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Doreen Mason

Doreen Mason is presented the award by Stan Smith
Doreen Mason is presented the award by Stan Smith

The Community Award for 2016 was presented to Doreen Mason in appreciation for the valuable support to the community of Crich and its surrounding area for over eighty years. The presentation was made in the Smith Memorial Hall, Wingfield Park by Stan Smith who has known Doreen for about seventy years. In his presentation Stan spoke about her service to the community after the service led by Diana Marshall (née Lynam) –

  • A Sunday School teacher at Mount Tabor Chapel Crich for approximately forty-five years.
  • Played the organ at Mount Tabor until it closed after service on Easter Day 1983.
  • Spent the last thirty years supporting other local chapels, playing regularly at the Congregational Chapel at Fritchley, the Smith Memorial Hall in Wingfield Park and frequently deputising as organist at St. Mary’s Church Crich.
  • Walter Glossop, who was the organist and choir master at Crich church for many years, taught Doreen to play the organ as a teenager. She would have her lessons on the church organ at Crich on Friday evenings before choir practice.
  • She became the accompanist for the Richard Johnson and Nephew Male Voice Choir, a position she held for forty years until the demise of the group in January this year. This duty involved practices every week and up to twenty-five concerts per year.
  • Always displayed a willingness to assist and support various organisations in the area. She accompanied the Crich cubs in their act at the concert given by the cubs, brownies, scouts, guides and venture scouts at the opening of the Scout Hut in June 1967.
  • Although her main interest has always been in music she has also supported the community in other ways. She was secretary of the Crich Evergreens from 1953 until its closure in about 2010.

If you consider someone worthy of receiving the Community Award because their voluntary activities in the parish, please let us have your suggestion.