Former Virginia Tech Football Coach Frank Beamer has been named the recipient of the 16th annual Baldwin Memorial Town and Gown Award.
The presentation ceremony took place on Tuesday, Nov. 14, at the annual meeting of the Community Foundation of the New River Valley. Coach Beamer’s wife, Cheryl, accepted the award for her husband who was unable to attend due to his required attendance in Dallas, Texas for a meeting of the College Football Playoff Committee.
Jessica Wirgau, Executive Director of the Community Foundation, presented the award at the Inn at Virginia Tech and Skelton Conference Center on behalf of the Baldwin Award Selection Committee.
Beamer was voted by the Baldwin Selection Committee for outstanding long service to Virginia Tech together with his enormous positive impact on the economy of the New River Valley over several decades.
In presenting the award Dr. Wirgau made special mention of the coach’s self-effacing manner despite his extraordinary achievements. The award consists of $500 to be given to Herma’s Readers, a charity devoted to fostering literacy, and an engraved plaque recognizing Frank Beamer as the award recipient.
The coach’s name and the year of his recognition will also be added to the large Baldwin Plaque that is displayed at the Virginia Tech University Club.
Past Baldwin Award recipients have been Al Payne (2003), Al Bowman (2004), Lindsay West (2005), Janet and Jim Johnson (2006), Lois Baldwin (2007), Bill Skelton (2008), Minnis Ridenour (2009), Tom Sherman (2010), T. Marshall Hahn (2012), Ray Smoot (2013), Bob Pack (2014), Susan Mattingly (2015) and Sandy Davis (2016).
The Baldwin Award endowed fund is held and managed by the Community Foundation. It is named for Vernon L. Baldwin who passed away in 2002. Professor Baldwin was a long time faculty member at Virginia Tech who had served in various community leadership roles.
Qualification for the award requires that an individual had long service to one of our educational institutions together with community leadership over an extended period of years. Alternatively an individual may qualify by providing intensive leadership during any one year for a project in which an educational institution and a community have worked jointly.
The founders of the award believed that everyone’s lives could be enhanced by fostering good relations between educational institutions and communities where they were located. Further, they believed that individual recognition would, over time, help to achieve that.
Their objective was to bring together institution, town and county development as a prime area in which to educate young men and women, to raise families and to maintain a beautiful, safe and clean environment.