The Mount Gilead Village Council honored Garnet Cover with the Dr. Nathan Tucker award at the July meeting of the Morrow County Chamber of Commerce last Tuesday.
Mount Gilead Mayor, Mike Porter presented Cover with the award and began with humor, “to say that our 2015 Tucker Award winner never met a stranger is quite an understatement – maybe that’s because she knows just about everybody.”
Porter continued by saying that when Garnet would see a need she would jump on the bandwagon to help make things a reality. When she saw the Junior Fair Building was old and too crowded for the active 4-H program in the county, Garnet and her late husband, Howard worked with Pat and Daryl Tingley to raise funds. They hired bands and put on square dances every week at the Fairgrounds and soon the new building was a reality.
The Covers were members of the Mount Gilead Music Boosters. When Garnet saw the band uniforms were worn and old she worked with the music boosters to raise funds for new uniforms. They put on many turkey dinners with all the trimmings and soon raised thousands of dollars for uniforms. Garnet even drove to Cincinnati to pick up the new uniforms so the band could show them off for homecoming.
She was also part of that same music boosters group that served ham loaf dinners to all the festival queens who came to the Gourd Show every year.
She put aside her own life plan to go to college when Howard bought Bill’s Hardware store on South Main St. in Mount Gilead. She and Howard ran the store for 27 years and Garnet served a term on the Ohio Hardware Board. She also served on the Mount Gilead Chamber of Commerce board as president for three years.
Garnet has participated in the Susan G. Koman breast cancer parade held in Columbus. She served for ten years on the Morrow County Board of Developmental Disabilities, with two of those years as Board President. She also helped cook for the “To Dime” Spaghetti Dinners held for the MRDD held for the last six years.
Garnet and Howard served as foster parents for about a dozen children. In addition to their own daughter, Lori, they adopted two children, Mike and Heidi. Garnet is now raising two of her grandchildren, Kiona and Cody. Kiona graduated from high school this year and will be attending the Mount Vernon Nazarene College in the fall. Cody will graduate from high school next year.
Mayor Porter said the Dr. Nathan Tucker Award honors individuals each year for excellence in contributing in some way to make the village a better place to live. Citizens are awarded for volunteer work, professional achievement, or some other contribution to enrich the lives of people in the community. Dr. Tucker was an internationally recognized Mount Gilead physician, known for his asthma specific medicine.
Cover accepted the award graciously saying that she and Howard didn’t do all those things for the recognition or award. They did them to serve the community and help people. She chuckled as she mentioned that incidentally she had taken the asthma cure from Dr. Tucker when she was young. She supposed it would probably be illegal now.
Alberta Stojkovic is a correspondent with the Morrow County Sentinel and can be reached at [email protected].
