2004 Service Award Winners

BOB GROSS

Bob has been a member of DVOA since 1990. Bob first heard of orienteering through a newspaper article, and he and his son stopped by a local meet to see what it was all about. Bob's son Chris quickly attracted everyone's attention by bypassing White and Yellow courses appropriate for his young age and successfully going out on Green. For many years, Bob was known as "Chris's Dad." We assumed that Dad had something to do with Chris's orienteering success.

Bob soon made a reputation for himself by designing a wildly popular T-shirt for one of our A meets. That started the tradition: if Bob designs the T-shirt, they will come. So far he has created eight, and all have become collector's items. In addition, Bob has been meet director at many local events and helps however needed at local and national events. He is currently serving as a DVOA trustee.

Bob, his wife Deni, and their fat happy barn cats live in Birdsboro, PA. Besides orienteering, Bob lists his hobbies as gardening, hiking, photography and music. He is a self-employed designer/commercial artist and teaches graphics classes at a local business school.

 

 

VALERIE MEYER

Valerie lives in Arlington, Virginia, and her primary membership is with the Quantico Orienteering Club, our neighbor to the south. Fortunately for us, she has also been a member of DVOA for several years. She has served as Results crew chief and shared her expertise in electronic punching results at several of our A meets. Last year, as some of you may remember, she was here at our winter meeting helping with the afternoon workshop on e-punching results. She has also worked with Kent Shaw to improve the on-line registration process for A meets, by writing software to translate the web-based registration data to the e-punch format.

Valerie has many interests, another of which is quilting. In addition to winning awards for her quilting, she used her needlework skills to decorate the ribbons on the stuffed bears given as awards last fall at DVOA's A-Meet at Delaware Water Gap.

Valerie used to be a race walker and now does long distance runs. She is employed as a records manager at a school district in Virginia. She is married to Roger and has a daughter Sarah who just graduated from the University of Maryland College Park and is teaching eleventh grade English.

 

 

JERRY SMITH

Jerry has been a member of DVOA since 1995. Although he had previously done map and compass navigation with scouts, Jerry says that he first encountered our style of orienteering at a National Wildlife Federation Summit summer camp in New Hampshire. The leader of that workshop was Dave Linthicum, whom many of you know as the force behind the successful annual scout event in the Baltimore area. Jerry became involved with our club when Rick Slater did an orienteering program for his scout council.

Jerry assisted Rick Slater with the New Jersey annual scout event for several years before taking over as director. Attendance is increasing so much that last year the park had to set a maximum for attendance. Jerry promises to continue this popular event in future years. Jerry did the map and clue sheet vetting for the US Short Course Championships at Iron Hill a few years ago and helped with printing and bagging maps. He has also helped Bob Rycharski with various scout events.

Jerry lives near the shore in Ocean Township, NJ and works for Avaya, an AT&T/Lucent spin-off telephone equipment maker, as a technical manager. His wife's name is Cathy and they have two sons, Kenneth and Alan, both in college. The boys were also involved with both scouting and orienteering, and Alan did a permanent course at Holmdel as a scout project.

Jerry lists scouting, leatherwork and carving as hobbies, and also plays the trumpet.