News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Upper Cumberland Habitat For Humanity honored its 2020 President’s Volunteer Service Award winners Monday.
Gold level award winner Allen Vosejpka volunteered for over 1,000 hours in 2020 alone, it was his first year in the program. Vosepjpka said the homeowners make it all worth it.
“They really care about the house and they put in their own effort,” Vosejpka said. “That’s sort of what I think keeps a lot of volunteers going. Because if that wasn’t the case, I think it would be harder to get up and do that type of work.”
For the other 11 yearly award winners, they volunteered between 100 and more than 500 hours. Habitat For Humanity also gave out its first ever lifetime achievement awards for accumulating over 4,000 volunteer hours.
For the lifetime achievement recognition, Gary Sachan was recognized for 10,000 volunteer hours over the years. Sachan said there’s one thing that keeps him coming back after working on nearly 30 homes.
“To see their smile on their face and the way they accept it,” Sachan said. “Everything like that just makes you feel comfortable with what you’ve done.”
Sachan said he would not mind putting in another 10,000 hours towards creating homes in his community. Both volunteers said they got involved after they retired, wanting to get out of their house and put skills to work.
“After I retired I wasn’t going to sit around doing nothing,” Sachan said. “I said, I knew how to do some of this stuff and as I went along I learned a lot more than I did know and how to do different things. The best part of it was after I got doing it, is just to see the people and how they reacted to when the house was done.”
Vosejpka said one of things he enjoys most about volunteering, is sharing skills with new volunteers. He said whether they be college kids or just young newcomers.
“It sort of allows an older person to get back into when they were young,” Vosejpka said. “You’re seeing them all interact with each other and that’s rewarding. You can actually teach them something because there’s a number of people who’ve never seen a hammer before, let alone running power saws.”
Jan and Fran Fritz, Kay Lane and Len Hawkins also received lifetime achievement awards for their service. Ed Malone, Julio Soulet and Scott Anderson received gold level recognition for 2020.
