1983 - Eloise Tressel
GRINDSTONE AWARD
1983

 

Eloise
Tressel
Hard working, energetic, dedicated, fair-minded, community-spirited - all good adjectives, but barely adequate to describe the eighteenth winner of the Grindstone Award, Eloise Tressel. For she has set a record for action in the public good which will long be remembered by the many whose lives she has touched.

Eloise was born in Cleveland, but was educated in Ada, Ohio, where she was a classmate of a young man named Lee Tressel, who later became her husband. She attended Ohio State University and received an RN degree from St. Luke's School of Nursing. After helping husband Lee receive his doctorate and their three sons, Dick, Dave and Jim their undergraduate degrees, Eloise went back to school to earn her BA at Baldwin-Wallace in 1972.

After the Tressels came to Berea in 1958, Eloise quickly became involved in activities which related to just about every facet of life in Berea. She has served as PTA president, Berea High School Boosters Club president, active member of A.F.S., chairperson of the Berea Health Fund, President of the Baldwin-Wallace Women's Club, President of the Faculty Women's Club, an early volunteer for the Berea chapter of FISH, a board member of the Berea United Church of Christ and a member of the Advisory Committee to the Berea Board of Education, Berea Historical Society and Alpha Phi service sorority. Currently, she serves on the board of the Cleveland chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

All the while, she never missed a game of husband-coach Lee's B-W football teams in the 23 years at B-W before his death in 1991. Eloise became a sort of unofficial "team mother" to the football team, even starting to sew players' names on their jerseys in 1974, a volunteer activity which she has headed ever since.

Since 1971, Eloise has been an Administrative Assistant in Education at Bald win- Wallace. Her continuing interest in B-W sports and the young athletes who play them resulted in another very special project - the development of the athletic archives for the college. Housed at present in Watts Athletic Center on the campus, the archives now contain many of Lee's mementos and trophies, lovingly added by Eloise.

Unstinting volunteer, humanitarian and civil servant are words that come to mind loud and clear when one thinks of Eloise Tressel. Fortunately for Berea, her own actions have spoken the loudest of all.
Presented March 29, 1984 Baldwin-Wallace College Union