September 30, 2015

National Liberty Museum to host Awards of Valor for region's unsung heroes

By Brandon Baker
PhillyVoice Contributor

Handout Art/National Liberty Museum

Four Philadelphia firefighter awardees from last year's ceremony: Lt. Mark Mierzejewski, Lt. Jeffrey Dewald, Firefighter James Collins and Firefighter Michael Sottung.

Wednesday evening marks the 10th annual Awards of Valor ceremony, hosted by the National Liberty Museum and intended to honor unsung heroes in the Philadelphia region.

And with the extra attention on police brutality this past year, the event surfaces as a particularly poignant one.

“To that end, one thing we’re doing this year is really spotlighting police and firefighters who are meritorious in terms of their community service," Kevin Orangers, vice president of programs for the museum, told PhillyVoice.

"Community peace-seeking, policing, those are additional elements we’re taking notice of this year and worked to find nominations for – and we found quite a few, actually.”

Orangers said several of the 17 awards, issued by a panel of five people from the museum, were handed out to police who resisted injuring assailants more than necessary. The total list of awards includes 27 police officers, patrolmen, detectives and sergeants.

The Awards of Valor program was launched to honor public servants, including police officers, police detectives and police sergeants, as well as fire police, firefighters, K-9 units and EMTs. Valor nominations are submitted by police and fire departments, as well as newspaper editors and community members. Thirty-eight people will receive an award this year, recognizing acts that went above and beyond the requirements of duty with no clear recognition expected.

Kevin Bethel speaks at 2014's Awards of Valor ceremony. He will speak again at this year's event. (Handout Art / National Liberty Museum)

The idea behind the program, National Liberty Museum Development Director Peggy Sweeney told PhillyVoice, is to demonstrate a commitment to liberty as more than a relic.

“We don’t view liberty as a dusty artifact living in our history textbooks," she said. "It’s a living thing that flourishes when all of us stand up and look after each other and our communities and our democracy.”

Representative of such is Collingdale, Pa., Police Officer William Carter's training program for his department, which teaches officers how to best communicate with community members living with PTSD; Philadelphia Fire Department firefighters John Stankiewicz and Charles McCarthy, who submerged 20 feet into the Delaware River to rescue an unconscious man from his car; and even a dog, which survived a gunshot by an assailant and helped prevent injury to other officers and civilians.

But the real significance of the awards ceremony, when the feet shuffle out and the lights click off, is what remains: An exhibit in the museum open to the public that tells the story of each Valor winner and places their photos next to text.

"What we would love for kids to be thinking as they're looking at them is, ‘This could be me,'" Sweeney said.

“What I love about this exhibit is there’s a tremendous amount of diversity in the heroes -- in the faces of the individuals who are there for an entire year. And that’s wonderful because young people can quite possibly see themselves reflected in the face of at least one of our heroes.”

Below, find the full list of 2015 Valor Award winners: