Our next award is for growth in Venturing, recognizing a crew member who has most demonstrated improvement in the past year. Please join me in welcoming this year’s winner, Aaron Speare.
Aaron has been with us for two years and to say that he has made a leap in this crew would be an understatement. His selection for this award was unanimous and never really a doubt.
Aaron is quiet, studious, hard-working, deliberate, friendly and very focused. He ran for secretary last September and was re-elected this spring. As secretary, he must keep in touch with 50-some crew members, at times calling them by phone, a very big job. The secretary must maintain the crew’s roster. He or she also must remind fellow officers of their monthly meetings and keep notes at those meetings.
He is so dedicated to that job that he uses a tape recorder to be sure he gets his notes right. And if he has to walk to or from meetings he does so without complaint.
He has been great as secretary and his re-election against a lot of competition was affirmation by the crew of just how well he has performed.
But there is a backstory here as well. Many of our youth, especially the guys, come to our group with social skills
that are far below those of the girls. It’s a natural handicap and one that keeps girls interested in older guys.
It’s also one reason most of our officers over the years tend to be female. So being a member of this group for
a guy, especially if you want to be an officer, can sometimes cause anxiety.
Rachel, who for years has awarded nicknames to members of the crew, tagged Aaron as Koala Bear some time ago as a result of his email address. I don’t know that he especially enjoyed the nickname but if you ask anyone in the crew who Koala Bear is, they know.
Like many who join our crew and are less than socially aggressive, Aaron has worked to fit in and be accepted. His election, and his re-election nomination by a fellow officer, signaled not only that he had been accepted but that he was respected as well.
One of my greatest pleasures as an Advisor has been watching youth grow. Not physically but emotionally and intellectually, into the fine young men and women they are destined to become. Aaron’s growth in the past year has been just such a treat.
I am proud to declare Aaron as our 2011 recipient of the Growth in Venturing Award.
Congratulations!