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Two women were feted today at the Alamo Women’s Club for their contributions toward making the club and the community a better place.
Vicki Koc was named Community Woman of the Year.
Claudia Waldron and Nancy Dommes introduced Koc, reading the 10 Commandments for Volunteers and noting that each one fits their friend Vicki.
Being purposeful, be flexible were the first two. “She has great ideas but she defers to other people because she knows they have ideas, too,” they said.
Be reflective, be receptive. We have two ears and one mouth because we are supposed to listen more than speak, they noted, and said this sums up Koc.
Be positive, be realistic. “She can go out and identify what needs to be done – and she tackles it,” said Dommes, pointing out her efforts for a bicycle path to Stone Valley Middle School, and as a member of the Alamo beautification and parks and recreation advisory boards. She was also president of the National Charity League, and headed up the roads committee to improve the street for Rancho Romero Elementary.
They also remarked that Koc spearheaded the community contest for a logo for Alamo, and they presented her with an apron bearing the logo.
Be independent. “She can be a worker bee or a queen bee.”
Be empathetic, be humble. “You’ll never know what she’s done,” Waldron said. “She’s a silent doer.”
The 10th commandment is to have a ball, and they congratulated Koc on that attribute also. She is heading up an April Shower for the club and everyone will bring gifts that will go to the women helped for STAND! Against Domestic Violence.
“That’s the kind of thing she does,” said Dommes. “She always has a ball no matter what she does.”
Koc, who was raised in Seattle, has lived in Alamo for 29 years. When she was 5 years old, she wanted to be a nun, she recalled, which surprised everyone because her family was not Catholic. At age 10, she changed her ambitions to continue the works of humanitarian Albert Schweitzer, who went to Africa as a medical missionary.
She observed that she has followed her childhood ambitions in her community work. When she discovered the Alamo Women’s Club, she thought, “There’s a place where people want to help others.”
Koc said her favorite causes are those whose results she can now observe, such as Alamo Elementary School, which was near closure in the early ’80s until parents contested the demographer predictions that enrollment in the northern end of the School District would be down.
“The failures and the successes have taught me balance,” she said.
Next Pat Burke was named Club Member of the Year. She left the hospital to attend the luncheon, accompanied by her daughter and grandchildren.
“Pat moved to Alamo in 1992 and shortly afterward joined the Alamo Women’s Club,” said former president Norma Scruggs after telling about Burke’s girlhood in Maine and her many moves countrywide with her husband Kevin, five sons and one daughter. They returned to Alamo to be near their family when Kevin had a stroke.
Her daughter Christine Landon recalled finding her a place to live near the clubhouse.
“Mom, you’re going to move her and you’re going to join the Alamo Women’s Club,” she recalled telling her. “It was a great way to support the community and to develop deep friendships.”
Landon described her mother as “a New Yorker at heart, not one of these quiet people,” and said that when she picked her up for the luncheon she was on the hospital phone ordering Chicken McNuggets for dinner because she didn’t like what was on the menu.
She said her mom is humorous, caring – as proved by her six children and years of helping her dad after his stroke – and smart.
Landon also remarked that although she looks like a sweet little old lady, “she really scares me because I don’t know what she’s going to say.”
“She is what she is,” she concluded.
Dear Dolores,
Today I received e-exchanges from several neighborhoods that simply said, “Good Choice!” Clearly neighbors, as a majority, do not share the focus of Vicki but they simply recognize a sincere interest in community.
In the factions that are the replacement of community, it is refreshing to understand those that are committed to service to our community’s voice and the opportunity for diversity.
Applause,
Hal/CDSI