The Boal Awards for Community Service and for Historic Preservation were presented at Memorial Day festivities at the Boal Mansion Museum on May 26. A Boal Award for Education was withheld pending contacts with a local school district.

          The Ambassador Pierre Boal Award for Historic Preservation, named after the sixth generation Boal who began the museum operation at the Boal Estate in 1952 and dedicated the last fifteen years of his life to preserving the museum collection was awarded to the board and volunteers of the Rock Hill School of Linden Hall for their persistent efforts to preserve this important  historical asset of Harris Township and for their detailed research into the history of the entire Linden Hall community.      

The Colonel Theodore Davis Boal Community Service Award in honor of the fifth generation of the Boal family who founded the Boal Troop and the 28th Division Shrine as well as the Boalsburg Fire, Electric, Water, Telephone and Bus Companies was awarded to Dr. Andrew Jackson Sr. for his community service, both as an academic adviser and counselor in Penn State’s College of Education, and as Secretary/Treasurer and then President of the American Federation of Musicians Local 660, and for generously sharing his talent and even his musical venues to encourage people of all ages and cultures to reach their potential.

The Judge George Boal Education Award, named after the third generation of the Boal family, one of the founders of public education in Pennsylvania and of Penn State University, was not awarded, pending Museum efforts to integrate the resources of Museum with the State College Area School District, which currently does not use the internationally-recognized Columbus Chapel and Boal Mansion Museum.

Lee noted and said the Museum is offering local Social Studies teachers a recently completed school unit plan designed to fit into school curricula which satisfies many of the History Standards of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

“We hope local educators will come to realize that they can show their students Spain just five minutes away from State College by visiting the Columbus Chapel in Boalsburg,” said Lee. He also noted a Federal assessment of the Museum that has declared “the generations of the Boal family who have occupied the estate evoke an understanding of time and of many of the themes that dominate the study of American history”