Dawn Hand of North Carolina is church’s Communicator of Year
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Dawn Hand |
Oct. 19, 2004By Tim Tanton* LAS
VEGAS (UMNS) - Dawn Hand, communications director for the United
Methodist Church’s Charlotte (N.C.) Area and a leader at many levels of
the denomination, has been named the church’s 2004 Communicator of the
Year. Hand
received the award from the United Methodist Association of
Communicators during the group’s annual awards banquet Oct. 15. The
association also inducted the late Rev. Judith Weidman, former top staff
executive of United Methodist Communications, and Roger Sadler, retired
art director for New World Outlook magazine, into the UMAC Hall of Fame. "I
believe with all my heart that … one of the most special ministries
that we can do is to tell the awesome story of Jesus," Hand said in her
acceptance speech. About
70 people attended the association’s banquet, held at Alexis Park
Resort hotel in Las Vegas. The communicators met Oct. 14-16 at a
non-casino hotel in recognition of the denomination’s condemnation of
gambling as a menace to society and good government. Hand
attended college with the goal of becoming a lawyer, but majored in
communications and got a job in television. In 1991, she became
assistant to the director of communication for the Charlotte Area, which
covers the church’s Western North Carolina Annual (regional)
Conference. She later became associate director and has served as
director for the last seven years. She also attends Hood Theological
Seminary in Salisbury, N.C., and is a certified candidate for ministry. An
outspoken advocate for the inclusion of young people in church
leadership, she helped lead her conference’s council on youth ministries
in the 1980s and is a youth minister in her church. Her
work at the churchwide level has included serving twice as a General
Conference delegate, and she was a governing member of the Commission on
Communication for eight years. In addition, she led the communicators’
association for three years as president, and she was succeeded Oct. 16
by the Rev. Erik Alsgaard, co-director of communications of the
Baltimore-Washington Conference and managing editor of the UMConnection newspaper.
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The Rev. Judith Weidman |
Weidman and Sadler
were inducted into the UMAC Hall of Fame by former colleagues Jackie
Vaughan of UMCom and Christie House, editor of New World Outlook, respectively.Weidman,
who died in December 2000 of cancer, had a career that stretched across
several prominent communications agencies. She was a communications
executive with the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and
Ministry; assistant editor at the United Methodist Publishing House;
associate editor for the forerunner of the United Methodist Reporter;
head of Religion News Service for 10 years; and finally general
secretary of UMCom. She began her journalism career as a reporter at the
Kokomo (Ind.) Tribune. During
her 1994-99 tenure at UMCom, she guided the formation of the
denomination’s advertising and welcoming campaign, Igniting Ministry.
She also created a scholarship fund for racial ethnic minorities to
increase diversity among the denomination’s communicators. She was
UMAC’s 1987 Communicator of the Year and was the 1999 Duke Divinity
School Distinguished Alumna.
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Roger Sadler |
Sadler was art director of New World Outlook
for 30 years, retiring in 2000. He began his career as art director for
the American Gas Association, then served at the National Council of
Churches for 11 years. He became a consultant with the Board of Global Ministries in 1970, when the board merged its World Outlook magazine with the Presbyterian publication New.
He joined the board full time in 1977 and became director of
production, promotion and design in 1980. Besides serving the magazine,
he produced hundreds of mission resources each year as well as displays
for the missions agency at major gatherings. House
recalled how Sadler could quickly draw a cartoon to illustrate an
often-technical point. "When a picture is worth a thousand words, he
could do that …," she said. "He thinks visually." One of Sadler’s four children, Hal, is New World Outlook’s graphic designer today. *Tanton is United Methodist News Service’s managing editor. News media contact: Tim Tanton, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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