Dee Rowland honored with Lifetime Achievement Award

Intermountain Catholic

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SALT LAKE CITY — Dee Rowland, who served 26 years as the Diocese of Salt Lake City's government liaison, before retiring in April, was presented with the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award by Voices for Utah's Children during a luncheon Sept. 29.

SALT LAKE CITY — Dee Rowland, who served 26 years as the Diocese of Salt Lake City’s government liaison, before retiring in April, was presented with the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award by Voices for Utah’s Children during a luncheon Sept. 29.

"If you ask people who know Dee, people who have stood in the hall at the State Legislature with her, people who have been at a prayer vigils on a cold night, people who have hiked with her, here is what they will tell you about Dee: Picture a person who cares actively and continuously about an incredibly broad range of community issues, a woman who has spent time with her daughters and their families, a woman who enjoys strong friendships, bursts into song easily … and who wants to be outdoors as much as possible. That’s Dee Rowland," said Voices for Utah’s Children executive director Karen Crompton before presenting the award. "She has been a persistent voice of conscious, speaking for our most vulnerable. There is no problem at any level that she sees as outside her scope of activism."

At the beginning of her acceptance speech, Rowland said she’s been quite depressed lately about the state of the world and of Utah, but she pledged not to talk about the starvation in Somalia, the evidence of global warming, or to dwell upon Utah legislators’ gerrymandering of the Congressional redistricting plan.

"Karen reminded me that this is a happy occasion, so I made an effort to search out and share some very positive things," Rowland said. Those positive things were her family: her supportive husband, John; and their daughters, who all work for non-profit organizations.

Rowland also asked her grandchildren for positive signs in their lives. Her grandson said that person at his school has come out as a homosexual but won’t be bullied, and her granddaughter said her friends all recycle and are trying to live sustainable lives.

"I think that that’s an intergenerational conversation that we ought all have," Rowland said, adding that "we should let these unfortunate situations inspire us and turn us into strong and successful advocates."

Keynote speaker Bill Bentley, president/CEO of Voices for America’s Children, the nation’s largest network of multi-issue child advocacy organizations, said Utah ranks seventh in the country on the Kids Count survey, which ranks things such as the percentage of children living in single-family homes.

However, the child poverty rate in Utah is 16 percent. "That means that 136,000 kids are living in poverty here in this beautiful state," Bentley said. "Thirty thousand more Utah kids are living in poverty today than they were just two years ago. Overall, more than one in five children lived in poverty in America last year…. We should be ashamed because we can do better. As a nation, we owe it to our kids, we owe it to their families, we owe it to the future of this country to do better."

Nevertheless, Bentley said he was hopeful about the situation because of people like Rowland and others who attended the luncheon. "In these tough times, child advocacy is more important than ever," he said. "Your voices should ring out clearly and loudly and often, as Dee Rowland and others of you have been doing for years and years and years."