2006 R. Kelly Bryant R. Kelly Bryant is living history. He is a member of White Rock Baptist and was baptized on August 30, 1925. He is the great-grandson of Margaret (Maggie) Ruffin Faucette, founder of White Rock in 1866; and he served as Trustee from 1945-2000. He knows African American economic development in Durham. He came to the Bull City in 1941 as an accountant at Mutual Savings and Loan Association (now Mutual Community Savings Bank). In 1944, he was appointed Chief Clerk, Ordinary Department, North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company (Home Office) and was Assistant Secretary, Manager, and Conservation Department from 1965 until his retirement in 1981.

Bryant made historic contributions in seeking equality of economic opportunity and access to education. He was Secretary-Treasurer of the Black Solidarity Committee for Community Improvement in 1968, fighting against limited downtown employment, public housing problems, educational needs, unequal representation on boards, and many other concerns. The campaign included a successful selective buying campaign [boycott] and Black Christmas parade.

Bryant is a collector of documentary resources and a public historian. He collects autographs of African Americans who are icons in American history, education, and culture: Frederick Douglas, Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson, James Weldon Johnson, Mary McCloud Bethune, Jackie Robinson, Mordecia W. Johnson, George Washington Carver, Matthew Henson, W. E. B. DuBois, Jesse Owens, and some 200 or more other notable blacks in music, sports, entertainment, politics, business, education, literature, etc.

He is chronicling his own family’s history by collecting family pictures (over 2,000 dating back to 1888) and collecting files on outstanding events, occasions and efforts.

Currently, Bryant is doing research, writing, and speaking in the Durham community on historical events in Hayti Durham, Parrish Street's "Black Wall Street," civil rights, business organizations, family histories, historic African American cemeteries and records, and other topics that support education, economics, and cultural arts.

R. Kelly Bryant advocates historic preservation as a vital element in Durham’s educational, economic, cultural, and recreational development. He continues to provide critical historic information and guidance in Durham’s African American economic and cultural development by serving on the Parrish Street Advocacy Group (PSAG) and is a member of the PSAG Executive Committee and History Committee.

Sanford lives at Fairntosh Farm, an historic landmark he has carefully restored. Once the center of the Cameron Plantation, one of the largest plantations in the South before the Civil War, the complex includes a fine antebellum house and many dependencies incuding a kitchen, dairy, smokehouse, commissary, servant's dwelling, school, teacherage, and overseer's house. Fairntosh is operated as an equestrian center and beef cattle facility with a breeding herd of Belted Galloways. Sanford also was intrumental in preserving the slave cabins at Horton Grove at the Stagville State Historic Site and parts of the ancient Indian Trading Path that cut across his Treyburn development in northern Durham County.

Current projects include restoration of the Old Salem Chapel at Fairntosh, and the development of Station 9, the first high-density "transit village" designed for the upcoming Triangle Transit Authority light rail system.

2004 Florence Blakeley Former Preservation Durham President Eugene Brown presented the Bartlett Durham Award to Ms. Blakeley with these words: Organizations such as this don't just happen. It takes the time, takent, and dedication of many individual volunteers such as Florence Blakeley for them to really work. There's an old saying: To succeed, volunteer orgainzations need work horses and not show horses. In this case, our recipent is truly a Triple Crown Winner. And even today, in her retirement years, she continues to run the good race.

Florence Blakeley's involvement in our ogranization is legendary. She is a charter member, has served as Vice President, Secretary, and long-time Board Member. But perhaps the most fun she had as a volunteer was for a period of four or five years when she and I were co-editors of our award-winning Historic Preservation magazine. It was a labor, but it was a labor of love.

History is often made by accident. By historic accident, Florence heard about a reference librarian job at an up and coming university named for some tobacco magnate. The year was 1948 and she thought she would stay perhaps for a year or two. The rest is history: she stayed at Duke for 38 years! Duke University also honored Florence Blakeley at their Founder's Day convocation last fall with their Humanitarian Service Award.

