The fourth annual Star of the Year Awards from the three Rotary Clubs of Gig Harbor were presented Friday during a ceremony at Canterwood Golf & Country Club. The awards recognize “extraordinary citizens” from the community and are given in coordination with the Rotary clubs of Gig Harbor, Midday and Gig Harbor North.

Honorees are nominated by someone they know for their service to their community.
This year, Rotary Club of Gig Harbor gave its Citizen of the Year Award to Jean-Louis Gazabat; Gig Harbor Midday gave its Business Person of the Year Award to Sue Braaten; and Gig Harbor North gave its Service Above Self Award to Marla Morgan.

JEAN-LOUIS GAZABAT

Gazabat has lived in Gig Harbor for 40 years, ever since he read an article about the Olympic Rainforest in National Geographic when he was a young man in Washington, D.C.

“I wanted to live in a green place,” Gazabat remembered. “And I said, ‘Wow, that looks interesting.’ So I wrote to my parents and said, ‘Well, I’ll call you.’ ”

He settled in the Northwest, where he met his wife, Terri Lynne, and raised two sons. Gazabat is a founding member of the Key Peninsula Lions Club and has been active in the Gig Harbor Lions since he moved across the bay. He also founded the Key Peninsula Credit Union and owned Shorewood Real Estate many years. He is now the president of Elkins-Gazabat Real Estate in Gig Harbor.

Gazabat is perhaps best known for his work with the Holiday Magic program for foster children. Twenty-three years ago, Gazabat reflected on his own family’s Christmas experience and started to think about the holidays for children in foster care.

“I felt there was a need,” he said. “And I felt that Christmas was lacking for me and my family, and if we started to give more, we could get some of that spirit of Christmas back.”

After lengthy discussions and approval processes with foster care agencies, the Gazabats organized toy collection from their friends and neighbors to give to foster children. The program remained small but consistent for a few years before Gazabat began to enlist the help of local organizations, including his church, Chapel Hill Presbyterian, and the Rotary Club.

The program continued and grew with the support of other groups.

A friend from church told Gazabat he’d been nominated for the Citizen of the Year award. The honor came as a big surprise.

“I got nominated and went, ‘Huh?’ ” Gazabat said. “I’m thrilled, and I’m humbled.”

SUE BRAATEN

Braaten also has a long history of service, including with other programs that help foster children. She is a 30-year resident of Gig Harbor, where she raised has four children with her husband, Ken. She’s owned and operated the Best Western Wesley Inn, which Ken built, for the past 16 years.

About a decade ago, Braaten started to notice women coming into the hotel who asked to cash checks or to use the bathroom, and they were carrying grocery bags full of clothes. She realized they had recently been released from the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Purdy, which drops off ex-inmates across the street from the hotel on Kimball Drive.

“It occurred to me that any of them could be my daughter,” Braaten remembered thinking.
She began to collect bags and purses from her employees and friends, and she filled them with supplies she thought the women might need – toiletries, clothes, phone cards. Church groups and other organizations now donate many items for the bag program, and the released women can swap their grocery bags for a purse full of needed goods.

“It gives them a real lift,” Braaten said.

She’s also involved with the Homestead at Alder Cove, a campaign to establish a safe home and adoption agency for foster children in Gig Harbor.

Braaten has been a volunteer guardian and legal representative for foster kids for more than 20 years through the Court Appointed Special Advocate organization. When Pierce County Alliance Youth Services needed a place to hold its annual Christmas party benefit, Braaten volunteered the Wesley Inn’s ballroom, and she coordinated caterers and present donations for the foster children the agency helps.

“I wanted them to feel like my kids do after Christmas,” she said.

When she was informed of her nomination for the Rotary Star Award, Braaten asked if she could use her speaking time at the celebration at Canterwood to talk about her work with CASA.

“That’s what I’m all about,” she said. “I don’t need the promotion.”

MARLA MORGAN

Morgan works as a paraeducator at Voyager Elementary and, in her spare time, she coordinates the Peninsula Hands-On Art program. It was Morgan’s brainchild six years ago, when her children were attending Harbor Heights Elementary.

“We found a need for an art program at their school,” Morgan said, so she proposed the idea to her colleagues in the Peninsula School District.

Working with organizations such as the Gig Harbor Gallery Association, which donated half of the proceeds from its “Salmonchanted Harbor” art event to provide Hands-On Art with its startup funds, the program was launched at Harbor Heights. It’s expanded every year since, and it now serves about 3,200 children at six public elementary schools, with about 250 parent volunteers.

“It’s been a real partnership, between the business community, artists’ community, and students and parents,” Morgan said.

Hands-On Art arranges training sessions every year for parent volunteers, who study a lesson from an established artist and take it into their assigned classroom. The program holds auctions and other fundraising events to purchase professional-quality art supplies, including watercolors, brushes and canvas, and they rotate between classrooms at each participating school.

Morgan, who has lived in Gig Harbor full-time for the past 11 years with her husband, Paul, and their three children, said she sees evidence of the program’s work throughout town.

“You go into people’s houses, and you see these paintings framed and on the wall,” she said. “It’s fun, and the kids love it.”

Reporter Will Livesley-O’Neill can be reached at 253-358-4152 or by email at will.livesley-oneill@gateline.com. Follow him on Twitter, @gateway_will.