| Outreach, Activities & Awards
Members of the Sarah Riggs Humphreys-Mary Silliman Chapter are active in the community in many ways. Some of our members work with our local high schools in support of the DAR Good Citizens Awards and Essay contests. Other members are more active in preserving important historical documents. Still others are involved with local VA Hospitals, VFWs, and American Legions to assist where ever, however needed.
Regardless of our individual interests, we have all come together and developed lifelong friendships, with a common goal: to promote the ideals of patriotism and to love our country.
DAR Good Citizens Award:
DAR Good Citizens Awards are given to outstanding local high school seniors for their contributions to their communities and schools. The DAR Good Citizens program and scholarship contest is intended to encourage and reward the qualities of good citizenship. The program is open to all senior class students enrolled in accredited public or private secondary schools that are in good standing with their State Boards of Education. United States citizenship is not required.
Eligibility Requirements and the Award submission and review process can be found at the NSDAR website.
2009 Winners
Masuk High School - Ashley Palmieri
Click here to read Ashley's essay which the Sarah Riggs Humphreys Chapter submitted to the State
Shelton High School - Julie Laven
Click here to read Julie's essay
Derby High School - Victoria Smey
Click here to view past winners
Fundraising Committee
The fundraising committee currently works with Yankee Candle fundraising and Holiday card sales. We also participate in various opportunities throughout the year to raise money, such as American Flag sales around Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor Day.
Veterans Committee
Our Veterans Committee works year-round to support local and national veterans.
American Heritage Committee
Many of our members are very talented in vairous arts, such as knitting, sewing, photography, and gardening. We use these talents to help provide for the community and those in need.
Constitution Week
Constitution Week is celebrated every year during the week of September 17th-23rd. Our chapter provides posters and bookmarks to our local libraries for their Constitution Week displays. This year, in 2009, we are excited to also provide bookmarks and posters for all Shelton elementary school libraries. The bookmarks have either the words of the Pledge of Allegiance or the words of the Preamble to the Constitution. The purpose of Constitution Week is to celebrate the words of our Founding Fathers and to remember those values upon which our country was built.
Flag Day
In 2009, our chapter celebrated Flag Day by researching those Revolutionary Patriots that are buried in the Huntington Burial Grounds, located in Huntington Center on the St. Paul's Episcopal Church property. For the celebration, we placed flags at the headstones of the 40 patriots identified. The celebration was open to the public and was enjoyed by many. The flags will be removed later this year, likely in observance of Veterans Day.
Junior American Citizens (JAC) - Coming soon!
Conservation Committee - Coming soon!
Shelton Day
The Sarah Riggs Humphreys DAR chapter plans to participate in the 2010 Shelton Day, planned for October 2010.
Library Contributions
Our chapter makes numerous contributions to our local libraries.
2009 Awards Received - Coming soon!
2008 Awards Received
Chapter Achievement Award - Level 1
Northeast Division for Leadership Support Involvement with Youth - July 2008
Membership Committee - Mary Rozsa, CT as Northeast Division Finalist NSDAR Membership Essay Contest July 2008
Membership Committee - Mary Rozsa, Sarah Riggs Humphreys Chapter, CT as Overall Runner-up NSDAR Membership Essay Contest July 2008
2007 Awards Received
C.A.R. – Sarah Riggs Humphreys – Leadership Support
DAR Genealogy Preservation – Mary Rozsa, Outstanding Service, Descendants
Project Membership – Chapter with Largest Increase in Membership by Division
C.A.R. – Sarah Riggs Humphreys – Leadership Support
DAR Genealogy Preservation – Mary Rozsa, Outstanding Service, Descendants
Project Membership – Chapter with Largest Increase in Membership by Division
Box Tops & Campbell’s Labels for Education Partnership
Bring your Campbell’s Labels for Education UPCs to our next meeting. These labels help provide educational resources for our local schools.
Our American Heritage and Our Responsibility for Preserving It
2009 Good Citizens Award Recipient – Ashley Palmieri
Masuk High School
A good citizen means much more than just someone who is involved in their community. Being involved is very important, but being a good citizen comes from within a person’s inner qualities. I believe that to be a good citizen, one needs to be respectful and caring; loyal and patriotic, and responsible. To be a good citizen, one needs to respect their society which includes themselves, others and its property. Being respectful shows that you care. To live a healthy life, we need to respect ours and others freedom. A perfect example of the consequences when others are not respected is during the Civil Rights Movement. During that time, African Americans were able to gain more freedoms, but had to resort to physical violence sometimes because some did not respect their freedoms.
Being a respectful and caring citizen can also include something as simple as stopping to pick up a piece of litter rather than passing it by. Respect and care are both things that everyone hopes to receive, but it is just as rewarding to be the one giving it.
Being a good citizen also includes showing patriotism and loyalty. When one sticks by the country and their word, especially during hard times, you know that you can count on them. These are the people who are more concerned about others than themselves. That type of person is the kind that forms the backbone of our society today. With loyalty and concern, we know that there will always be a support system waiting to catch us if we fall. Learning the power and importance of loyalty and patriotism, I have become more humbled by my freedoms and hopefully it does the same for others.
