The Marion Chamber of Commerce will be celebrating its mission, members and community at its 102nd annual awards celebration on Friday, January 20, 2023, at The Pavilion in Marion. The program will feature presentations by the Chamber, elected officials, and 2022 award winners.

  One of the awards that will be given during the event is the Mayor’s Service Award. The 2022 Mayor’s Service Award winner is Tom Logan.

 The Mayor's Service Award recipients are selected by the Mayor of the City of Marion, Michael Absher.

Tom Logan

 Logan graduated from Stephen Decatur High School, in Decatur, Illinois in 1961. At 18, he took a solo hitchhiking trek through Africa (Ghana, Cameroun, Gabon, South Africa, Rhodesia, Kenya, Ethiopia) and spent two months with Dr. Albert Schweitzer at his hospital and leper colony in Lamberene, Gabon. On his way back to the States, he spent a month with Palestinian refugees and a month in a Jewish Settlement in a Kibbutz in Israel. Coming of age during the Civic Rights Movement, Logan attended the March on Washington in 1963 with his father and witnessed Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech. When they returned home, a cross was burned in their front yard.

 After graduating from Warren Wilson College in 1964, he worked for Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Green County, Alabama, and registered voters. He continued his education and obtained degrees from the University of Illinois in 1966 and from McCormick Theological Seminary in 1969. Later in life, Logan received an honorary doctorate degree in 2017 from the University of Livingstonia Malawi.

In 1972 Logan and his wife, Jocelyn, moved to Cairo, Illinois, and worked with the Egyptian Housing Development Corporation. In a year and a half, 150 homes were built on scattered sites with an interracial crew that was half black and half white. In the 1975, along with his wife, Jocelyn, and Bill Covey, Shawnee Enterprises Inc. was founded. Between 1975 and 1982, Shawnee Enterprises, Inc. developed, and built fourteen low-income housing projects in ten Southern Illinois towns. These housing units are still managed by the organization and Jim Covey, Jr. The apartments are an asset to each community where the tenants are taken care of and the tenants take care of Shawnee.

 Logan and Jocelyn founded Marion Medical Mission in 1985. Its purpose is to share the love of Christ with the extreme poor in Africa. Marion Medical Mission has built 6 Primary Schools, and 2 schools for the hard of hearing. From 1990 to 2020, the major effort has been to provide a sustainable source of safe drinking water to rural African villagers. Safe drinking water means the children will no longer die from water borne diseases. The villagers are healthier, which enables them to work in their fields longer and produce more food to prevent starvation. There are currently over 43,000 villages in Malawi, Tanzania, and Zambia that have wells built through Marion Medical Mission providing an estimated 5 million people with safe drinking water.

The wells are built where the need is greatest regardless of religious beliefs. At each ‘Hand-over Celebration,’ the villagers are told their well is special because Christians from the U.S. shared the love of Jesus with them. These wells and their faith in a brighter future is the best defense against war and terror. Marion Medical Mission’s goal for 2020 was to build 3,000 wells covering 60,000 square miles in Malawi, Zambia, and Tanzania providing an estimated 375,000 (225,000 children) of the extreme rural poor with potable water. Construction did not start till September (during the dry months), and in that time, 3,155 wells were built.

The first Mayor's Service Award was given in 1996 to Elfora Aikman. Last year's winner was Healthcare Heroes of the Heartland.

“I am excited to honor Tom Logan this year with the Mayor's Service Award. Every time I hear his story, I learn something new and truly inspiring!” Said Mayor Mike Absher in reflection of Logan. “Tom has literally changed our World for the better through his Marion Medical Mission. Marion is blessed to be able to claim him as a resident and that he calls Marion home.”

 Award winners will be honored during the 102nd annual Marion Chamber of Commerce Awards Banquet & Auction on Friday, Jan. 20 at The Pavilion. The event begins at 5:30 p.m.

“The Marion Chamber Annual Banquet and Awards Ceremony is Marion’s most prestigious event of the year, said Jared Garrison, executive director of The Pavilion and chair of the Marion Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors. “We have worked tirelessly throughout the year, engaging and connecting with one another to grow and enhance our community. This event is a celebration of all our efforts towards that work with the highlight of the evening being our award nominees and recipients."

 Tickets to attend are $65 a person or $500 for a table of 8 or $750 for a table of 12 and are available by calling the Marion Chamber of Commerce at (618) 997.6311, visiting marionillinois.com or emailing director@marionillinois.com.