Randy Kincaid Receives 2014 Algernon Sidney Sullivan Community Service Award

This award citation was read during Davidson College's 177th commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 18, 2014.

This year's community winner of the Algernon Sidney Sullivan Community Service Award is a familiar figure to everyone who walks, bikes, pauses for a conversation at the post office, or loves any of Davidson's expressions of public life. He is quick with a political opinion and unexpectedly generous in listening to our own. Indeed, if public discourse were a sporting event, he would have reached Olympian status long ago. Today, however, Davidson College honors the quieter and heretofore unacknowledged service of this very public man.

Unknown to all but a few has been his continued and unselfish attention to fellow citizens who have been sick, shut in by disability, or threatened by the depression that comes with lingering disease. He is ever available to offer transportation and an encouraging word to those who have been stranded emotionally as well as physically. He buys groceries, delivers medicines, or simply spends an hour with those who need to hear a reassuring voice. Occasionally working through his church, or sometimes simply following rumor, he puts himself where he is most needed and then steps into the background when recognition is meted out.

Long before he sought public office, he was the chief advocate for establishing enrichment programs for citizens of all ages at the Ada Jenkins Center; and as a member of our town board—and later mayor of Davidson—he brought the same values into the public forum by insisting upon racial and income inclusivity in the town's planning and calling for balance between progressive building policies and environmental preservation. Today he is a spokesperson, a conciliator, an advocate, a servant, and a friend to all who need the word "Davidson" to mean more than the sum of its parts.

For your many acts of kindness, for your unassuming dignity in trying circumstance, and for your unfaltering belief that service freely given needs no other acknowledgment, Davidson College is proud to name you—Randy Kincaid—as the recipient of this year's Algernon Sidney Sullivan Community Service Award.