Jim Tate Honored With Inaugural Community Service Award

The most animated part of Jim Tate's speech was when he recounted his days as a field hockey coach.

In the meeting room, before a crowd of about 30 who had turned out to see him accept the first-ever township Community Service Award, Tate jumped up and down and waved his arms as he reenacted of his coaching method.

"I just ran up and down the side line, yelling 'Run, run, run, run! Hit, hit, hit, hit, hit!'" Tate said. "Obviously, we lost the game."

That game was in 1974. Tate had spearheaded the creation of a field hockey club after seeing a dearth of girls' sports at , where his daughter was a student.

But his volunteerism included much more than sports, Tate also...

• chaired the recycling commission.
• revived the Willistowne Crier newsletter.
• served on the Sugartown Elementary PTO.
• chaired the environmental advisory council.

At the award ceremony, held Nov. 10, Willistown Parks director Mary McLoughlin said Tate was the ideal recipient of an award designed to recognize residents who create a sense of community.

"It dawned on me that it was darned about time to raise a glass to Jim and say thanks, because he has done so much for the township," she said after presenting a plaque with his photo that will hang in the township office.

Tate said he was so active because he enjoyed volunteering. Through his grantwriting, he has secured more than $300,000 for the township's recycling programs. He got involved in recycling as a child in the '40s, when reusing materials was a civic duty in a nation at war, and was immediately hooked:

"See this wagon wheel here?" Tate said, quoting himself as a child. "That's going to fit together with this handle from a 1930 Plymouth, and it would go on... I had visions of how all this material was going to be reused, and I was six years old! That's how I got started."

After his acceptance speech, friends and fellow volunteers chimed in with anecdotes and praise.

Andrea Lynch, a former Sugartown PTO president herself, said Tate saw his projects through to completion. (When he coached the field hockey team, for example, he also mowed grass on the field.)

"You recognize that person who will actually do the thing they say they're going to do, and not just come up with the idea," Lynch said.

Joe Carpenter, a longtime friend and political rival, said Ronald Reagan would have admired Tate, a Democrat.

"We are ideologically exactly opposite, and we don't talk a lot preceding elections," Carpenter said. "But the day after, all the secrets of both sides are revealed between two 20-year friends."

As for next year's Community Service Award recipient, McLoughlin said nominations are welcome.

"We have all these wonderful community people volunteering in Willistown—71 people as a matter of fact—quietly working behind the scenes, volunteering their time on all these different boards in Willistown," McLoughlin said.