In 2021 We Honor Dick Somer and Walter Hoffman.

See our previous award winners

Dick Somer

This year we recognize Dick Somer for his amazing commitment to serving the congregation and caring for our buildings with a watchful eye to make them more energy efficient, safe, and beautiful. Dick says that his environmental passion evolved from his scouting years, his love of photographing trees and plants, and camping in the Sierra Nevada with his sons.

But Dick has spent his lifetime as an environmental activist. After witnessing the overpopulation of deer when the Sierra Club removed the wild cats from the national forests in California, as well as the wildfires and the need for reforestation, Dick began to see nature as a complex ecosystem. He became a member of the Nature Conservancy and then the Audubon Society in Stockton, CA., and chaired a committee to build a non-motorized trail from the Sierra Nevada summits to San Francisco Bay. The result became the 100-mile Mokelumne Coast to Crest Trail. During that time he also began collecting seeds of native liles, irises, and trees for botanical gardens and a reforestation project of the local land trust.

Dick and his wife Natalie joined our church in 2005, before they actually relocated from California. They became members of the Environmental Action group in 2007, when Dick also became co-chair of Buildings and Grounds and served for three years, including March 2009 when the Board created a first $6000 energy efficiency fund. Dick faithfully oversaw the congregation’s first and second rounds of energy saving improvements that the Green Sanctuary Task Force had recommended in order for us to qualify for Green Sanctuary accreditation by the UUA.

Dick was a trusted friend of Glenn Short, another founder of the Environmental Action group and Task Force member, and when Glenn was dying, he helped Glenn create the Glenn R. Short Endowment Fund of over $287,000 which Glenn gifted to the church to renovate the sanctuary, in and out. During the last year, while the pandemic raged, as a trustee of the Endowment Fund, Dick worked with Sally Taylor and Don Landis and with the contractors to assure that Glenn’s intentions of making our sanctuary greener were fulfilled. Well done, Dick! You are the definition of a “good and faithful servant!” We are happy to honor you today as a UU Charlottesville Minister for Earth and Eco-Hero, 2021.

Walter Hoffman

What would our church be without our beautiful grounds? Our second Eco-Hero 2021 says that the grounds are his church and where he finds peace. For the past nine years, Walter Hoffman has watched over our grounds lovingly, nearly every day walking here and working in “his” gardens behind Summit House. For Walter, working in the garden is a spiritual activity and a way to contribute to our congregation.

Walter was raised on a 20-acre farm in Madison County where his father worked for Southern States and his mother taught in an elementary school. They had four large gardens where all of the food for Walter and his six siblings was grown.

When Walter joined the church eight years ago, he worked with Sallie Kate Park, a member of the Green Sanctuary Task Force, to create a number of raised vegetable beds, and he happily gives away the produce he grows to church members. He amended the soil and built the fences around the beds to keep out the many critters that live with us even in the city. He reports that our gardens have been visited by deer, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, foxes, skunks, hawks, and his wiliest foes, three woodchucks. About five years ago Walter and Jim Souder dug and prepared the wildflower bed in Summit front yard and planted native plants.

As a daily keeper of the gardens, Walter has become a well-known member of the neighborhood. Recently he became the Chair of Grounds, working with the Gardens and Grounds Team on cleaning up our property. The UU team of grounds volunteers spent days cutting back the bamboo along our Edgewood Lane parking lot and cutting out underbrush along the side of the Summit House property, only to discover that daffodils are blooming there again. The neighbors have told him how grateful they are for the improved appearance of our campus.

For about six years Walter helped each month with the church food bank, the soup kitchen, the yard sale, the elder dinner, PACEM, as a church usher, kitchen worker, and making coffee each Sunday at the Haven. In 2018 he lost his voice due to surgery, so stopped many of these “fun things.” Walter worked at the yard sale in 2018 even though he was unable to speak.

We honor Walter for his devotion to our congregation and our grounds, where you are a true “Minister for the Earth.” Thank you so much for your service. You have made our church home more welcoming, more bountiful, and more GREEN. We are proud to name you a UU Charlottesville Minister for Earth and Eco-Hero, 2021.