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Community ConnectionsApril 2007
The Hammer-Marcum Award was created in 1987 by the Valley Women’s Club, to honor two special people in the San Lorenzo Valley who had already given thousands of hours to improve the quality of life of local residents, Mary Hammer and Annette Marcum. Named for these remarkable women, who have long continued their dedication the community, the Award has since been given to a total of 38 people in the 15 times it has been awarded. This year’s event, the sixteenth, adds three new recipients who have worked to improve the quality of life of local residents in significant ways. Google “Lompico” and you will find over a dozen references in a range of publications to the work of Kevin Collins and Mary Jo Walker, founders of The Lompico Watershed Conservancy and leaders in the successful effort to preserve the watershed that provides pure drinking water for the 500 families living in Lompico and to improve conditions for the Creek and its wildlife inhabitants as well. Their work for the environment goes far beyond Lompico, lucky for us.
Since 1999, Mary Jo and Kevin have come regularly to the VWC Environmental Committee meetings, where they are a resource on important topics including the Regional Water Quality Control Board, the regulations of the Board of Forestry and land use regulations. They helped create Earth Day exhibits and signs to publicize workshops; they took an active role in all of the Watershed Festival’s events from forums to leading hikes. Mary Jo worked on the budget and helped publicize events, and when a massive widening of Graham Hill Rd. was proposed in 2000, Kevin analyzed the proposal, which helped the VWC engage residents in the public hearings. The hearings sparked a redesign of the project, reducing the destruction of the original plan while conserving public safety. In 1998, Mary Jo and Kevin founded the Lompico Watershed Conservancy (LWC) to place important parcels in protected status through conservation easements or purchase, to help protect and restore the Creek and its environs, and to monitor and comment on the decisions of the Regional Water Quality Control Board. They write and publish the LWC Newsletter, filling it with wildlife information and guidelines for residents, to prove that “people and wildlife can share the same watershed successfully.” They weren’t busy enough, so in 2003 they applied for a State Department of Fish and Game grant to improve the chance for steelhead to migrate up the Creek, changing the Old Lompico Pool from a barrier into a fish passage. They spent countless hours obtaining permits, organizing the project and seeing it through to completion, improving the steelhead’s chances for survival in Lompico Creek. Knowing well the steep land led to them to mobilize the entire community, to prevent a 2001 logging plan that would have severely degraded the fragile watershed and threatened the very water supply of the Lompico Canyon community. For years the Conservancy sought to purchase the property, knowing that was the only way to truly protect it. When the owner/logger refused to consider an offer and continued plans to log, Kevin and Mary Jo led the effort to rally hundreds of people to come speak against the Timber Harvest Plan at public hearings in Zayante Fire Hall. They educated and motivated a record number of individuals and organizations to write letters to the California Department of Forestry (CDF) to urge denial of the logging permit. With thoroughly researched data, the concerns they raised were deemed so important that when the THP was approved by CDF after two years of delay, the County appealed the decision. Over the years Kevin and Mary Jo have helped raise thousands of dollars and spent much of their own time and money in support of the Conservancy; they’ve researched and studied laws and regulations and rulings and sought to educate the community-at-large on complex and difficult issues. As Supervisor Mark Stone pointed out, “Kevin was amazingly adept at confronting the State bureaucracy, armed with a more thorough knowledge of the State Forestry regulations than the professional foresters and officials.” The appeal was successful – a very rare event in the history of CDF. The THP was resubmitted with minor changes, however, and the community faced more years of turmoil. Happily, though, the years of effort had caused a shift in the logger-owner’s attitude about selling the property, and in 2006 Sempervirens Fund was able to purchase Islandia (as it is known locally) to protect its redwoods – thus protecting the watershed, the Creek and the water supply of Lompico. Of course Mary Jo and Kevin are actively helping raise the funds to pay off the loan Sempervirens took out to purchase the property! They continue their commitment to protect the wider San Lorenzo Valley and Santa Cruz County watersheds as well. We all owe them a debt of gratitude and are delighted to honor them with the 2007 Hammer-Marcum Award. And… We have another precious resource in our fortunate community . . . a woman who puts the welfare of others before herself, who sees the need to empower people who are impoverished or disabled, who helps the individual while working for the many – Jenna Collier.
