Former mayor and longtime Nevada City community leader Reinette Senum has been selected as the 2014 recipient of the prestigious Elza Kilroy Award for outstanding community service, Sierra Foothills Report has learned.
The Nevada City Chamber of Commerce presents the prestigious Kilroy award annually to a citizen whose efforts help make Nevada City a better community.
The Chamber’s Board of Directors selected Reinette for the award to honor her dedication and support of Nevada City.
Chamber Executive Director Cathy Whittlesey and, of course, Reinette, confirmed this “scoop.” “Reinette did win, and she is so pleased,” Whittlesey told me today. “She fits so well. She makes it happen, and it comes from her heart.” Reinette also was excited.
An official press release is forthcoming. I’m excited about this, just as I was excited to see another young adult, Paralympic Gold Medalist Evan Strong, named as the Grand Marshal in the Fourth of July parade, which you also read here first. Some pioneering young adults are helping to reshape our community, as I’ve written before.
Previous winners of the Elza Kilroy Award have included David Painter, co-owner of SPD Markets; Duane Strawser, owner of Tour of Nevada City Bicycle Shop; historian Ed Tyson; former Mayor Steve Cottrell; longtime city engineer Bill Falconi; retired City Manager Beryl Robinson and Whittlesey, among many others.
The award will be presented at the Chamber of Commerce’s 113th Annual Installation and Awards Dinner on January 31th at the Miners Foundry. The Kilroy Award is one of the several annual awards presented by the Nevada City Chamber of Commerce.
Reinette is a 1984 Nevada Union High School graduate who went on to travel widely, visiting some 50 countries, and to become the first women to walk and ski solo across Alaska. She studied film in Southern California before returning to Nevada City in 2004.
She co-founded the Alliance for a Post Petroleum Local Economy (APPLE) and Power Up-NC before being elected to a four-year term on the City Council in 2008. She served as mayor in 2010.
Reinette is a co-founder and former manager of the Nevada City Farmers Market and advocate of the Commercial Street Boardwalk, its acoustic Thursdays and Farm to Table events. She also is the winner of the 2014 Col. William H. “Bill” Lambert award.
The prestigious Lambert Award award is presented annually by the Famous Marching Presidents of Nevada City to recognize outstanding contributions to Nevada City and the Nevada City way of life. It is named in honor of the late Col. William H. Lambert, founder of Nevada City’s annual Constitution Day Parade
The Kilroy award was established in 1969.
“Elza Kilroy worked for the Nevada City Post Office for 32 years,” according to Ancestry.com. “He was greatly interested in Nevada City affairs and worked tirelessly in improving the town. Yearly he sat on the Fourth of July committee and was once a parade grand marshal.
“Kilroy spearheaded the effort to raise money to restore the old Nevada City Theatre and was on the Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital board of directors. His wife, Luvia, taught school for 32 years at Nevada City Elementary.
“A large cross on Drummond Street in Nevada City, lighted every Christmas, was erected by Elza Kilroy in 1932. It is still illuminated each year at holiday time.
“Elza Kilroy put in so much of his time and energy to make Nevada City and Nevada County a better place that the Elza Kilroy Award would eventually be established. It is given each year by the Nevada City Chamber of Commerce to a person who exhibits outstanding community service. Elza died in 1981, as full of honors and as sorely missed by the community he served as had been his father.”
Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report 
Congratulations to Reinette for a well deserved honor.
This post has generated 60 “likes” so far on the “Nevada County Peeps” page in Facebook. The internet is changing how we communicate.
Couldn’t have gone to a more deserving person. Reinette rocks! I truly hope that she will run for Supervisor in 2016!!