The final ingredient to being a good citizen is being responsible. Knowing the difference between right and wrong, and choosing the right path allows us to grow and make better decisions for ourselves and others. If more and more people strive to be responsible more often, I feel our society will be a better place. A perfect example of this relates to many people my age – and that is drinking underage. Many people know that it is wrong but still do it anyways. If teens could resist this temptation, more and more lives could be saved, of all ages. It is our responsibility to want to better ourselves and our community, and therefore make ourselves into what is considered a good citizen.
Overall, there are an endless amount of qualities that make a good citizen, but I feel that respect, care, loyalty, patriotism, and responsibility are the most important. We should all strive to achieve this title because it will make our world and the worlds of our children better and better.
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Our American Heritage and Our Responsibility for Preserving It
2009 Good Citizens Award Recipient – Julie Laven
Shelton High School
As a young girl growing up, my mom often told me about our family history. Her great grandparents came to America from Ireland at the height of the potato famine. I was intrigued by the story and asked if that is how everyone came to America. My mom just laughed and told me that everyone’s family has a different story. Confused, I then asked her how everyone knew to come to America. After explaining how those escaping religious prosecution came to the new world is search of a better life, I thought, “is everyone who comes to America in search of something better?”
This question continued to arise each year at Heritage Day at Long Hill School, and the answer was always “yes”. I began to realize that although no two people came to America for the same reason or in the same way, everyone came to the land of opportunity for a better life. I believe that this is our American Heritage. Our founding fathers, along with many other men and women fought for the values and freedoms we know in America. Without the help of George Washington, John Adams and others, the United States of America would not have been able to develop.
At the end of my freshman year of high school, my family took a vacation to Washington D.C. It was so exciting to see much of history unchanged since the late 1700’s. My favorite museum was the Smithsonian – it was like taking a time machine to the beginning of the United States. The first American flag was being restored while I was at the museum. It was great to see our very first flag still radiating freedom. This trip to the Smithsonian showed me that although we all have different histories and stories, we all have roots in the United States because it is the place we call home.
As citizens of the United States, it is our duty to protect our American Heritage. There are many ways to do this – support our troops, even if you don’t agree with the reason. These young and brave men and women are putting their lives on the line so that you have the choice to support your own beliefs. By protecting our heritage, we ensure that generations to come will have the same wonderful freedoms we do now.
After seeing the beautiful artifacts at the Smithsonian, it is also our responsibility to protect these pieces of history so that they can continue to inspire those who visit the museum later.
Now that I am much older, I still look back at the days when I would ask my mom about our family history. Each person here has something different to contribute, yet we are all able to appreciate the said foundation for a strong country that was set up by those first brave immigrants and our founding fathers.
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Our American Heritage and Our Responsibility for Preserving It
2008 Good Citizens Award Recipient Adam Cleri – Shelton High School
Essay Placement 2nd in Connecticut State
After leaving the Constitutional Convention, a lady asked Franklin, “Doctor, do we have a republic or a monarchy? To which the delegate replied, “A republic if you can keep it”. Although no longer the precarious infant of the founding fathers age, America’s existence depends on the upholding of its heritage of democracy, responsive government and progress to better the people.
America was the baby born of enlightened ideas for a representative government, and America’s standing today shows the results. Democratic nations do not make war with one another; do not turn inward and hide from the world; and do not cling onto tradition for longer than is good and necessary. The United States’ ability to revive quickly after both a revolt and civil war and then to become an economic, militaristic and political superpower is because the people are actively telling the government what the nation needs.
Just as important as this cry of the people is someone on the other end who listens and responds, wanting to better not only the nation, but the people of the nation: both America and Americans. When James Madison asked congress to declare war on Britain in 1812, New England threatened to secede rather than fight their trade partners. The indecisiveness of politicians and presidents four decades later led to a secession that was really fulfilled. From there however, what was once a predominantly Christian nation displayed “Christian Charity” as Ernest Thayer calls it, from Lincoln’s ability to ease a nation divided to Wilson’s call to defend democracy. Indeed of all the reasons that historians disavow Buchanan and that the United States cried for Nixon’s impeachment, the underlying theme was their deafness to how the people expected them to act and promote domestic tranquility.
The third pillar of our heritage is that all people “have certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” All of these require a nation that promotes progress by promoting freedom and a sense of responsibility. The success of the most praised of leaders, from Elizabeth I to Jefferson to TR, is attributed not to their direct acts but rather their ability to create stable and active states. It is nothing less than America’s structured freedom that allowed us, not the Germans, to have Einstein and allowed us to breed the likes of Edison, Fitzgerald and Audubon.
Such is our American Heritage, but how can that become our present and future? The ether, the alpha and omega, the elixir is the people. The Constitution is nothing if we do not support it; the American’s Creed is waste if we do not live it. It is the duty of all of us, to ourselves and our nation to study, to question, to learn and to apply all that we can to both solve and prevent problems. America is great only if to it we sincerely pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
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2008 Winners
Shelton High School – Adam Cleri
Click here to read Adam's essay, Connecticut State 2nd place award recipient
Derby High School - Kimberly Rogers
2007 Winners
Shelton High School – Christina Bastarache
Derby High School – Andrew Mark Bisacci
2006 Winners
Shelton High School – Casper Yi
Derby High School – Danielle Ezzo
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