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April 18, 2007 - Carpenter Michael Hughes Receives Presidential Award Honoring Thousands of Hours Devoted to Volunteer Community Service - Press Release

Date Issued: April 18, 2007

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Mike and Marlene Hughes

Michael Hughes with his wife Marlene. (Click on image to see larger version. Photo courtesy of Diana Rogers.)

Menlo Park, CA—Somebody who's racked up thousands of hours of community service has been either very bad or very good. Michael Hughes, a carpenter at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), has been very, very good. Having volunteered more than 6,000 hours of service over the past 34 years, Hughes received the President's Call to Service Award, presented Tuesday in SLAC's Kavli Auditorium by Acting Under Secretary of Energy Dennis Spurgeon. The award honors those who have given at least 4,000 hours of service in a lifetime.

Hughes' volunteer career began almost accidentally, after he enrolled in an adult education woodshop course at a local high school. "I first attended the class to work on my personal projects," he said. "Then I started helping people when they didn't know how to do things." For more than three decades he was a class mainstay, spending four hours each week assisting the teacher.

"Woodshop was always a big part of my life," he says. "It felt good to help people make their finished product."

Hughes earned more karmic points volunteering for 25 years at the annual Garlic Festival in his native Gilroy, Calif. He also volunteers for local Relay for Life chapters, for the Gilroy Police Department and for special SLAC events.

by Heather Rock Woods

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