Volunteers honored for service to Newark

Eric Nelson

12 p.m., June 24, 2005--Eric Nelson, advertising and marketing manager in the Office of Public Relations, has received the Selena Bing Award as the Outstanding University Volunteer of the Year from the Downtown Newark Partnership (DNP).

“I was surprised, flattered and honored,” Nelson, who received the award from UD President David P. Roselle during the DNP’s fourth annual dinner on Thursday, June 16, said. “It’s really an honor to win an award with Selena Bing’s name on it.”

The award, which recognizes outstanding contributions of volunteers from the four components of DNP--business owners, residents, the city of Newark and UD--was named last year in honor of Selena Bing, owner of Bing’s Bakery and former member of the DNP board.

“It’s really a welcoming community,” Nelson, who lives in Wilmington, said of Newark. “Everyone makes me feel like I’m part of the group.”

"In addition to his campus responsibilities, Eric has served as the University representative on the DNP merchants’ committee since the committee started in 2002, and he has...provided sound guidance for the committee’s advertising campaigns, strategies and its investments," Roselle said. "He understood that a successful business must go beyond its four walls to the entire community in order to stay successful, and he took great pains to ensure the businesses he served were informed about what was going on in and around downtown."

The DNP also honored Wendy Mitchell, former secretary of its Merchant’s Committee and a business advocate; Anne R. Munyon, for years of service with the DNP Parking Committee; and Andrew S. Haines, Newark parking administrator. Ronald L. Gardner, former Newark mayor, read a DNP proclamation in memory of Olan R. Thomas, a Newark resident and UD employee who served in the City Council for 30 years beginning in 1964.

Roselle took a moment at the dinner to praise the Newark Police Department for “real service done to the community” in the recent arrest of a suspect in the murder of 20-year-old University of Delaware student Lindsey Marie Bonistall in her off-campus apartment on Sunday, May 1.

Past UD recipients of DNP’s Outstanding University Volunteer Award are John A. Brennan, senior associate director in the University’s Office of Public Relations, Domenick Sicilia, director of the Bob Carpenter Center, and Mary Hempel, assistant to the president and director of public relations at UD.

DNP is a coalition of the City of Newark, UD, downtown business owners and Newark residents who work together to promote and preserve Newark’s unique downtown area as a community and commerce center.

The awards ceremony was preceded by a silent auction, which raised $3,500 toward the Downtown Newark Partnership’s CSX Bridge Mural Project.

Article by Martin Mbugua
Photo by Kathy F. Atkinson

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