The Syracuse University Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Committee and the Syracuse Regional Martin Luther King Jr. Commission have selected four recipients of the 2004 Unsung Heroes Award.
The award winners are: the group of Nottingham High School and Fayetteville-Manlius High School youth facilitators for the Community-Wide Dialogue to End Racism project; SU student Joy Mutare; SU staff and Onondaga Nation member Regina Jones; and peace activist Angus MacDonald. The winners were chosen for their work, which advances King's agenda in a significant way. They will be honored during the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Dinner on Jan. 17 in the Carrier Dome. This year's celebratory dinner will include an evening program and a keynote address by Geoffrey Canada, president of Harlem Children's Zone. The winners are:
The Nottingham High School and Fayetteville-Manlius High School facilitators for the Community-Wide Dialogue to End Racism project
Life as a teenager is not easy, and facing racism or discrimination does not make it any easier. For responding to this challenge head-on, 11 area teens share one of this year's Unsung Heroes awards. They participate in the Community-Wide Dialogue to End Racism project's exchange between Fayetteville-Manlius and Nottingham High Schools. The students were nominated by Beth A. Broadway, director of the project, which is part of the InterReligious Council of Central New York.
"These teen leaders are extraordinary and just plain ordinary," says Broadway. "They are like every other teenager, yet they choose to spend their time and energy taking a stand against racism and for racial justice."
The students were trained by Community-Wide Dialogue in a 12-hour facilitator training and went on to lead five dialogue circles between their two schools. They helped other students look at stereotypes, at the ongoing effects of racism and at ways to become effective allies.
The students are:
Brian Connolly of Fayetteville-Manlius. Connolly, a member of the National Honor Society, received the Environmental Science and Forestry Environmental award from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. He is a member of the All-State String Orchestra at the Eastman School of Music and the principal cellist for the Chamber Orchestra and the All-State Orchestra.
Kayleen Chiesa of Fayetteville-Manlius. Chiesa has spent time in Africa, she is an equestrian competitor and she participates in Model United Nations. She is also a volunteer firefighter in Fayetteville.
Vincent Cobb of Nottingham. Cobb participates in Outward Bound, he is the vice-president of his senior class and he has received Nottingham's 2003 Spanish Award.
Tracy Driscoll of Nottingham. Driscoll is the recipient of numerous awards in Latin, social studies and French. She is the secretary for the National Honor Society and participates in the Show Choir and on the varsity tennis team.
Rebekah Fleming of Fayetteville-Manlius. Fleming is the co-editor of the yearbook, a National Honor Society member and a member of the Cazenovia Rowing Club and the Food for Thought Club.
Emira Hozdic of Nottingham. Hozdic fled Bosnia in 1999 and is now on her school's honor roll.
Jonathan Kolozsvarv of Fayetteville-Manlius. Kolozsvarv is the recipient of three National Latin Exam Awards. He is also a varsity athlete and was nominated for the High School Award of the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame.
India Robinson of Nottingham. Robinson plays on the junior varsity basketball team. She also participates in the Leadership Partnership Program and tutors in an after-school program.
Christina Shantz of Fayetteville-Manlius. Shantz is a member of the National Honor Society, the International Thespian Society and Modern Music Masters. She writes for the school newspaper and is the photography co-editor for the yearbook. She is also vice-president of Colours, an organization promoting acceptance and diversity.
Other student leaders of the exchange project are Heather Early of Nottingham and Kate Savery of Fayetteville-Manlius High School.
SU student Joy Mutare
Joy Mutare has so impressed those who know her that two different people nominated her as an Unsung Hero. Michael B. Smithee, her international student adviser at SU, says "In my 27 years with the Slutzker Center for International Services, I have not seen a person as capable as she is." Rick DiRubbo, director of MBA student services at SU's Martin J. Whitman School of Management, says, "She is impressive because of how devoted she is to her cause."
That cause is support for people with HIV and AIDS. In Mutare's native Zimbabwe, about 2 million of the country's 13 million people are infected with the virus. Mutare has lost two uncles to AIDS, and she stayed with them in their last days.
"Stigmatization is one of the biggest problems for people with HIV," Mutare says. "I was fortunate to know the truth about how HIV is transmitted, so I made a point of visiting friends and relatives who had it to find out how I could help them." She continued her humanitarian work as she completed her bachelor's degree at the University of Zimbabwe.
After arriving at SU in 2002, Mutare discovered that SU's African Student Union (ASU) suffered from low participation and student apathy. Today, with her at its head, interaction between the ASU and the rest of the SU student body has increased along with the ASU's membership and visibility. The organization now has more than 160 active members, with nearly 100 attending most of its functions. The organization hosts events such as a recent luncheon to honor men's basketball player Kueth Duany, and helps new African students negotiate such challenges as banks, malls and college registration.
