Mayor named Peggy Allen recipient

As usual at the annual Wake Forest Community Christmas Dinner, the 69^th, Mayor Vivian Jones went to the podium while the last people were finishing their dinners and began announcing the three annual awards.

There was great applause when she named Dawn Nakash as the Citizen of the Year and warm applause when she said the Wake Forest High School Junior ROTC was the Organization of the Year.

Then she went to her table and sat down. Durward Matheny, this year’s dinner chairman, stepped to the microphone and quietly said the winner of the Peggy Allen Award was the mayor.

“They tricked me,” she said as she accepted the freeform statuette. She spoke briefly, saying she did not deserve the award because she had just been doing her job as mayor for which she is paid “all those big bucks.”

The next day Jones said she knew she had been nominated but was sure she would not win. The committee asked her if she would step aside and let someone else, a friend of the winner, announce the Peggy Allen award. Well, that was what happened.

The dinner, held on Monday at The Forks Cafeteria, was a success with a large crowd estimated at 275.

Nakash was selected from the nominees by a secret ballot vote of Community Council members. She is an active member of the Wake Forest Optimist Club; was named Club Woman of the Year for 2016 at the Wake Forest Women’s Club; is on the board of Wake Forest Downtown; volunteers as a tutor at the Wake Forest Boys & Girls Club; and was named an outstanding woman of 2016 by Emerging Women NC. She is president of Daybreak Marketing Services in town.

The organization of the year award was accepted by four young men and one young woman representing the 120 members of the Junior ROTC group along with their commanders. The group volunteers to help at several community events in town and in Rolesville, including the Purple Heart Dinner, Beach Street on White, the Wake Forest Flag Ceremony honoring deceased veterans, the Rolesville Christmas Parade, the Wake Forest Christmas Parade, football games at Wake Forest High and the Antique and Classic Car Show.