SUMMIT — In community there is power, said the former CEO of Our Lady of Bellefonte Hospital, who was honored Saturday at the 2008 Freedom Fund Gala of the Boyd and Greenup County branch of the NAACP.
“We are coming to a time when if we are going to prosper, we must work together,” said Mark Gordon, who received the Community Service Award at the annual gala.
“We are all leaders in the fight for progress,” Gordon said.
Now the executive vice-president of St. Francis Medical Center in the Bon Secours Health Center in Richmond, Va., Gordon was CEO at OLBH from 2004 until earlier this year.
The NAACP chapter chose him for the honor for the many new programs implemented under his watch at OLBH, said chapter vice president Carol Jackson.
They included broader outreach services, better community awareness and development of the Bellefonte Center and the OLBH Pavilion.
The gala is an occasion to commemorate the NAACP’s “long and storied history of bringing people together to celebrate human rights,” Gordon said.
“Freedom comes with a cost. Freedom is essential. The best way to ensure freedom for all is for communities to hold conversations together.”
In a historic time, the chapter can promote discussion about cultural diversity, said William H. Turner, National Endowment for the Humanities Chair in Appalachian Studies at Berea College.
The event brings key community leaders together, Turner said. “When they are together, exciting things can happen,” he said. “They can move a lot of things in this town.”
Turner said the presidential election contest between John McCain and Barack Obama has brought attention, not all of it good, to the Appalachian region.
Campaign narratives about Appalachian voters and their supposed reluctance to vote for a black candidate are reinforcing old stereotypes, he said. “Once again Appalachia is depicted in a negative way in the national media.”
In terms of the racial divide, he said, Appalachia is little different from the rest of the United States.
Also at the gala, Community Trust Bank and the El Colonial Restaurant received Community Business awards and former chapter president Chris Barr received a Presidential Award.
MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2652.
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