Honoring civic leaders and volunteers at the Community Foundation luncheon

BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) -The Community Foundation of the Brazos Valley hosted a luncheon to honor the ongoing good work of civic leaders and volunteers in our community. This year’s honorees were Becky and B. Don Russell, Keith Halsell and Lina and Kenny Lawson.

This year’s Community Champion award was given to The Eagle for their constant hard work and dedication to our community’s local nonprofits. Crystal Dupre, Publisher for The Eagle, said it’s such a great feeling winning Community Champion.

“We are very honored,” said Dupre. ”I mean very honored to be given the award today. Our team works tirelessly.”

Dupre said with the number of non-profits in our community, it makes her happy to be able to highlight almost all of them in The Eagle through stories and advertisements.

“We start with a blank place of paper seven days a week. The amount of work it takes to get those local stories out there...It’s just incredible. I am very very proud to serve alongside of the team of the Eagle,” Dupre said.

Patricia Gerling, President and CEO of Community Foundation, said The Eagle is truly the definition of the word champions and she can’t thank them enough for the ways they go above and beyond for the community.

“They advocate for our purpose here in the community and support different quality of life needs,” said Gerling. “We felt that The Eagle was very worthy of that recognition.”

To continue the celebration of philanthropy, The Community Foundation added a new donation option for attendees called the Philanthropist of the Day award. This means anyone making a donation added their name to a raffle and the winner was awarded a $3,500 check to give to their philanthropy of choice.

The ‘Philanthropist of the Day’ winner was Jesse Parr. Parr gave his money to Voices For Children.

“I just think this is a way of saying thank you for all the hard work that all the CASAs do and all the foster parents do and all the children’s protective services,” said Parr. “They work hard to help children who don’t have someone else watching out for them.”

Parr said he chose Voices For Children because it holds a special place in his family’s heart.