July 19, 2016
BAR HARBOR — The Maine Seacoast Mission has announced the three recipients of the Mission’s 2016 Sunbeam Award: Acadia Centennial Task Force Co-Chairs Cookie Horner and Jack Russell, and also, President & CEO of Jasper Wyman & Sons Edward R. Flanagan.
Ms. Horner, Mr. Flanagan, and Mr. Russell will accept their awards Friday, August 19th at the Annual Sunbeam Award Gala 2016 at the Mission’s Headquarters Colket Center in Bar Harbor.
After graduating nursing school, Cookie Horner moved to Maine permanently in 1972. Ms. Horner worked at the University of Maine Health Center, then at MDI Hospital. “But the last 17 years of my nursing career was as school nurse at MDI High School, a job that I loved, and where my children went to school,” said Horner.
“It is truly an honor that Jack and I have been chosen for this award, which actually very much belongs to all of the Acadia National Park community for their enthusiastic support of the centennial,” Cookie Horner said.
Since retiring, Cookie Horner has worked as a volunteer on the Friends of Acadia Trail Crew, and as a hospice volunteer and care manager. She served six years on the board of Friends of Acadia, and the last four years as co-chair with Jack Russell of the Acadia Centennial Task Force.
Jack Russell was born on Mount Desert Island. His “privileged education,” Mr. Russell said, “trained him as a literary historian.” He then “worked as a community organizer in Detroit in the 1970s and then served for three decades as a writer, thinker, organizer and consultant helping manufacturers — and the cities, states and nation that hosted them — perform in the rising global economy.
In 2006, Jack returned to MDI with his wife Sandy Wilcox. He writes, speaks and teaches occasionally on local history and American literature and politics. On the board of Friends of Acadia since 2009, Jack is the co-chair, with Cookie Horner, of the Acadia Centennial Task Force.
“I am still recovering from the shock of the Sunbeam Award honor,” Mr. Russell said. “The best therapy is to think through how to express the only way in which I can accept — which is as one representative of the many who have worked long and hard to give the communities surrounding Acadia an opportunity to express their pride in the park made from our land, labor and love….”
Ed Flanagan joined privately owned Jasper Wyman & Son in 1993 and has been Wyman’s President & CEO since 1995. Founded in 1874, 31 years before the founding of Maine Seacoast Mission, Wyman’s is the largest U.S. owned blueberry grower in the United States with farm and processing operations in Washington County Maine. A central area of the Mission’s work, rural Washington County has chronically high unemployment. And Wyman’s remains among Washington County’s top employers.
In Wyman’s Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2014 it says, “Wyman’s has always had a deep commitment to the local communities of Downeast Maine — Milbridge, Cherryfield, Deblois and surrounding communities of Washington County, plowing back over 75-percent of its $55,000 donations into local community charities including Women’s Health Workshop, Maine Seacoast Mission and local food banks.”
Table and patron tickets for the Gala are now available. Space is limited.
For more information about the Gala, or to make a reservation, contact Anna Silver at 288-5097 or [email protected]