MV foundation to recognize staff and alumni

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Linda Garrity, left, and Lorraine Ewing are the 2021 Mt. Vernon distinguished alumni.

HANCOCK COUNTY — One spent decades teaching at Mt. Vernon High School and made more than 3,000 masks at a time when personal protective equipment was critically low for health-care workers. The other devoted her career to nursing and now volunteers in a variety of ways, including administering COVID-19 vaccinations at the Hancock County Health Department.

The Mt. Vernon Education Foundation’s Distinguished Alumni Award recipients are just two of the honorees who will be recognized at the organization’s annual Black and Gold Gala next weekend. Teachers, staff, a foundation member and corporate sponsor will be acknowledged as well.

The event also gives the organization a chance to celebrate its successes over the past challenging year.

Supporting Mt. Vernon schools is the foundation’s purpose, and the COVID-19 pandemic created plenty of need for support.

The foundation spearheaded a generosity challenge shortly after the pandemic reached Indiana last spring, during which students did random acts of kindness to enter a drawing to win gift cards from local restaurants in need of support.

Renee Oldham, executive director of the education foundation, also recalled the campaign it held around Thanksgiving that collected donations for food pantries.

“We saw an enormous increase in that need because of parents being laid off during those times,” Oldham said.

Much like handshakes, hugs haven’t been encouraged during these socially distanced times. But the education foundation wanted to get as close to giving them to school staff as they could. So they bought more than 500 Mt. Vernon scarves for all of them to wrap around themselves with handwritten cards from community members letting them know how much they’re appreciated.

The foundation also provided small grants for teachers, which were used on expenses like art supplies, more of which were needed because students could no longer share them. Additionally, a grant provided science classes with more frogs for dissecting, because the pandemic prevented multiple students from huddling around a single specimen.

“We tried to fill in anywhere and anyhow, any kinds of gaps we could, to help keep our staff encouraged, motivated and appreciated and our students learning,” Oldham said.

At the gala, the Ryan Fry Excellence in Education Award will be announced for Mt. Vernon’s Teacher of the Year and Staff Member of the Year, chosen from nominees from each of the district’s six buildings.

Jill Prefontaine and her husband, Kevin, established the award in 2018 in honor of her brother, the late Ryan Fry. She was motivated to create the recognition to combine her love for her brother and great teachers. Her father, Kenneth, taught math at Mt. Vernon for 30 years.

Each winner will receive $2,500. Additionally, this year, each building winner will receive a $500 award.

The foundation’s Distinguished Alumni Award is going to Lorraine Ewing, class of 1969, and Linda Garrity, class of 1973.

Ewing was in the first class to be in the high school’s current location at State Road 234 and County Road North 200W. When the high school was at what’s currently Landmark Park in Fortville, she met her future husband, Bill, who reached out through a school bus window to shake her hand. The couple has been married for 51 years.

She went on to work at the very high school from which she graduated, spending the last 25 years of her 31-year career teaching family and consumer sciences before retiring in 2007.

The McCordsville resident was working part time at a chiropractor’s office when the pandemic shut it and so many other businesses down. Ewing, who has a passion for sewing and quilting and was in need of an activity to help her through the grieving process of losing her mother in late 2019, made 3,325 masks during the pandemic to boost personal protective equipment supplies at a time when they were critically low for health-care workers.

“If you can’t do what you do, you do what you can,” she said. “If I couldn’t be out there working, maybe I could help protect someone who was.”

Garrity credits her time as a cheerleader at Mt. Vernon with instilling confidence in her for public speaking.

“It took me several years before I realized that it actually helped me to be comfortable in front of people and speaking in front of people,” she said.

She graduated with about 85 other students, less than a third of the number that graduated from Mt. Vernon last year.

“I think that played into the fact that I really was close to my community,” she said. “When you come from a small, tight-knit community, you kind of keep those roots over the years. I’ve always felt very rooted, especially to McCordsville, Fortville and Greenfield.”

Garrity worked as an obstetrics registered nurse for Indiana University Health hospitals for 25 years, which she said allowed her to experience the opposite of the small community she grew up in and made her more well-rounded.

She worked at Hancock Regional Hospital as well. While there, she started a nurse honor guard program several years ago that area funeral homes offer to loved ones of nurses. Through the program, a team of hospital employees and volunteers, dressed in all white, conduct a 10-minute ceremony at the nurse’s funeral, which includes a candle lighting.

Garrity, who lives not far from Mt. Vernon’s campus in Fortville, spends much of her time volunteering, including for Court Appointed Special Advocates; as president of the Hancock County Council on Aging; and administering COVID-19 vaccinations at the Hancock County Health Department.

Jan Viehweg, a founding board member of the Mt. Vernon Education Foundation who chairs the selection efforts for the distinguished alumni awards, praised the impacts both recipients have made through their careers and volunteerism.

“I think they are great recipients of this award,” Viehweg said.

The education foundation’s Leanne Brown Cornerstone Award is presented to an individual for their service and dedication to the foundation, and is named after the foundation’s founder, Leanne Brown. Alyssa Prazeau is this year’s recipient.

Oldham said Prazeau embodies the model of excellence that Brown set for the foundation.

“She quietly goes about getting things done in meaningful ways,” Oldham said, whether it’s supporting staff through the scarf project last winter, serving on foundation committees or providing design assistance by sharing her expertise as a managing partner of an Indianapolis-based landscape architecture and land planning firm. “She really models servant leadership.”

Prazeau has a daughter who graduated from Mt. Vernon and another currently in the school system.

She also thinks the foundation goes about its mission in a meaningful, quiet way that does not seek recognition, but because it is the right thing to do. Prazeau admires that the foundation focuses on the entire school system, not just part of it, as well.

“I just think that education foundations in general, either at our school or any school, they’re serving the right purpose for their communities,” she said.

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WHAT: Mt. Vernon Education Foundation

WHEN: 6 p.m. Saturday, April 17

WHERE: JW Marriott, 10 S. West St., Indianapolis

TICKETS: mtvernonfoundation.home.qtego.net

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District Building Winners and Nominees for the 2022 Mt. Vernon Community School Corporation Teacher of the Year

  • Beth Chaplin, McCordsville Elementary
  • Delinda Deckard, Fortville Elementary
  • Lynette Huth, Mt. Vernon High School
  • Kittie Masters, Mt. Vernon Middle School
  • Leeanna Seppala, Administration Building
  • Brianne Williams, Mount Comfort Elementary

District Building Winners and Nominees for the 2022 Mt. Vernon Community School Corporation Staff Member of the Year

  • Jenny Campbell, McCordsville Elementary
  • Jo Goff, Mt. Vernon High School
  • Doris Johnson, Administration Building
  • Lisa Lindman, Mt. Vernon Middle School
  • Melissa Montague, Mount Comfort Elementary
  • Nancy Price, Fortville Elementary

Mt. Vernon Education Foundation 2021 Distinguished Alumni Award

  • Linda Garrity
  • Lorraine Ewing

Mt. Vernon Education Foundation 2021 Keystone Award Winner

  • Ambrose Property Group

Mt. Vernon Education Foundation 2021 Leanne Brown Cornerstone Award Winner

  • Alyssa Prazeau

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