The Distinguished Service Award, the briefer name by which it was formerly known, was renamed in honor of Dr. Mario D. Zamora, who was Professor of Anthropology at the College of William and Mary until his untimely death in August 1993. Born in Pampanga, Philippines, Dr. Zamora earned his doctorate in anthropology at Cornell University with top honors. He returned to the Philippines for some years before joining the faculty at William and Mary. His life was filled with honors: he was a University Scholar at the University of the Philippines, an Exchange Scholar to the Delhi School of Economics, a Fulbright/Smith Mundt Scholar to Cornell University, a Graduate Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Cornell, and one of nine Adlai Stevenson Fellows to the United Nations selected from all over the world. He published 14 books and nearly 100 articles. He served as President of the Virginia Social Science Association in 1986–1987. The Mario D. Zamora Distinguished Service Award is presented to a VSSA member who has contributed to the Association in outstanding ways over a period of years.
Prior to its renaming in 1995, a similar award had been made intermittently in the 1960s and 1970s and every year beginning in 1981. In some years between 1967 and 1987, however, it appears that the Distinguished Service Award was presented in a manner more akin to what in 1998 was reconstituted as the Public Service Award or even, as given in 2007, the Distinguished Career Award.
The first Distinguished Service Award, in 1963, was given to William E. Garnett, of Virginia Polytechnic Institute, who served as the VSSA’s very first president, in 1926–1927. Some subsequent awards also went to early VSSA presidents, including Richard L. Morton, of William and Mary (president, 1930–1931), in 1964, and Belle Boone Beard, of Sweet Briar College (president for two successive years during World War II, 1942–1944), in 1973.
Distinguished Service Award Recipients:
2007 Donald Zeigler, Old Dominion University
2004 Lea Pellett, Christopher Newport University
2001 Mary Ferrari, Radford University
1997 Bernard Levin, Blue Ridge Community College
1996 Peter Wallenstein, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
1995 Vinson H. Sutlive, The College of William and Mary
1988 Charles Lane, Longwood College
1987 Alice Andrews, George Mason University
1987 Emmanuel Peleaz, Philippine Ambassador to the USA; former Vice-President of the Philippines
1986 Annie S. Barnes, Norfolk State University
1985 Barbara Knight, George Mason University
1984 George Blume, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
1983 Weldon Cooper, University of Virginia
1982 Curtis W. Macdonald, Northern Virginia Community College
1981 Albert L. Sturm, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
1977 John Malcus Ellison, Virginia Union University
1975 Virginius Dabney, Richmond Times-Dispatch
1973 Belle Boone Beard, Sweet Briar College
1969 Robert D. Meade, Randolph-Macon College
1967 Colgate W. Darden Jr., University of Virginia
1964 Richard L. Morton, The College of William and Mary
1963 William E. Garnett, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
