The Halifax County Board of Commissioners recently recognized local winners of the 2022 Governor’s Volunteer Service Award. 

The North Carolina Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service recognized two individuals with the 2022 GVSA and one committee with the 2022 GVSA Medallion. 

The 2022 GVSA recipients are Guardian ad Litem Jan Morgan and Carolyn Battle, executive director of the Lincoln Heights Community Center. 

The Sarah Keys Evans Public Art Project Committee was honored with the 2022 GVSA Medallion.

The GVSA program, created by the Office of the Governor in 1979, recognizes North Carolina's most dedicated volunteers. Through the years, the award has been bestowed on thousands of North Carolinians who have shown concern and compassion for their neighbors by volunteering in their local community. 

Each county selects up to 10 individuals, businesses, and groups/teams to be recognized for their outstanding contributions to their communities.

The Governor's Medallion Award for Volunteer Service was implemented in 2006 to recognize the top 20-25 volunteers in the state. 

Medallion recipients are nominated at the county level by the county award coordinator. 

Only one medallion nomination is permitted per county. A statewide panel reviews and evaluates all these nominations to determine the award recipients. 

The Sarah Keys Evans Public Art Project Committee was honored initially during a virtual Medallion Award recognition ceremony in May.

The following information was gleaned from the award nomination statements.

In the gallery: The Keys committee; Morgan; and Battle

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Jan Morgan

Guardian ad Litem Jan Morgan has displayed exemplary commitment and dependability in her work with the program. 

Morgan has served as GAL for as many as four cases with multiple children at one time. 

She is the go-to volunteer for high profile cases. 

She is always willing to take a case as they come in. Often, when she is in court on behalf of one of her cases, a new case will be heard and after hearing the details of the new case, she will offer to take it. 

Morgan is a seasoned GAL and is often assigned a newly sworn GAL to shadow her. 

Morgan never says no to any request that is made and easily establishes a relationship with the children and families that she serves. 

She has a way of making children feel comfortable so they can open up to her. 

She has helped over 12 children to find a permanent home in her two-and-a-half years of serving as a GAL. 

She maintains good relationships with all of the social workers and other agencies that she has worked with. All social workers and other agency workers speak very highly of her. 

Overall, Morgan has gone above and beyond to carry out the duties that she is charged with as GAL.

Carolyn Battle

From the days of her early youth, Carolyn Fleming Battle, a lifetime resident of the Lincoln Heights Community, has followed the footprints and passion of her parents, Robert and Dorothy Hawkins Fleming, as an activist, humanitarian, and volunteer. 

Battle is a retired educator of the Halifax County Schools and a leader in her church's youth/adult ministry. 

In 1993 she assisted in organizing the Lincoln Heights Community Development Coalition, the Lincoln Heights Community Center and the Lincoln Heights Community Crime Watch Program.

She is the owner and operator of CB's Child Care Center, which is the community’s first licensed child care facility. It has been in business for 36 years. 

Additionally, she is the second executive director volunteer to ever render services at the all-volunteer staff of the LHCC. 

She has diligently and efficiently maintained the center's operations in this capacity for the past 15 years.

Thanks to Mrs. Battle and her late husband, Sam, a basketball court was funded and installed by the couple at the LHCC in 2021. 

They also purchased land in the neighborhood to erect a new community center with construction slated to begin this year with funding from the state budget and the Community Development Block Grant-Neighborhood Revitalization program.

As a community volunteer and activist, Battle maintains a constant watch of the poverty-stricken Lincoln Heights living conditions and the devastation on the community's social cohesion and economic prosperity.

Sarah Keys Evans Public Art Project Committee

The Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation in 2018 offered grants to communities that would highlight the compelling, unknown and often untold stories of trailblazers like Sarah Keys Evans through public art. 

The genesis of the 2018 Z. Smith Reynolds Public Art Project grant was brought to the attention of Ervin V. Griffin Sr., president emeritus of Halifax Community College. 

Realizing that Evans’s story met the criteria proposed by the foundation, the sponsoring committee through Eastern Carolina Christian College and Seminary submitted a grant proposal to highlight her story.

From a pool of approximately 80 applicants, ECCC & Seminary received a $50,000 grant to build The Sarah Keys Evans Plaza, now located in the Martin Luther King Park at the corner for Virginia Avenue and Wyche Streets in Roanoke Rapids. 

The Public Arts Project highlights the story of Sarah Louise Keys Evans, an African-American woman who enlisted in the Women's Army Corps and refused to move to the back of an interstate charter bus in the City of Roanoke Rapids on August 2, 1952, three years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

The committee spent the next two years designing the SKE plaza, getting drawings for the builder, getting a local construction company to donate their skillset at no cost to the project, garnering approval for the project from the Roanoke Rapids City Council and others, and building a website that would be interactive and allow groups to visit and have a guided tour of the site. 

One of the committee's most pressing and important projects was to hire a muralist who could accurately interpret the story of Sarah Louise Keys Evans and develop the panels that would meet approval by all parties.

The Sarah Keys Evans' Plaza Ribbon Cutting and Unveiling Program was held on August 1, 2020. Since that time, the committee has led community celebrations, such as Sarah Keys Evans Day. 

Most recently, the committee was intimately involved in the celebration of the historical marker that was dedicated in Roanoke Rapids on January 15 honoring Evans. 

The attendance at all of the celebrations have been very diverse and well-attended. 

The Sarah Keys Evans Plaza has had over 2,000 visitors since its opening, and the website has had over 3,000 hits since its launch.

The final product in MLK Park is a great example of volunteerism at its best. Sarah Keys Evans Public Art Project Committee members are as follows: Charles McCullom Sr.; Georgette Brown Kimball; Griffin; Ophelia Gould-Faison; Helen Rosser; John Simeon; Napoleon Hill; and David Putney.