From left are Volunteer of the Year receipient Deseret Ward, SMSS Executive Director Mary Lee Ziebold and board president Beth Baker.Deseret Ward and Dawn Carlton are Signal Mountain Social Services’ Volunteers of the Year, an honor both women received at the organization’s recent board meeting.
“These women exemplify the true spirit of volunteering,” said SMSS Executive Director Mary Lee Ziebold, which she defined as “doing more than you want to, because you have to, for a cause you consider good.”
The 2016 recipients have a lot in common, said Ziebold. Both involve their entire families in their volunteer work, and both have husbands with trucks who don’t mind helping with projects involving heavy lifting or deliveries, such as the Christmas baskets volunteers pack and deliver to SMSS clients each year.
In addition, the two women both help with the post office food drive and deliver meals and Valentines to seniors, Ziebold added.
Ward began volunteering with the organization’s food pantry in 1988, and since then has regularly served as the SMSS representative for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She also organizes the packing and delivery of the Christmas baskets.