A very special night: Du Quoin Chamber Banquet Wednesday
The lives of a Du Quoin mother and son who have taken the cause of young limb-different athletes to a global audience will be celebrated Wednesday when the Du Quoin Chamber of Commerce hosts its annual banquet this Wednesday, January 27 beginning at 6 p.m. Awards will be given to Citizens of the Year, Emerging Business of the Year, and Business of the Year. The evening will be hosted by chamber president Robyn Laur Russell.
Past Citizen of the Year recipient Dixie Travelstead nominated Sam and Jana Kuhnert for this year's award. They are co-founders of Nub-Ability Athletics, which hosts a summer camp for limb-different athletes in Du Quoin.
The not-for-profit Nubability Athletics has also become a national resource center for families on how to enrich the lives of these athletes.
Their work is stunning.
Event sponsors include: Banterra Bank, Chip Banks Chevrolet/Buick, City of Du Quoin, Du Quoin Nursing & Rehab Center, Du Quoin State Bank, Pepsi Mid America, SIU Small Business Development Center, and The W Restaurant & Lounge.
This year's event is themed "Red Carpet Affair," and will feature a paparazzi-lined runway with a backdrop of Sponsors and a "Dress to Impress" competition. A silent auction and a bucket auction will be held featuring a variety of prizes.
In four short years the NubAbility Athletics camp has grown from 19 campers to 219 last year.
Du Quoin is the host city and the camp is centered around the Du Quoin High School athletic facilities.
Quality begats quality as Jana and Sam have enlisted some of the nation's most celebrated limb-different people to be their camp coaches: Nikki Kelly - born with one arm, became Miss Iowa Zach Hodskins - a University of Florida basketball player born with one arm, was recently featured on ESPN and other sports and national news shows; Stephanie Decker - the mom who lost both her legs while protecting her kids in the tornado that hit Indiana a few years ago; and Barbie Thomas - the Arizona mother of two boys, who plays the piano and became a body builder, having lost both her arms at the shoulder in an electrical accident when she was two years old; Jen Bricker - a professional aerialist born in Rumania, with no legs, and given up for adoption, who later learned she is the full sister to Dominique Moceanu, Olympic Gold Medalist in Gymnastics. The list goes on.
Wednesday's presentation follows the naming of Bill Asbury, founder of the indoor girls' Olympics tournament as 2013 Citizen of the Year and Joe Davis as 2014 Citizen of the Year. The annual award was designed to celebrate selfless greatness among us and it is certainly doing that.