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By Dave Harrison, 2010-2011 Chapter Chair
Volunteer of the Year
As last year’s chair of Genesee Valley Chapter of ADK, it’s my responsibility and
pleasure to recognize as Volunteer of the Year a chapter member whose efforts on
behalf of ADK-GVC during the past year were so great in terms of the time spent and
the quality of service that they were in a class by themselves. As you can imagine,
selecting one such individual can be a daunting task, since there are so many people
who have volunteered so much of their time in making our chapter run. That said, I
have no difficulty in designating Larry Telle as this year’s Volunteer of the Year.
Larry is not an officer of the chapter, and he is not a committee chair or a member
of ADK-GVC’s executive committee. What he is is someone who has taken a major
leadership role in one of the chapter’s primary activities—hiking. An accomplished
hiker and mountain climber, Larry currently serves as one of the coordinators of
our very successful Sunday hike program. This means that he invests considerable
time in lining up leaders for upcoming hikes and publicizing those hikes. Moreover,
he has led countless Sunday hikes himself. Although some of these have been local
hikes in County Parks, he has also organized and led a series of all-day hikes on the
Finger Lakes Trail. Some of these have required two to three hours of travel to the
trailhead, which means that the groups have left early in the morning and returned
in the evening. (Many of us have been passengers in Larry’s van on these all-day
outings.) One of Larry’s goals in organizing and leading the series of FLT hikes has
been to afford participants the opportunity to hike the entire Finger Lakes Trail in
installments.
As a hike leader, Larry is very attentive to the needs of his fellow hikers. He takes
care to see to it that the group stays together, and he adjusts the pace of the hike
where a participant is having difficulty keeping up.
In addition to his contributions as Sunday hike coordinator and as a hike leader,
Larry participated as one of the instructors in the chapter’s 2011 trip leader
training program. And last spring, he was one of the volunteers who took part in
the chapter’s National Trails Day work project on Rob’s trail and the adjacent spur
leading down to Canadice Lake.
In all of these activities, Larry has been very friendly and welcoming to the other
participants, whether they were chapter members or newcomers. Genesee Valley
ADK wouldn’t be nearly as effective in implementing our outdoor recreation mission
without his volunteer efforts. And we certainly wouldn’t have as much fun as we
have had on the trail with Larry!
Congratulations to Larry Telle, an outstanding member of Genesee Valley ADK, and
an outstanding Volunteer of the year.
--Dave Harrison
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