Attendees packed a Community Center room to celebrate 11 past Greenbelt Outstanding Citizens on Thursday, August 13. The Greenbelt Rotary Club hosted the event to celebrate the many ways Greenbelters contribute to Greenbelt before the 2026 Outstanding Citizen is named at this year’s Labor Day Festival. Guests of honor were Sandy Lange (1987), Konrad Herling (2001), Jean Cook (2009), Rick Ransom (2016), Greg Fisanich (2018), Lore Rosenthal and Michael Hartman (2019), Shaymar Higgs (2021), Maggie Cahalan (2022), Cathie Meetre (2024) and Robert Goldberg-Strassler (2025).
Collective Effort
When moderator and Greenbelt Rotarian Kristen Weaver invited honorees to discuss what led to the work their awards recognized, Ransom said, “When you contribute to a community you don’t do it thinking ‘If I do this, I’ll get the Outstanding Citizen award,’” to laughter. He and other honorees felt that others deserved the award more or that it should have gone to everyone with whom they worked on projects. Ransom’s award recognized service to organizations including American Legion, Greenbelt CARES, the Labor Day Festival and city advisory boards.
Konrad Herling saw his Greenbelt Arts Center proposal as an opportunity for the sake of the community, because “bringing people closer together and putting it together could uplift everyone because … there’s a lot more that we have in common than items that we don’t.”
Judy Goldberg-Strassler said Robert Goldberg-Strassler (education, literacy, food insecurity, the environment and unifying Greenbelt) “gets the community to do things together. He doesn’t think he was deserving, because he felt like it was everybody who joins him in the things he does, to foster kindness throughout the entire community and see all Greenbelt as one.”
Cathie Meetre (News Review, Greenbelt Farmers Market, Co-op Rays on the Roof) downplayed her own “specialness,” instead emphasizing being a catalyst. “There are lots of people with lots to give,” she said, explaining “The question is how to make them behave in concert, to put something together that’s mightier than any one individual.” She felt most Outstanding Citizens achieve results by harnessing the ideas, energy and contributions of a group.
You Can Do It
Jean Cook (noted for efforts including the Greenbelt Combined Choir and Miss Greenbelt Pageant) remembered starting with no organization and knowing very little. “It was fun to try it, to see what we could do, and we just started to do it. We didn’t know what we were doing, and we had so much fun doing it together and saying ‘Hey, that was pretty good!’”
Similarly, Maggie Cahalan, recognized for promoting environmental stewardship and cofounding the Chesapeake Education, Arts and Research Society (CHEARS), described Greenbelters as a quilt of “all the things that we can do together.” Her sentiment echoed CHEARS’ and others’ emphasis on unifying all the areas of Greenbelt.
Lore Rosenthal (honored with Michael Hartman for peace and environmental activism) remembered encouraging the 2019 award audience to act on their ideas and make them happen, because anyone can do it. Cahalan noted ideas building on each other. She remembered attending a climate change education course by Rosenthal based on Project Drawdown resources. Cahalan later won a National Science Foundation grant to use those resources with low-income first-generation college students. Meetre similarly noted that a Greenbelt News Review effort to gather evidence for a Pulitzer Prize application revealed the fragility of original newspaper issues dating from 1937, leading to today’s digital archive.
Shaymar Higgs (founder of The SPACE: Free Art For All) recognized his fellow Outstanding Citizens for being “crazy enough to take a chance on yourself and a chance on other people, to trust other people and step out there to be a mover of things.”
Outstanding Citizen Beginnings
Sandy Lange recounted Katherine Keene suggesting the award in the early 1970s, when most Labor Day Festival recognition went to young Miss Greenbelt Pageant winners, whose experience didn’t yet compare to contributions of older volunteers. She said David Lange (then Festival vice chair) began organizing the award process in 1971, but there wasn’t time to select an awardee for that year’s Festival. (David Lange would become the 1986 Outstanding Citizen for organizing Marylanders to pressure state government to protect citizen savings during the 1985 savings and loan crisis.) In 1972 the Festival chose popular nonagenarians “Pop” Cipriano and Jerry Goodin as Parade Grand Marshals. Boy Scout Troop 746 Leader Al Cousin was the first Outstanding Citizen in 1973, and Al and Elaine Skolnik were honored in 1974 for leading the News Review through its multiyear libel case, Bresler vs. Greenbelt News Review, and U.S. Supreme Court win, after a rule change permitted honoring multiple persons who made their contribution as a unit.
Rotary Community Service
Greenbelt Rotary Club President Paul Ricketts noted the community service ethos shared by Outstanding Citizens and the Rotary Club, which is the primary financial sponsor of the Outstanding Citizen Award. The club supports local causes, including CHEARS Three Sisters gardens, Greenbelt Grows, Venture Crew 746, driver education, the Black History and Culture Committee’s middle school essay contest, Springhill Lake and Greenbelt Elementary students and families, and the Greenbelt Pumpkin Festival. Ricketts noted the Venture Crew 746 inherited the first Outstanding Citizen’s scout troop number 746, and that Mowatt Memorial United Methodist Church has hosted both groups.
Oral History
Weaver and Jennifer Dudley (Greenbelt Rotary immediate past president and Greenbelt Access Television (GATe) and CHEARS board member) discussed an ongoing Rotary-GATe project to preserve Outstanding Citizen history, including oral history interviews. Dudley invited Outstanding Citizens and their families interested in participating to email rotarygreenbelt@gmail.com with Outstanding Citizen in the subject line.
The club inducted the honorees as Honorary Rotarians, having inducted Larry Hilliard and Sylvia Lewis earlier this year before they moved out of state. Outstanding Citizens Mary Lou Williamson, Leta Mach, Marsha Voigt, Eric Zhang, Paul Downs and Linda Ivy either couldn’t attend or be contacted for the event. Attendees noted recent deaths of Outstanding Citizens, including Solange Hess, John Henry Jones and David Lange.
Weaver closed the event by noting that each Outstanding Citizen saw a need, she said, “something that needs done, someone that needs help or something to beautify the community. They didn’t just sit around, they did something and the community recognized that. Even those who don’t think you deserved it — the rest of us think ‘Yes, you really did.’”
