Duke
Employee Community Service Award
Pam
Spaulding recognized as Duke University employee of the year
for service in the community
PAC2 and Old West Durham volunteer, Pam Spaulding, was recognized
by Duke officials at a special dinner last night. Tired from her
trip to the Final Four, even Nan Keohane stopped by to congratulate
Pam -- who didn't know why she was there. :)
Pam was enthusiastically nominated by the Old West Durham neighborhood,
for the 2003 Duke University's Employee Community Service Award.
Old West Durham is a Duke partnership neighborhood that stretches
from East Campus, across Ninth Street, almost to the doors of
the medical center.
Many shops along Ninth Street were forced to close their doors
after Northgate Mall opened in the 1970s. In the 1980s, Erwin
Mills shut down and the Durham Freeway destroyed dozens of mill
houses and our only park. Our neighborhood had hit rock bottom.
After years of neglect and hardship, Old West Durham needed to
be pulled together. Eight years ago, we had no neighborhood association.
One of the first goals of our new group was to build a sense of
community.
Today, local newspapers call us one of Durham's most active and
effective neighborhood groups. A very, very large part of our
success is the result of Pam Spaulding's tireless and ongoing
commitment to improve the community.
The first thing Pam did was create a web site to help build that
sense of community that was lost.
Designed and maintained by Pam from the beginning, our neighborhood
history webpages have been honored by the Historic Preservation
Society of Durham, Preservation North Carolina, and by the United
States Library of Congress.
We've added dozens of pages of recollections and old photographs
from long-time residents. Recent efforts include accounts from
Italian stonecutters who built Duke Chapel and called West Durham
home, a Nevada resident who grew up in West Durham's African American
community of Brookstown, Duke Press historians for an early 'blue
collar' history of Ellerbe Creek, and Hall of Fame composer John
D. Loudermilk (who was born in Old West Durham and wrote the song,
'Tobacco Road').
Due to these efforts, we've been contacted by several Duke students,
teachers and staff seeking more information about the communities
near campus.
Along the way, our neighborhood association was bestowed with
the Herald-Sun's "Durham Grit" Award, MuniNet Guide Review's best
community site in the nation award, and the Independent Weekly's
"Citizen Award" for "tireless dedication to making our community
a better place to live."
Pam was directly involved in all these efforts and then some.
Pam worked to secure a $2,000 Partners Against Crime grant to
help Old West Durham build community (with T-shirts and bumper
stickers) and provide items for residents to enhance home security
(including flood lights and deadbolt locks).
Pam also helped get 100 new street lights installed along neighborhood
streets and designed neighborhood brochures that were given to
elected officials, new neighbors and distributed at McDonald's
Drugstore, Books on Ninth and The Regulator.
Pam created and maintains the Friends of South Ellerbe Creek
website -- an informal group of citizens dedicated to conserving
and enhancing the scenic, recreational, natural and historic qualities
of South Ellerbe and its landscape near East Campus.
Finally, when the Partners Against Crime needed a co-chair, Pam
walked up to the plate to serve. PAC2 builds bridges with police
officers and empowers citizens with information on how to access
the resources available to them in various areas, such as crime
prevention, safety and housing. As co-chair, Pam moderated meetings
between neighborhoods and officers in the police district near
Duke.
A modern-day Paula Revere, Pam has worked tirelessly to get information
out to the community -- by building the multi-neighborhood group's
website and improve communications among Duke's closest neighbors
via what has become Durham's most active community listserv.
For her quiet and effective efforts, Pam Spaulding richly deserves
Duke University's Employee Community Service Award for 2003.
John Schelp, president
Old West Durham Neighborhood Association
Kelly Rimer, past-president
Old West Durham Neighborhood Association
