Service award winners named
Two shocked but deserving residents were notified on Friday that they will receive the Butler County Distinguished Service Award at a May 1 dinner at the Butler Country Club.
The winner of the senior award is Audray Muscatello Yost, who was nominated by Lisa Nicholas Konesni, while the junior Distinguished Award winner is Jordan Grady, who was nominated by Kenny Bonus. The award sponsors are the Rotary Club of Butler and the Butler Eagle.
Yost, 70, has served on the Golden Tornado Scholastic Foundation's board of directors since 2004 and is the current president. She started the Dangerous Stranger program in the Butler School District's elementary buildings, an initiative on which she spent more than 500 volunteer hours.
She spearheaded the Tuff Tornado Run event in the fall of 2018, which raised $15,380 for creative teaching grants, technology upgrades, and the weekend backpack food program in the Butler School District.
Yost taught for 23 years in the district before retiring, and was one of three finalists in the “volunteers” category in this year's United Way “Champions of Learning” awards program.
She co-founded the district's Weekend Backpack program in 2015, which stuffs 350 backpacks with food for the district's at-risk students. Yost spends hours working with a handful of other volunteers to pack the food bags each week.
Yost has served on the Butler Health System Crystal Ball committee and the county Humane Society's Fur Ball committee since 2012, the Alliance for Children's summer barbecue and bowling event committees for the past four years, and provided bags for the Meals on Wheels annual golf outing since 2012.
“She is a leader, inspiring others to roll up their sleeves and pitch in through her own boundless energy and commitment to whatever need or project is at hand,” Konesni wrote in her nomination letter.Yost said Konesni and two others showed up at her door on Friday morning to notify her that she had won the Distinguished Service Award and present her with a cake, flowers and a bottle of wine.She admitted she shed a few tears when she was told she had won the award, but insists the honor is not the impetus for her volunteer work.“I was blown away,” Yost said. “There are so many wonderful volunteers out there and I work with them every day, so to get this award is really special.”Grady, 24, spends hundreds of hours engaged in volunteer work in addition to his employment as project coordinator at Alliance for Nonprofit Resources.He is the vice president of the Butler AM Rotary as well as the chairman of the Rotary's membership committee. As such, Grady was co-chairman of the Ghost and Giggles event and the vendor relations committee for the Carved in Ice Festival.He is active in the county's Chamber of Commerce, Young Professionals and Youth Leadership groups. He is co-chairman of the Young Professionals organization.Grady, who lives in Slippery Rock, also was co-chairman of a golf outing cancer fundraiser in his hometown in West Virginia. His mother and aunt are cancer survivors.He was also a volunteer with Kids Day America as a young student.“Jordan's involvement in any project or nonprofit brings great energy and enthusiasm to the effort,” Bonus wrote in his nomination letter. “It can usually be guaranteed that if Jordan is involved with a project, it will be wildly successful through his hard work and motivation.”Grady said he was raised from a young age to contribute to his community, and that goal has only grown stronger as he has aged.“I look forward to continuing my involvement in this community,” Grady said. “I'm pretty much speechless about the award, but very thankful.”
