NCTC names Ross Volunteer of Year

Sherman Ross, left, with NCTC Director Jay Slack Photo by Rachel E. Molenda/USFWS
Shepherdstown resident Sherman Ross was recognized at the National Conservation Training Center on May 20 as “Volunteer of the Year” for 2008, in recognition of his four years of service to the campus Conservation Library. The presentation was made by NCTC Director Jay Slack and librarian Anne Post Roy.
Ross also was cited for providing translation and narration assistance that aided in the production of a new U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service visitor center DVD for Missisquoi National Wildlife Refuge in Vermont. His fluency and expertise in the French language enabled NCTC’s video production division to
record the product in a second language, enabling the northern refuge the opportunity to expand its outreach to visiting French Canadians. Production of video products for America’s 544 national wildlife refuges is an added responsibility of the Shepherdstown training campus.
A former employee the U.S. Information Agency, Ross, 84, was stationed in a variety of foreign countries Algiers, Cameroon, Dahomey/Benin, Ivory Coast, and Pakistan as a Foreign Service worker and English teacher.
“We discovered when we needed help with French that the talent existed right here in our midst, among our loyal and dedicated group of regular volunteers,” says David Klinger, chief of NCTC’s media resources branch. “That’s the thing about Shepherdstown and the people in this unique community the depth of talent and knowledge that they bring to their assignments here, based upon amazing careers that have spanned the world. Sherman Ross provided both the words and the voice when we needed them most.”
In his weekly service to NCTC’s Conservation Library, Ross maintains interlibrary loan statistics for its document retrieval services to other Fish and Wildlife Service offices and programs around the Nation.
Ross and his wife, Elinor, are residents of Shepherd Grade Road and neighbors to NCTC.