EVERETT — William Vincent dropped by the Sno-Isle TECH Skills Center in south Everett on Monday to visit students and the career center.
All the staff and many of the students know him. Vincent, 87, runs the Everett Elks lodge’s scholarship programs.
For more academically inclined students in local schools, the Elks offer their “Most Valuable Student” scholarships. But at Sno-Isle, which instructs students from most school districts in Snohomish County in a variety of trade skills, there’s also the Elks’ Vocational Grant program, which provides up to $1,000 for students who go on to a trade school or similar program at a community college, or even in some cases to buy equipment for a career.
During the application season, Vincent, who also has been active in the Lynnwood Kiwanis, shows up almost weekly at Sno-Isle to guide kids through the application process and give them feedback, said Theresa Hausmann, the counselor in the school’s career center.
“We need 100 more like Bill,” Hausmann said, while Vincent was chatting with students in the culinary program. The students were having a “skills day,” practicing techniques to make a perfect velouté sauce.
“He’s really invested with the kids to get them through that process,” she said.
Old-school service organizations like the Elks are pretty much synonymous for charitable work in their communities.
For those people to go beyond the proverbial call of duty, the Lynnwood Elks lodge reserves its MacArthur Award, which is named after the late General Douglas MacArthur.
Once a year the Lynnwood lodge selects one person, whether or not that person were an Elk, who, in the words of the award, “exemplifies Americanism so cherished by the late general.”
This year, the 50th the award has been given out, it went to Bill Vincent.
“Bill Vincent is an outstanding person,” said Doug Shultes, a former Exalted Ruler of the Lynnwood lodge who helped select the award winner.
“His (military) service was part of it, but after he got out of the service during the Korean War, he did so much community service with the Kiwanis, with the Elks,” Shultes said.
Vincent served in the Navy aboard the USS Eldorado from 1948-1952, and took part in the second wave of the invasion of Inchon in 1950.
After his service, he worked a variety of jobs, including as a lightkeeper on Saturna Island, B.C., and as a caddy at the Everett Golf and Country Club, before he went to work for Transamerica Title Insurance Co. He stayed with the company until his retirement in 1991.
He joined the Lynnwood Kiwanis in 1978 and the Everett Elks in 1983. He started volunteering at Sno-Isle a few years later.
“It’s one of the best kept secrets in Snohomish County, in my book,” Vincent said.
In the 1990s, he was also involved in the building of Kiwanis House, a home for teenage mothers and their children that was eventually transferred over to Volunteers of America.
He’s most proud of his work with the “Tall Elks” program, a statewide program launched in 1954 which provides free therapy for children with developmental disabilities in families with limited means.
“The most important thing, in my eye, is the education the parents get from the therapist,” Vincent said.
The program now has 15 therapists statewide making home visits to about 25 clients each, and as administrator of the program locally, Vincent has worked with the same therapist covering Snohomish County for 23 years.
“It’s more important to me than anything,” he said.
Chris Winters: 425-374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.
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