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By Ellen Shubart, Class of 2006

Florence Gurke.

Never heard of her? Well, she was the first docent to receive an Outstanding Docent Achievement Award, when that award was first presented in 1980. Lots of docents – 41 to be exact – have their names following her on the plaque that, sadly, is out of view now, but lives in the Docent Library.

Over the years, awards have been given out to acknowledge docents’ achievements. They varied depending on when they were issued, they rewarded different accomplishments. But annually having an Outstanding Docent has been consistent even as the organization grew and changed.

Back in Florence’s day through today, the Outstanding Docent Award is given to a docent who has a history of achievement over a period of years, a career of service whether on committees, in creating new or leading existing tours, or by giving large numbers of tours each year. As always, the nominations by docents’ peers begins the process of selection. Awardees are selected by an ad hoc committee of docents that usually includes previous Outstanding Docent winners, representatives from the Education and Tour committees and the president of Docent Council.

This year, the DAN committee is seeking nominations only for the four to seven Docent Service Awards and Outstanding Docent. That’s because the pandemic precluded many docents from giving tours and CAC from offering tours. But in a non-pandemic year, DAN would be the venue for the presentation of many more awards.  Included in the usual roster are:

• Myra Gary Award for Excellent in Tour Development
• Neighborhood Tour Director Service Award
• Above and Beyond Awards
• CAC Staff One Team Docent Award
• Anniversary awards: 2 years, 10 years, 15 years, etc. through 30 years

Most of those are self-explanatory. And we expect those awards to come back next year, if we are able to give tours somewhat normally in 2021.

Lots of History

The history of the awards, however, reminds of us of many different names for the awards, and different emphasis on what we reward.

Today, we usually list in the program the hours docents accumulated giving tours, under categories of 100 hours, 200 hours and 300 hours. In the past, however, these were distinct awards presented in person, and were named for docents who exemplified those giving the most tours for the most tour hours. For instance, the Kruski-Balanoff-Cohen Award for Most Tour Hours in Year, was named for Art Kruski, Henry Cohen and Margaret “Peggy” Balanoff. Balanoff was a docent from 1989 through 2001, when she passed away after a long and painful fight with cancer. Balanoff helped plan the Residential and Historic Styles courses that were offered for docents; she gave tours of Glessner House, “the two Loop tours” (which, at the time, meant the Modern and History tours) and the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio. She sat on the Docent Education Committee, Docent Council and the then-Youth Ed Committee, and served as Docent-at-Large for two years. Art Kruski, Class of 1988, and Henry Cohen, Class of 1992, who served as Docent-at-Large and wrote a column for Docent News, were also docents who contributed hours of service.

Another award, which can be dates to the turn of the last century, was the Pullman: My-Kind-of-Town Worker Award. This honored the most tour hours by a first-year docent. At the time, Pullman was an area where tours were being developed; but the name only remained for a few years. My Kind of Worker was always given to the first-year docent who did the most tours. But according to Donna Gabanski, one of CAC’s local “institution memory” docents, the award was discontinued when it became difficult for docents to find as many tours as they would to give. By 2008, the award was simply Most Tour Hours by a Member of the Newest Docent Class. And for the last five years or so, this was a listing in the program.

Other awards? The SOS Award was given to the docent who most often pitched in when needed at the last minute and was awarded by the staff. Another variation was the SOS Award for Helping Out in a Pinch. Similarly, the Most Tour Hours Award was called the Worker Bee Award for many years.

Do You Remember These?

One of the more interesting awards category was “Fun Awards.” In 2002, the three fun awards were the Topless Tours Award: Michelle Mondro; the Trial by Fire Award: Eric Kille and the Tours by Airplane Award: Karen Flannery. Gabanski remembered the fun awards and said they originally were given at the suggestion of the docent community, but they were discontinued because not enough docents submitted ideas and “in a way, they were just in-jokes” that many might not understand.

Too bad. We’d like to know what the Topless Tour Award was all about. Maybe it was a tour in an open-air bus, but other ideas abound as well.

Gabanski did remember that in 2004, Charles Stanford, Class of 2003, who later went on to be president of Docent Council, got a Top Gun Award. That came about because he was practicing his historic tour in 2003. He was hanging around the lobby of Chicago Board of Trade building. Security was very tight after 9/11 and a guard approached him with a gun drawn. Top Gun, get it?

There also was the “I gave three boat-tours-the-week-I-gave-birth Award to Helen Albert. That appears to be self-explanatory, and congratulations to that baby born in 2000.

Two other fun awards were the Quatrefoil Award to Henry Kuehn, long-time docent and board member emeritus, who just retired. He was given the award for being able to use the terms quatrefoil and modillions more than three times each in a single tour. And, finally, the Yellow Journalism Award went to editor of Docent News Joe Frey in 2001 for his “unrelenting quest to find out where this year’s DAN was going to be held.” In those years, the venue was withheld from the docent body until very close to the event.

Much of the fun in the awards was eliminated by the need to keep the length of the DAN program from ballooning, hence the written lists of tour givers and their hours, and the memories of long-time docents.

If you’d like, suggest a few Fun Awards for last year in the Comment section below. We’ll run a summary in the Features area of the Bridge with all the ideas.

And see you at this year’s virtual DAN for a great time, a recognition of significant anniversaries and the few awards for 2020.

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