NFPW Honor for Me and The Arch Scaler News

Last night (6 June), I joined in via Zoom (https://zoom.us/) in the awards presentation for this year's National Federation of Press Women (NFPW) (https://nfpw.org/) Communications Contest. Normally, these awards are presented in person at the NFPW's Annual Conference; however, the current pandemic scrapped this year's conference.

I had earned a First Place award from Missouri Professional Communicators (MPC) (https://www.facebook.com/MissouriProfessionalCommunicators)--an affiliate of NFPW--in Writing: Publication regularly written by entrant--newsletter or other non-newspaper. This was for The Arch Scaler News, the monthly member newsletter of the Gateway Chapter, International Plastic Modelers' Society (IPMS) (https://sites.google.com/view/ipmsgatewaychapter/home). (I submitted the August 2019 issue to the judges.) By earning a First Place at the state affiliate level, I was eligible for a NFPW national level award.

I dressed like I was in person at this event and parked in front of my computer. There were other honorees in the video chat as NFPW officials announced the names of the winners, in alphabetical order, along with the awards and categories they earned. I was very happy when they came to me, and I was announced as First Place in this category. This is only the second national award I have received for my work--two years ago, a press release I wrote and distributed for IPMS/Gateway earned a Third Place in this contest.

I was also very happy for six other MPC members who earned awards this night: Suzanne Corbett, Ruth Ezell, Alice Handleman, Mary Scott, Allison Stein, and Kathie Sutin. There were over 1800 entries at the affiliate level in this year's Communications Contest, and about 550 of them advanced to the national competition. The NFPW will mail the certificates and judges'comments to the winners in the coming weeks.

It's a great honor to be considered for this award, and especially an honor to be chosen. I am looking forward to the judges' comments. At the MPC level, these comments have been most helpful in improving my work in communications.

After the ceremony, I stayed in the Zoom chat for a while with several MPC members at first in a breakout room, then with the general chat room until it broke up. It was great to congratulate my colleagues and join in the fun. Afterward, I cracked open a can of beer--specifically, Schlafly (https://www.schlafly.com/) Ale d'Or--in celebration.

Later.