William Reid “Bill” Harshbarger CERT Award for Leadership and Excellence

Recipients

Established in 2019, this award is given to an outstanding CERT member, in memory of Bill Harshbarger, who was instrumental in building our CERT program.

2022 – Activation Team

The 2022 Harshbarger Award goes to the Activation Team: Mark Adamcin, John Beaston, Steve Case and Brad Hart. The team was honored for an App they created that streamlines and simplifies the process to notify volunteers when their services are needed, in other words, when volunteers are “Activated”. If a Shelter needs to be opened during a storm or CERTs are needed to help police with a Lost Person search, the App targets the volunteers trained to do that work and texts the details to them. Volunteers can reply to let authorities know if they are able to deploy or not.

2021 – Jo Cooper

The 2021 Harshbarger Award was chosen by the CERT Leadership Team, and goes to Jo Cooper, CERT Lead, for her tireless leadership and creativity as CERT moves forward.

2020 – Paula Peek

The Nehalem Bay CERT program would not have survived the loss of its founder, our beloved Bill Harshbarger, were it not for its co-founder, Paula Peek. She is truly the heart and driving force of the CERT program. She is an unflagging cheerleader for everyone involved in the program.

Paula is usually the first one to arrive and almost always the last to leave. Because of her strong personal relationships with our local first responders, we have highly qualified instructors for our CERT training. Paula prepares the materials and gathers resources for the classes. During the classes she is on hand to teach, encourage, and gently remind us all of best practices.

Paula is a sincere people person and she genuinely believes that personal preparedness can and will save lives. To that end she reminds people every chance she gets that being prepared is something we can all do, and that every piece of information we can gather and skill we can hone, will improve our chances of surviving a major disaster.

2019 – Mary Dunn

Mary Dunn is the first recipient of the William Reid “Bill” Harshbarger award. Introduced to EVCNB when three CERT volunteers made a presentation in Rockaway Beach, Mary and her husband soon trained to be CERT volunteers themselves. Being a retired cardiology nurse, Mary also joined SERV-OR, a statewide registry system to help pre-credentialed healthcare professionals volunteer their services during emergencies with significant health impacts. She also began the effort to restart a CERT program in the Rockaway Beach area.

Mary earned this award for her unwavering participation, contribution, and leadership in the CERT program.