By Jan Jackson
The 2010 Northwest Festivals Conference Ovation Award Ceremony recognized Mount Angel’s Wurstfest 2009 as Best New Festival or Event in Oregon, Oktoberfest was honored as the Best Cultural and Heritage Event for 2009 and Oktoberfest Public Relations Director Jerry Lauzon is the Oregon Festival and Event Industry’s Volunteer of the Year for 2009.
The conference, March 7 – 9, in Seaside, also featured educational sessions and roundtable discussions covering sponsorships, marketing, festival and event operations as well as organizational management and leadership.
Lauzon, whose Volunteer of the Year award follows 20 years of festival service in Mount Angel, was both proud and humble. “Since coming to Mount Angel in 1989, Oktoberfest has been a major part of our life,” he said. “Connie and I have fallen in love with Oktoberfest and with Mount Angel. It is extremely gratifying and very humbling to have the Oregon Festival Events Association select me as the Oregon Volunteer of the Year. In doing so, they also recognize our community along with the several thousand volunteers who have captured and organized an Oktoberfest that any community in Germany would be proud to host.”
John Gooley, who is starting his fifth year as Oktoberfest president, attended the conference for the first time. “Knowing Jerry was going to win the award, I watched him get in position to photograph the winner of the Volunteer of the Year Award,” Gooley said. “When he heard them make reference to the winner as a retired from the Army as a colonel, he said ‘uh oh,’ and laid his camera down. He even got a little teary eyed. “I could see that every festival wishes they had a Jerry Lauzon on their committee and we should be proud of the fact that Mount Angel’s Oktoberfest is the poster child of festivals.”
