Askins Achievement Award
The Askins Achievement Award is named in honor of James S. (Jim) Askins, founder of the National Park Service Historic Preservation Training Center and recognizes contributions over and above the noteworthy. The award criteria includes contributions to the preservation trades for: the continuance of traditional building skills, advocacy of training in preservation trades, practicing a building trade at master level of skill and knowledge, and extraordinary effort given to advancing the awareness of traditional building trade skills and knowledge.
Recent Recipient
Will Beemer
2021 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"Will was instrumental and influential in developing, organizing, and implementing the Apprentice Training Program within the Timber Framers Guild and was responsible for putting together the detailed and thorough curriculum required by the US Dept of Labor to allow the program to qualify for government certification."
Since 1978, Will Beemer was an instructor and co-owner with his wife Michelle, of Heartwood School for the Homebuilding Crafts in Washington, Mass. He served Co- Executive Director of the Timber Framers Guild for 11 years.
Bill Hole
2020 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"For more than 17 years, Bill developed, marketed, and shepherded the Historic Preservation and Restoration Technology (HPRT) program at College of the Redwoods (CR), the first Associate of Science degree in HP west of the Mississippi (1995), and the only within the 110 California community colleges, receiving numerous local, California Preservation Foundation, and State Governors’ Preservation Awards."
Jane Wooley
2019 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"Jane has been an integral part of the Dry Stone Conservancy almost from its beginning in 1996. During that time Jane has organized millions of dollars of restoration and training projects and coordinated scores of introductory workshops all over the United States. She has worked and collaborated with staff from over 25 National Parks throughout the length and breadth of the country."
Patrick Kennedy
2018 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"Patrick formed the Pine Mountain School for Practical Historic Preservation. What followed was a series of week-long intensive workshops that targeted particular aspects of preservation that had been identified as of critical importance."
Jim Turner
2017 Askins Achievement Award"I grew up passing through these magnificent neighborhoods in the city, riding in the car and gazing up at these large houses that we never thought we could obtain while we drove to Belle Isle," says Turner. "It set a dream that was ultimately fulfilled."
Carol Heidschuster
2016 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"This is very important, the Cathedral has an ongoing restoration programme for at least the next 25 years. Our major stonemasonry projects use in the region of 100 tonnes of Lincoln Limestone per year."
David Hayles
2015 Askins Achievement Award RecipientWhen someone mentions the word "scagliola" in America...one name comes to mind: David Hayles. Few men have had such a profound impact on their specialty in the Preservation Trades as David.
David R. Mertz
2014 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"Every academic professor who has built a program in these United States has referenced this man and his work. Which means that every student who has been through an academic trade education program has been influenced by this man."
Duffy Hoffman
2013 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"His goal in life is clearly to promote the historic trades by using his expertise in painting and other restoration skills to educate anyone who is interested in learning, and even those who aren’t!"
Simeon Warren
2012 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"Simeon represents a rare combination of qualities – a visionary and artist with a long view of the role and the value of the trades – and a pragmatic and immensely focused determination to doing the hard work and consensus building required to help bring about a bright future for the trades."
Dominic DeRubis
2011 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"Dominic DeRubis is uncompromising and demanding of his own work and when when it comes to masonry training; he expects the best out of his students and has the ability to inspire mastery of the trade; those are the very qualities that make him a Master."
Neil Rippingale
2010 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"His ability to inspire, willingness to learn and passion for drystone deserves recognition. His combinations of skills, gained from an agricultural background and worldwide experience makes him probably the most qualified drystone project manager in the US, possibly in the world."
Robert Adam
2009 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"Robert Adam has been a tireless advocate for thorough skills training in traditional building trades for more than thirty years."
David Gibney
2008 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"He has raised the bar and challenged others to the task. His ethics in practicing his craft are at a master skill level, promoting him as a driving force in moving the preservation trades forward."
Dr. Gerard C.J. Lynch
2007 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"Gerard is well respected by his peers for never forgetting his craft back ground or where he came from and indeed can jaw at any level from Craft to Academic."
Earl Barthé
2006 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"He is not only a master preservation plasterer of extraordinary skill and artistry, he is a craftsman who has great love for his traditional trade, takes great pride in high standards of excellence in craftsmanship, and has worked tirelessly to teach, preserve, and pass on his traditional skills to future generations of tradesmen."
Joseph Jenkins
2005 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"Joe is a true connoisseur of roofing skills and has studied and researched roofing structures from all over the world."
John William Laing
2004 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"As an educator at Edinburgh’s Telford College, John Laing has dedicated his life to sustaining the trowel trades in Scotland, in particular, plasterwork. He has also played an important role in bringing the techniques of historic plasterwork to trades people, architects, and conservators in the United States."
Jimmy Price
2003 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"His work in bringing the traditions of the production and use of lime putty mortar has been a contribution of extraordinary value to the conservation of our common cultural heritage."
Bill Gichner
2002 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"Throughout his career Bill Gichner worked tirelessly to advance the trade, or art, of blacksmithing by formally and informally teaching the subject everywhere he could."
Lisa Sasser
2001 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"Since 1987, she has helped to develop training programs, and instructed workshops in preservation philosophy and "hands on" preservation methods for federal agencies, universities, and state and local groups."
Rudy R. Christian
2000 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"Many people become less accessible as they accumulate advanced knowledge, experience and skill and as their services become more in demand. Rudy has maintained an openness and a commitment to community building that is exemplary within the PTN community."
John Fugelso
1999 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"He consistently strives to share his knowledge and experiences with his broad base of professional colleagues, unskilled youth, and in general, with anyone who will listen."
James S. (Jim) Askins
1998 Askins Achievement Award Recipient"Jim Askins completed formal apprenticeship programs in both carpentry and cabinetmaking, and is considered by many preservationists to be a leading expert on the technical aspects of construction, restoration and maintenance required for historic preservation."