Virginia Master Gardener Honor Roll
VMGA may decide to recognize the accomplishments or service record of a VMGA past or present member who has contributed greatly to VMGA and/or the VCE Master Gardener Program.
Karen Sacasky - Oct 2024
Karen Sacasky is an important part of VMGA history. She served as President during a particularly trying time when the Legislature acted to prevent VCE staff from supporting Master Gardener Programs. Her actions during that difficult time helped establish the associations of the various units and VMGA as important parts of the Master Gardener program. During this time Karen held more frequent meetings of VMGA officers, and established the Unit Support Committee as a method to help Units learn what to do and share information across the state. Karen also wrote the first two installments of the history of VMGA (Microsoft Word - VMGA Web Proposed History of VMGA ) that detailed our emergence within VCE. She was an original member of the Master Gardener Advisory Team and Master Gardener College Advisory team and helped formulate VCE and MG program policy in important formative years. She helped usher in the State MG Coordinator Endowment funding agreement and has served VMGA and the Master Gardener Program in so many ways for many years. She joined MG in 1991 and has over 11,000 volunteer hours
Tom Bolt - June 2024
Tom Bolt served a long term with VMGA in various capacities. He is a past President of VMGA. Most notably however, was his part in elevating the Communication Committee’s ability to respond rapidly to the membership by streamlining and operating our e-blast system. The e-blast was initially envisioned to let members know of upcoming meetings or to expect the minutes of past meetings to be delivered. However, soon after he took over the e-blast system became a critical tool in letting Master Gardeners across the state know of moves to de-fund Cooperative Extension. His barrage of E-blast informational communications allowed VMGA to play a critical and successful role in getting Master Gardeners to contact their elected representatives, and forestalling the effort to de-fund our activities. We may well not be here today if it had not been for Tom’s tireless service.
Dave Banks - June 2024
Dave Banks has served VMGA as its webmaster since he was named webmaster during the Bill Scott administration. Tom took over a balky website of several hundred pages; streamlined it; modernized it; added e-commerce so we could sell our merchandise; and to this day maintains the website. He is an unnoticed VMGA contributor who deserves to be recognized in the VMGA Honor Roll.
Bill McCaleb - October 2023
In early 1997 Bill McCaleb took the Master Gardener Classes, shortly thereafter he became a volunteer Master Gardener Coordinator and since September 1998 he has been the Extension Master Gardener Coordinator for Halifax. For more than 25 years he has been an avid EMG and Extension Program Assistant, Agriculture and Natural Resources. He is also an EMG Tree Steward. All of this AFTER a 32 Year Career with the US Federal Government. He has been a member of VMGA and served on many Committees (in fact any time he was asked and many more he volunteered for) and Officer positions. Most notably he was the President of VMGA that saw the signing of the State Master Gardener Coordinator Endowment agreement between VMGA and VA Tech in 2005. This Endowment has risen in value due to the efforts of many EMGs and others but came into being during the time Bill was our President. Even after serving as president, he volunteered to help revise By-Laws, help with nominations and much more. He has been an active supporter of the State Coordinators Office. He participated with state-wide agents and local coordinators to formulate EMG program policies in the late 1990’s. He served on a team that assisted then-State Coordinator Sheri Dorn with creating materials for the program. That team helped plan and conduct Master Gardener College, and eventually became the College Advisory Team. Bill served on that team for several rotations. Many looked forward to seeing Bill at MG College; he was there almost every year!
His work as an EMG and Coordinator has been active. He works with the public and is the author of many articles dealing with such subjects as Boxwood Blight, Spotted Lantern Fly for several EMG Unit newsletters, In-Season, etc. Bill was also a founding member of the group that formed the Healthy Harvest Community Garden in Halifax County and was instrumental in its design and planning. He contributed his years of agricultural experience toward the vision of planting a sustainable, mostly organic garden that would benefit the community with healthy vegetables. Bill was a trusted advisor to those implementing the tobacco funding. He was instrumental in seeing that EMGs got to participate in that funding helping to establish a demonstration garden and evaluating plant introductions suitable for Virginia gardeners. That nexus resulted in a partnership between County, VA Tech and, most importantly, The EMGs to establish the Southern Virginia Botanical Gardens and Environmental Education Center following the end of the “Beautiful Gardens” evaluation program. In November of 2020 Bill was named Employee of the Month by the VA Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Today we are naming him as the inaugural member of the VMGA Honor Role.
Friend of Master Gardeners
VMGA may decide to recognize the accomplishments or service record of an individual or group that has contributed greatly to the Master Gardener Program.
Friends of VMGA
George Graine - October 2022
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Ed Jones - June 2021
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Dave Close - June 2021
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