Unsung heroines get their due at Rotary
Community service awards for Irene and Joyce
Pitlochry Rotary recently rewarded the efforts of two valuable ladies in the community.
The club presented two community service awards to the pair who are considered the area’s unsung heroines.
Irene Jones was nominated mainly because of her 30 year association with Ballinluig Association Football Club, helping to raise funds, cleaning strips – sometimes three times a week – darning socks, and cleaning the changing rooms.
Irene keeps on top of financial as well as practical matters by also being treasurer for the football club.
Her work as an enthusiastic member of the Mid-Atholl Community Hall Committee was also saluted.
Irene has devoted herself to raising money for charities big and small, pushing local quizzes and selling raffle tickets. She sends her knitted scarves to Malawi where, with temperatures dropping, the woollen items are an essential piece of clothing.
The second community service award, meanwhile, went to Joyce Bruce of Pitlochry.
Joyce lives and works in the Highland Perthshire town and also looks after her young son but does much more, which often
Pitlochry Rotary president John Uytman, left, presents a community service award to Joyce Bruce. Also pictured is Dougal Spaven
Rotarian Clive Bridges presents the community service award to Irene Jones for 30 years of working with the Ballinluig Football Association goes unrecognised by most local residents.
Irene’s main contribution to the community is through the very popular ‘Pitlochry: Down Memory Lane’ Facebook page and also her interest in genealogy, which enables her to help many local people with family trees and history.
She also assists in tracing missing relatives and will never take any payment.
In one instance she was able to trace the missing mother of one local man, who had been unsuccessfully researching for years, taking just three days to track the person down.
She also went out of her way to look after a 92-year-old nonrelative who needed immediate help when neither the police or ambulance service were available.
When the sick person passed away, kind Joyce made all the arrangements with an undertaker for the absent family.