Mayor recognizes five residents for outstanding service to the community

Sidney appreciates its citizens who go the extra mile.

At Tuesday's city council meeting, mayor Wendall Gaston presented citizenship awards to five deserving Sidney residents.

"When I go across the state I tell people that what makes Sidney special is its citizens," Gaston said. "So I thought this year I would present a few awards."

There were no specific criteria for the awards. Instead Gaston recognized that these people had accomplished something positive for the community, often difficult to quantify. He selected five people from his original list of around 15, all five of whom who came to Tuesday's city council meeting to receive the awards.

"I just wanted to, it being the holidays just thank some people for doing exceptional things and that's really the whole basis of this," Gaston said.

His first selection were two sisters, Camille and Elsa Highby.

"These two girls set up a lemonade stand, pretty much like I did when I was little-except I spent most of my money on baseball cards," Gaston said.

These girls could have bought ice cream or go to the movies with their money, but they instead decided to donate the proceeds to the Night of Hope cancer walk, Gaston explained.

"We lost one of our really good citizens, Jan Lawler to cancer this year," Gaston said. "So I thought it was exceptional that you two girls chose to set up and do all the work for a lemonade stand."

He thanked them for being good citizens and an example of the kind of people who live in Sidney. Gaston encouraged citizens to stop by the girls' stand if they set one up again next year.

The next award was presented to John Bahr.

"John has been to numerous council meetings over the past," Gaston said. "And has outlined some of the challenges that the physically challenged members of our community had getting around downtown and other parts of our community."

Bahr's input made a difference in the downtown improvement district to insure others with physical disabilities could get around more easily, Gaston added. Bahr also helped to organize a fishing event at the park for disabled persons. Bahr took it upon himself to obtain gifts and prizes for those participating in the event and got fishing equipment for the festivities from Cabela's.

"I thought for going up and out of his way, it's the kind of quality of citizens we have in Sidney," Gaston said.

Nyla Hobson, who is active in the church as well as many other groups around town was the next recipient. Gaston has encountered many newcomers to Sidney who said Hobson's tour of the town was a big help. Not only does she show new residents the school system and restaurants, but she also makes sure they know where the post office is located and where they can pay their taxes.

"I think everyday promotion of Sidney is what's an example of our citizens in town," Gaston said. "And I think Nyla is one of those people."

Larry Nelson was the mayor's last award winner.

Nelson has done many interviews with former military personnel which he recorded and sent to the Library of Congress, as well as publishing them in the paper.

"It showed the experiences these veterans had had," Gaston said. "In some cases it was the first time in decades that these veterans had talked about the events they participated in during the war."

Nelson also assisted some of the veterans in obtaining medals they'd lost or medals and awards they had earned but hadn't received. Nelson has a mission to obtain uniforms from each branch of service for each war period. So far, Nelson has collected 60 uniforms. Those uniforms were displayed in the windows of downtown businesses during Veterans Day for the past two years.

"I just thought that Larry was always making sure that the forgotten were not forgotten," Gaston said.

Gaston decided to give out the awards because he thought it was important to promote not just the city of Sidney, but its people as well.

Councilman Roger Gallaway thanked the recipients.

"They were all certainly excellent choices and all deserving of the honor," Gallaway said.

Councilman Joe Arterburn also extended his congratulations to the winners and thanked the citizens and the mayor for setting a good example for the community.

Gaston knows some people might wonder why he didn't select others for the awards. He admitted that it was a tough choice because there are so many outstanding citizens in the community.

"We have a lot of good people in town who do many things every day," Gaston said.