Not limited to children’s activities, Jenna volunteered in local supervisorial campaigns and is a supporter of the Boulder Creek Library. She even hauled wagon-loads of books from the little library by the BC Fire Department to the big new library when it was finished. She was backstage help at the Valley Women’s Club’s Redwood Mountains Fair for seventeen years. The Storm of ’82 hit this community hard, and Jenna came to help. She dug out houses full of mud and helped at the Disaster Center. For years she has been a Neighborhood Coordinator for the Neighborhood Survival Network, which the Valley Women’s Club and the Valley Resource Center started after the Storm of ’82. She was an early volunteer for Valley Churches United and the Valley Resource Center, when they worked together from the old gas station building 24 years ago, and has continued as a volunteer since then. Long before the current Certified Emergency Responder Training (CERT) program was initiated after 9/11, she was trained by the Red Cross to set up a neighborhood response center in case of disaster. After the ’89 earthquake, she helped with the effort to match people needing help with those with the needed skills to begin the recovery. She has helped with every fundraiser Mountain Community Resources (formerly Valley Resource Center) has ever put on – putting in countless hours to assure success. At first she was uncomfortable calling people and asking for money during the Annual Phone-a-thon – so she acted as coordinator for many long evenings; now she even makes the phone calls in this crucial effort. Jenna has volunteered for Mountain Community Resources, in Information and Referral, for well over twenty years, putting in many hundreds of hours each year to bring resources to those in need. This position brought her face to face with the challenges faced by low- and no-income SLV residents, and people of all ages hindered by life-long disabilities. She found many ways to help, from simply listening, giving validation to their concerns, to advocating for them, guiding hundreds through the bureaucratic tangle of governmental and charitable agencies. One-on-one. Seeing a need, she joined with Linda Crouse in founding “For the People,” an organization working for young people caught up in gangs and drugs, helping them find a way out. Fittingly, she often responded more personally, helping dozens of individuals over the years. Recently, she sponsored a little boy to play soccer for a year, taking him to all of his practices and games during both summer and the school year. Even more moving, she took a Hepatitis C patient to all his Stanford Hospital appointments for over a year, until he died. Most of us would have trouble doing that for a family member! Jenna has actively supported Native American causes throughout her adult life. She has organized and participated in on-going vigils for peace since the War in Iraq began touching our lives. Jenna’s commitment is one of compassion, and the Valley Women’s Club is proud to honor that commitment with the 2007 Hammer-Marcum Award. Previous Recipients of Hammer-Marcum Award:
Home | Back To Top ©2007 Valley Women's Club
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The honorees for the 2007 Hammer-Marcum Award demonstrate the broad range of interests and concerns which epitomize the San Lorenzo Valley community: its beauty, water resources and environment, and its help for disadvantaged residents, its “neighbors-helping-neighbors” ideal. The honorees – chosen with great difficulty from an extraordinary group of nominations – are husband-and-wife team, Kevin Collins and Mary Jo Walker of Lompico, and Jenna Collier of Boulder Creek. They were celebrated at a luncheon on Sunday, May 6, 11:30 am, at the Highlands Park Senior Center.
Jenna is a precious resource herself because she is a tireless advocate for social justice in her occupation and far beyond, and she has been so for over twenty-five years. Jenna works part-time for the Healthy Kids program operated through Mountain Community Resources, but it is a drop in the bucket compared to her volunteer time. She started as many did, as a volunteer in her son’s classroom at the elementary school. She didn’t just volunteer in class, she helped with Pioneer Day and was a Noon Art artist, teaching children to make puppets, create a story and put on a puppet show for classes. She was an assistant soccer coach for several years and Team Mom for Little League. She more recently volunteered to assist a Girl Scout Troop.