I started the friend of the lake award. When I became active in the association it was having some difficulty finding people to accept leadership positions. Steve Powelko went to a meeting and came home as the president, and carrying all of the files of the association in a cardboard box. This was not the way the by laws described the procedure for filling board positions.
About that same time, I had received a phone call asking me if I would accept a position on the board. Previous to that call, I had attended a couple of meetings, but had not been active. Once I was on the board, I found many of the officers had been in their seats for many years; even though the constitution had term limits. Most people that were active in the association were taken for granted and felt unappreciated.
I thought that some kind of permanent recognition of the tireless efforts of some of those people was in order. I suggested the idea to the board and they asked me to draft some guidelines. I proposed that the recipient be someone that had made significant contributions to the association over a period of several years. I also proposed that members of the association should be able to nominate candidates to the board and the board should select the annual recipient.
After the first couple of years one of the board members was nominated to receive the award. After a discussion at a board meeting, the board decided that acting members of the board should be ineligible for receiving the award. The thinking was that we wanted members other than current board members to be recognized. Board members could always be nominated following their term(s).
Another decision made by the board was to have the previous recipients select the winner of the award each year. This arrangement is being followed to the present time.
Jim Gehrke