Pat Lile Receives 2008 Roots and Wings Award




An audience of hundreds attended the awards ceremony honoring Pat Lile

    On February 8, 2008, ARCF Board Chair Baxter Sharp presented the annual Benefactor "Roots and Wings" Award to retiring ARCF President/CEO Pat Lile in a ceremony at the Governor's Mansion.

This annual award was created in 1997 in order to recognize and honor those who have made significant contributions to the philanthropic sector in Arkansas. Recognition is not based upon the size and number of charitable gifts made but rather upon a longtime record of consistent generosity and a broad vision for good works, with an emphasis on statewide impact on the nonprofit sector and on Arkansans.

Indeed, Lile's many achievements demonstrate her commitment to philanthropy and service to organizations throughout the state of Arkansas. In addition to serving as president and CEO of ARCF during an 11-year period when assets grew from $15 million to over $130 million, Lile has also supported a multitude of other charitable organzations:


  • Founder and executive director of Leadership Pine Bluff from 1981- 1990
  • Founder of Pine Bluff Area Community Foundation
  • Executive Director of the Commission for Arkansas' Future, 1990-1995
  • Co-founder of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families
  • Co-founder of the Women’s Foundation of Arkansas
  • Founding board member of City Year Little Rock/North Little Rock
  • Founding board member of Arkansas Coalition for Excellence (ACE)
  • Founding member of AWLF (the Arkansas Women's Leadership Forum)
  • Leadership Greater Little Rock Alumna
  • Rotary Club of Little Rock Paul Harris Fellow
  • Board of Philander Smith College
  • Board of Just Communities of Central Arkansas (JCCA). 
  • Advisory Council of Garvan Woodland Gardens
  • Sustaining member of the Junior League of Little Rock
  • Steering committee for Leadership Arkansas
  

Incoming President/CEO Heather Larkin Eason
presents award to Pat Lile

Additionally, she has received numerous awards for her community service, including the Lugean Chilcote award for service to the Arkansas Community Foundation, the Martin Luther King Jr. Arkansas Commission Community Service Award, and Arkansas Business's "Top 100 Women of Arkansas" award (four times).

Polly Keller Winter Receives 2007 Roots and Wings Award

ARCF’s Board chair Jim Ross of Monticello presented the 2007 Arkansas Benefactor “Roots and Wings” Award to Caroline (Polly) Murphy Keller Winter at a small family gathering in Little Rock in April.  Ross noted, “Since 1997 this award each year has honored an individual or organization with a longtime record of consistent generosity and a broad vision for the philanthropic sector in Arkansas.”

“We are so pleased to honor Mrs. Winter for her decades of dedicated service to Arkansas philanthropy,” said Pat Lile, ARCF President and CEO. It seems very fitting that in our 30th anniversary celebration year we honor the individual who set up one of the first two permanent funds with our fledgling Foundation in the spring of 1977.”

Mrs. Winter was a founding Board member of ARCF.  Originally from El Dorado, Mrs. Winter was an early benefactor of the Arkansas Orchestra Society Fund (now called the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra Endowment).   In 1977 she offered a challenge match to build a permanent endowment that would benefit symphony operations.  In just the last ten years, that fund has returned more than $416,000 to the ASO for its operations and will continue to yield earnings to benefit the orchestra in perpetuity. 

Last year Mrs. Winter and her family announced a $3.5 million gift to Heifer International toward construction of a hunger education center which will be named the Polly Murphy and Christoph Keller, Jr. Education Center.  On April 16 Mrs. Winter together with several family members broke ground on that new building, which will be located adjacent to HPI Headquarters at One World Avenue in Little Rock.

Mrs. Winter’s first husband, the late Right Reverend Christoph Keller Jr., was a former Episcopal Bishop for the Diocese of Arkansas and her son, the Reverend Christoph Keller III, 50, is theologian-in-residence at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Little Rock.

 


Mrs. Winter and her family:
(Front Row L-R) Daughter Cynthia Davis, Mrs. Winter, granddaughter Mary Olive Keller,
daughter-in-law Julie Keller
(Back Row L-R) Stepson Schuyler Winter,
son-in-law Mike Davis, son Christoph Keller III

Mrs. Winter regales Board Chair Ross
and his wife Elgenia with many stories
of her life, rooted in Arkansas

Pat Lile, ARCF President and CEO, presents the framed Roots and Wings Award, an original watercolor signed by calligraphy artist Timothy Botts

Christoph Keller III enjoys listening as
Jim Ross, ARCF Board Chair,
extols his mother,
Mrs. Winter's, generosity
1400 West Markham, Suite 206, Little Rock, AR 72201
ph: 501-372-1116 arcf@arcf.org