Florence finally retired and moved to Croasdaile Village where she would walk by an empty room designated to be a library. She couldn't resist and 3,000 books and 1,000 video tapes later a library was born. The entire Durham Community has been blessed with the lasting and meaningful involvement of Florence Blakeley. And so has our organization. It is in this spirit and with great pleasure and gratitude that we present our 2004 Bartlett Durham Award to Florence Blakeley.

2003 Pat Coman Pat Helms Coman is a charter member of Preservation Durham and has served as Recording Secretary, President-Elect, and Second Vice President. In 1981-1982 she was Preservation Durham's seventh President. She has served on and chaired numerous committees, including Arrangements, Nominating, and Publicity. Her talents as "Bus Tour Hostess" are legend! As Chairman of the Board from 1984-1985, she chaired Preservation Durham's effort to save the historic Blacknall House from demolition and the 350-ton brick house was successfully moved out of the path of the Durham Freeway.

Mrs. Coman is a charter member and former President of the Stagville Associates. She and her husband Bill, a previous Bartlett Durham Award winner, founded the History Room at Duke Memorial United Methodist Church and worked to list the church on the National Register of Historic Places.

During a lifetime devoted to community service, Pat Coman has also been involved with the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Durham Choral Society, and the Durham Council of Garden Clubs.

2000 Frank Depasquale The Bartlett Durham Award was bestowed on Frank DePasquale at HPSD's 2000 Fall Gala.

DePasquale has been an architect in Durham since 1951, advocating the adaptive reuse of old structures and creating significant new works of his own. A charter member of Preservation Durham, he was President from 1992-1994 and has served several terms on the Board of Directors and a number of key committees. He has also served on the boards of many other local organizations concerned with preservation including the Historic District Commission of Durham; North Carolina Central Foundation and Museum; the Chamber of Commerce; Durham Council of Architects; the NC Museum of Life and Science; Durham Arts Council; and Durham Central Park.

"The preservation of architecture is an important expression of the history of our forefathers and the way that they lived. It is a teaching tool and stepping stone of knowledge into the future for those not living today, but for future generations to use to improve the quality of life for all," says DePasquale.

JIM WISE REMEMBERS FRANK DEPASQUALE

Frank Albert DePasquale was a passionate guy. Passionate about his family, about his faith, about his work and his art and about Durham, his adopted home town. Those lucky enough to know him couldn't help but be infected with Frank's passions; that's one of the myriad of legacies he left with us when he passed away Dec. 9, 2010, at the age of 85.

Some of Frank's legacies are all around us, literally, in the homes, schools, churches, offices and civic buildings he designed and helped preserve. The Hayti Heritage Center, Hill Pavilion, Avila Retreat Center, a score of school buildings, Grace Lutheran and Frank's own St. Luke's Episcopal churches evidence his skill and visionary style; and though he was a modernist as an architect, Frank showed his reverence for tradition with invaluable professional and inspirational passion he brought to restoring, preserving and adapting the Carolina Theatre, Durham Arts Council Building, an old science building at Duke University that he turned into a showcase art museum and more. He was a founding member of the Historic Preservation Society, now Preservation Durham, and a live-wire downtown tour guide who reveled in showing off one gem and then another that left his audience feeling honored they'd been brought in on somethings special.

But Frank's life is distinguished by more than bricks, mortar, steel and glass. For many, many of us, his loss is a personal thing. Frank's warmth, generosity and sheer kindness drew people to him. He was always ready to share his knowledge, hospitality, opinions -- and he had them -- wisdom and time. For anyone with an interest in architecture or art or Christian iconography or the City of Durham, Frank was a font of information and inspiration and a ready mentor. He's already missed. Just knowing he's no longer there to answer a question, share a thought or hear a joke is a dark empty space in our lives. Knowing he left so much of himself with and in us -- wit, wisdom, humor, joy and reverence for the world around us -- goes a lot way toward making that space full again.