Vermont Folklife Center
Governor’s Heritage Awards
Awardees 2000–2008
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2000 Vermont Heritage Awards
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Artist: Myrtle GonyawMyrtle Dunbar Gonyaw is one determined woman with a creative spirit shaped and nurtured by her heritage. The youngest of ten children, she grew up on Walden Mountain far from town or village. By today’s standards it was a rugged life—no electricity, no running water, no telephone, no neighbors, walking to school, living off their garden and off the land. [continue reading]
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2001 Vermont Heritage Awards
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Artist: Ron WestRon West grew up in the era when kitchen dances--known as junkets or tunks--regularly brought farm neighbors together to socialize and make music. Ron’s mother played the parlor organ and his father and uncle were fiddlers. Ron talks about learning mostly from observation, by watching and listening. [continue reading]
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2002 Vermont Heritage Awards
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Artist: Gordon TallmanClifford and Gordon Tallman were brothers who grew up on a farm in Hyde Park, doing chores and bringing in extra income through logging. Immersed in life around them, they absorbed the contours of the land, a familiarity with plant life, the habits of the game, the sounds of the woods, the smell of the outdoors and a delight in the natural world. [continue reading]
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2002 Vermont Heritage Awards
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Educator: Peggy PearlAsk Peggy Pearl about the roots of her interest in history and she’ll tell you it all began in a cemetery. From age five on her father was superintendent of the Mount Pleasant Cemetery in St. Johnsbury and she and her family lived adjacent to the cemetery grounds. Peggy’s father not only buried people, but could turn right around and bring them to life again through the stories he’d tell about their lives and experiences. [continue reading]
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2003 Vermont Heritage Awards
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Artist: The Louis Beaudoin FamilyBoth Louis Beaudoin and Julie Lacourse’s families had sold their farms in Quebec and emigrated to this country in hopes of earning a better living working in the cotton mills. Louis and Julie met at Lakeside and by the time they married, Louis was already a fine musician, playing his fiddle at local and family gatherings. [continue reading]
Photo by John Gilbert Fox -
2003 Vermont Heritage Awards
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Educator: Ginger WimbergWhen Ginger Wimberg was growing up in rural New Jersey her next door neighbor was an older man whom she knew as “Uncle Maurice.” He was an uncle by affection rather than a blood relation, and he had a keen sense of history. [continue reading]
Photo by John Gilbert Fox -
2004 Governor’s Heritage Awards
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Artist: Harold LuceBorn to a central Vermont farm family, Harold Luce grew up in a world where fiddling was part of everyday life. As a teenager he would sit behind the piano at dances in the Sons of Union Veterans Hall and discreetly play along with legendary fiddler Ed Larkin. [continue reading]
Photo by John Gilbert Fox -
2004 Governor’s Heritage Awards
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Educator: Judy DowAs an adult Judy began to realize that her family wasn’t like every other family. Indeed, this round of seasonal migration bore a striking resemblance to the historic cultural pattern of Abenaki families in the region, which prompted Judy to begin researching her family’s genealogy. [continue reading]
Photo by John Gilbert Fox -
2005 Governor’s Heritage Awards
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Artist: David “Stoney” MasonWhen David Mason builds a stonewall he takes his inspiration from the site itself. In his words, “Just let’s start and let Mother Nature take care of it. She’'ll tell you where to go with it. And she does, too.” [continue reading]
Photo by John Gilbert Fox -
2005 Governor’s Heritage Awards
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Educator: Larry CoffinWhen Larry Coffin was faculty advisor to the Oxbow High School Student Council the students initiated a Senior Prom with a new twist: it was held at Bradford’s Brookside Nursing Home and the students’ dates were the nursing home residents. [continue reading]
Photo by John Gilbert Fox -
2006 Governor’s Heritage Awards
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Artist: Bob SpearWhen Bob Spear was a boy his mother, a school teacher, nurtured his interest in the natural world with the gift of Ernest Thompson Seton’s Two Little Savages. In an era before Peterson field guides, Seton’s book modeled ways to observe birds in the wild and encouraged young people to sketch what they saw. [continue reading]
Photo by John Gilbert Fox -
2006 Governor’s Heritage Awards
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Educator: Maureen DobartEach year Proctor teacher Maureen Dobart and her third grade class use an “enchanted” map to explore Proctor history. Their focus is the village center near the place now known as Sutherland Falls, and they visit and revisit this location at critical intervals over four centuries. [continue reading]
Photo by John Gilbert Fox -
2007 Governor’s Heritage Awards
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Artist: Michele ChoiniereMichele Choiniere grew up in a Franco American family where music was an intimate part of everyday life. Her father, Fabio, plays his father’s repertoire of fiddle tunes on his harmonica, a genre he absorbed by ear and transposed by experiment. [continue reading]
Photo by John Gilbert Fox -
2007 Governor’s Heritage Awards
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Educator: Phil GrantWhen Phil Grant was a boy he found himself wondering why school couldn’t be more like summer camp. At camp he absorbed knowledge about science, ecology, and the natural world while having fun out-of-doors in the very environments about which he was learning. [continue reading]
Photo by John Gilbert Fox -
2008 Governor’s Heritage Awards
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Artist: Delsie HoytDelsie Hoyt is descended from the illustrious Scotsman William Nelson who arrived in Vermont in 1774 and settled in the town of Ryegate. This lineage anchors Delsie firmly in the traditional culture of this region, where for generations families got their living from the farm and women made everyday household items – such as quilts and rugs – that were of great utility and often of compelling beauty. [continue reading]
Photo by John Gilbert Fox -
2008 Governor’s Heritage Awards
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Educator: Mark SusticMark Sustic's first exposure to traditional music was listening to his immigrant Serbian grandfather play such classic American tunes as “Redwing” on his fiddle. Mark, who grew up in western New York State in the 1950s, also remembers going with his parents to square dances in private homes where he and his age-mates would fall asleep to the sound of dance music. [continue reading]
Photo by John Gilbert Fox
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