Mutare also volunteers and has interned with Hospice of Central New York, visiting terminally ill patients, and she continues to work for her primary cause, supporting those living with HIV and AIDS. She has helped to coordinate the Gay Men's Health Crisis of New York City's annual AIDS Walk and arranged for the ASU to host speakers including AIDS Community Resources Deputy Executive Director Donna Valerino and Henry Chionuma, president of Homeland Charities.
"I think that Martin Luther King's philosophy of not judging a person by their color applies to AIDS as well," Mutare says. "It doesn't matter how a person got this disease. It's not up to us to judge but to help them live with dignity."
SU staff member Regina Jones
In her 15 years as a member of the SU community, Regina Jones has touched the lives of an untold number of students, particularly Native American students. She has made the same kind of difference as a lifelong member of the Onondaga Nation, where she has overseen 15 births as an apprentice midwife.
Jones came to the University in 1989 to work as an undergraduate secretary in the physics department in The College of Arts and Sciences. While there, she became known for helping Native American students from across campus balance academic and cultural obligations. Jones started an e-mail listserv, which continues today, to keep Native American students connected and informed.
In 2000, Jones left the physics department to work in the Office of Multicultural Affairs, and kept the office running on an interim basis during SU's search for a director. She continues to serve the office as program coordinator and chairs the committees that award the Chancellor's Feinstone Grants for Multicultural Initiatives and the Irma Almirall-Padamsee La Fuerza Community Enhancement Award.
Jones has been a key member of the team that has worked to build a Native American focus on campus--a focus that now includes a Native American Studies minor, a Native American learning community and the Center for Indigenous Citizenship, Law and Governance in the College of Law.
One of Jones' greatest contributions is her recent work spearheading the formation of the Native American Students at Syracuse (NASAS) student association, which offers support to students experiencing culture shock upon arriving at a large urban university from rural reservations. Members of the group have branched out into other activities, including sponsoring charitable giving to families during the holiday season.
"Credit for NASAS rightfully goes to Regina, for it is a testament to her patience, diligence and tenacity that this group exists," says Maureen Schwarz, director of Native American Studies in the Department of Anthropology. "Although many of us offered support and collegiality, it was she who would not give up and saw it through until the group finally became a reality."
Within the Onondaga Nation, Jones helps in any capacity she can. She attended her first birth more than 22 years ago in the role of photographer, and remembers that not one photo was taken as Jones never left the side of the laboring mother. After assisting with that birth Jones was trained as an apprentice midwife with expertise in newborn examinations; she says it's an honor to be a part of the first few minutes of the life of each baby she helps deliver.
A mother of four and grandmother of six, Jones says she doesn't see the service she performs as anything out of the ordinary - she says it was the way she was raised and those values are what she imparts in her family and in the students she works to help.
"Regina is the kind of person I aspire to be," says Stephanie Waterman, a graduate student in the School of Education and a member of the Onondaga Nation. "She accepts everyone and believes in you. A short conversation with Regina, and you believe you can."
Peace activist Angus MacDonald
While many people of Angus MacDonald's age are relaxing in sun-drenched Florida, the 91-year-old is still working in Central New York, active in movements to promote peace in the United States and across the globe.
In January 2003, while many Americans were glued to the television watching reports on the impending military action in Iraq, MacDonald was bundled up in his winter clothes, peacefully protesting the attack in front of the Federal Building in Syracuse. He and 15 others were arrested.
"I feel that the U.S. government is controlled by people who have ambitions to set up a world empire, and I don't think that is the function of the U.S. government," says MacDonald. "I feel that it is a citizen's duty to oppose these [actions]."
Though the charges against him and the other fellow protesters were dropped, MacDonald is no stranger to non-violent protest or run-ins with the law. In 1997, MacDonald was arrested at Fort Benning, Ga., as he "crossed the line" in protest of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly the School of the Americas. His granddaughter Laura was also arrested there last year as she repeated her grandfather's efforts.
"The Institute, among other things, teaches military [units] of other countries to operate in the best interests of the U.S. military, [which] is sometimes against the best interests of the people in their own country. We feel it necessary to ask that this organization be discontinued and never reappear in any form," says MacDonald.
MacDonald, who has served on the editorial committee of the Syracuse Peace Council's Peace newsletter, has participated in the activities of the Council in varying levels since the 1930s.
Today, he often writes letters to the editors of local newspapers to voice his concern. One letter he recently sent to the Syracuse Post-Standard, in which he writes of the effects of U.S. sanctions and military action in Iraq, begins, "Have our consciences become completely numbed? Have they died?"
The common thread in all that he does is non-violence. In his Unsung Hero Award nomination letter, written by fellow Syracuse Peace Council members Ed Kinane and Ann Tiffany, MacDonald is hailed as "unfailingly courtly, gracious and kind - he constantly seeks to see the best in us all - [his] good cheer is invariably there in service of those who work for equality, peace and justice."
MacDonald, who retired several years ago after 23 years at the Iroquois Door Company, has been mentoring and inspiring a younger generation of peace activists. When asked about how he does it, MacDonald replies, "actually, they're inspiring me."
