award.” Among the JA members in the early years of the award was Sylvia McElroy, who joined the club soon after moving back to Columbia in 1975 and served as president in 1981.
McElroy said they would send a letter to all of the civic organizations in town asking for nominees. The guidelines for who they were looking for were summed up in the JA prayer, which they recited at the beginning of each meeting.
It begins, “Send us, O God, as Thy messengers to the hearts without a home, to lives without love, to the crowds without a guide. Send us to the children whom none have blessed, to the famished whom none have visited, to the fallen whom none have lifted, to the bereaved whom none have comforted.”
The president chose a “secret” committee from the community who would select the winner from among the nominees, keeping their identity as confidential as possible while still working with their family to make sure they attended the ball.
While that process remains more or less the same, the name of the award changed several years ago to “Citizen of the Year,” and McElroy noted back then the club’s makeup was different because almost all of them were homemakers; in fact, bylaws limited it to just three working members.
Billy Beasley made the first flags, McElroy said, and the tradition has continued.
Dal Murray, the 2007 winner, said when she moved to Columbia in 1969 to teach the reputation was that if you weren’t born here you would never be accepted.
“When I got Citizen of the Year, I said, ‘I guess I’m a part of the community,’” she said.
She said it’s meaningful because someone nominates you based on something you’ve done to make a difference and because of the achievements of past winners.
“To be part of some of the people in the community who I admired for what they did, to be selected it was very humbling and unexpected,” she said.
List of JA Outstanding Citizen honorees
• 1972, Mrs. Thomas Carter Griffith
• 1973, Maggie Mae Burrow
• 1974, Van Morgan
• 1975, Maurice Dantin
• 1976, Dr. Clifford Thompson
• 1977, Margaret Clark
• 1978, Sedgie Ford Griffith
• 1979, Bea Bradley
• 1980, Betty Upton
• 1981, Miriam Simmons
• 1982, Jeanne Williamson Willoughby and Bret B. Bradley Jr.
• 1983, John Sapen
• 1984, Dr. Russell Bush Jr.
• 1985, Vernon Pearson
• 1986, Mary Jeanne MacKay
• 1987, Sebe Dale Jr.
• 1988, Marlyn Fortenberry
• 1989, Dr. Tommy King
• 1990, Dr. Merwin B. Moore
• 1991, No recipient
• 1992, Dr. Walter Hassell Jones
• 1993, N/A
• 1994, Mickey Webb
• 1995, Earl D. “Buddy” McLean
• 1996, Maxine Branton
• 1997, Jean M. Cavin
• 1998, Arny Rhoden
• 1999, Mary Elizabeth Sturdivant
• 2000, Judy Griffith
• 2001, Robert and Ann Herrington
• 2002, Julia Kathryn Pittman
• 2003, Margaret Lee
• 2004, Dr. Thomas B. Whitehead
• 2005, Billy Rawls
• 2006, Patty Dantin
• 2007, Dal Murray
• 2008, N/A
• 2009, Reuben McDowell
• 2010, Patricia Johnson
• 2011, Edward Hough
• 2012, Ken Rayborn
• 2013, Vicky Stringer
• 2014, Beverly Houston
• 2015, Ben and Lori Watts
• 2016, Carlton Thornhill
• 2017, Leigh Berry
• 2018, Stephanie Guidroz
C-P Editor Charlie Smith compiled this list from the newspaper archives along with help from the Junior Auxiliary. If you know who the winners were in the missing years (1993 and 2008), please contact Smith at 736-2611 or csmith@columbianprogress.com so we can have a complete historical record.
Pictured Above: Dal Murray, awarded the Junior Auxiliary Citizen of the Year in 2007, holds the JA flag that past winners display at their homes during the week of the annual charity ball. | Photo by Charlie Smith
