The Jefferson Iowa News®
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Nominees for Jefferson Iowa News Lifetime
Achievement Award After several weeks of vigorous discussion and debate inside of our selection committee, Jefferson Iowa News is proud to announce the two finalists for the Jefferson Iowa News Lifetime Achievement Award. This award annually goes to the person that JeffersonIowaNews.com feels sacrificed the most for the betterment of the community of Jefferson, Iowa. Their sacrifice may represent monetary contributions or in some cases services provided. We would like to note that the preferred method of sacrifice would be monetary ... who cares if you were a cub scout troop leader? Not us. Which makes the nominees for this year's award all that much more surprising, although well deserved! Nominees are listed in the order of their importance: Rev. George McFadden (AKA Father McFadden) While the outstanding priest Rev. George McFadden was only a resident of Jefferson, Iowa for three years, he made a lasting impression. Few, if any, church or civic leaders of this community could honestly claim that they touched as many young men of Jefferson. Father McFadden was so involved with the young men of the community that some might have said he was obsessed with the boys of Jefferson. Since the reverend's departure from Jefferson it seems that the leaders of the other churches in the area just have not picked up the torch. Rev. Sheri Daylong That's right...another minister! This year's voting has turned into a cage match between two people doing God's work (not to imply God is too lazy to do his own work...we're just just reporting, not judging God's obvious lack of work ethic). The Reverend really only caught the eye of the selection committee for one act! They were so impressed with that one act that she went straight to the short list of potential nominees. Here, in a nutshell, is what Reverend Sheri Daylong did for Jefferson: She, in a stroke of pure genius, injected religion into virtually all community events! She did that by pushing for the term "Radical Hospitality" to be the "motto" associated with RAGBRAI coming to Jefferson. Radical hospitality is a term universally associated with Christians trying to convert people to their church based upon the illusion that they are nicer than expected to strangers. Her injection (infection?) of religion into RAGBRAI has now spread to www.jeffersoniowa.com as we see in their news article, "WHO Great Iowa Tractor Ride - Greene County Showed Radical Hospitality to the Tractor Riders." Obviously the good reverend has the Jefferson Chamber of Commerce now in the part-time business of "spreading the word of Jesus"! |