Events

Arkansas Preservation Awards: Lifetime Achievement Award Winner Cheri Nichols

This Friday, January 27, Preserve Arkansas will host the 2016 Arkansas Preservation Awards honoring Cheri Nichols with the Parker Westbrook Award for Lifetime Achievement.


Cheryl Griffith Nichols

Founded in 1981 as the Historic Preservation Alliance of Arkansas, Preserve Arkansas is the only statewide nonprofit organization witih a mission of cultivating stronger communities by reconnecting Arkansans to the state’s rich heritage and empowering people to save historic places. By presenting educational programs, advocating for preservation at the federal, state and local levels, and providing technical assistance to owners of historic properties, Preserve Arkansas reamains a steadfast voice for preservation in Arkansas – for more than 35 years. Preserve Arkansas hosts the Arkansas Preservation Awards each year to recognize preservationists and projects throughout Arkansas.

Hosted at the Albert Pike Memorial Temple in Little Rock, the 2016 Arkansas Preservation Awards will celebrate outstanding achievements in historic preservation in ten categories with the Parker Westbrook Award for Lifetime Achievement serving as the highlight of the evening. Honoring the Preserve Arkansas founding president, the Parker Westbrook Award recognizes significant achievements in historic preservation throughout a period of years or even decades. The award may be presented to individuals, organizations, businesses or public agencies whose activities have local, statewide or national significance. This year’s Westbrook Award winner is Little Rock native Cheryl Griffith Nichols.

Cheri’s name is synonymous with preservation in central Arkansas – her role in historic preservation at the local, state and national levels spans nearly forty years. From her commitment to the Quapaw Quarter Association to her service with the Historic Preservation Alliance of Arkansas, as well as her roles with Preservation Action and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Cheri is an advocate, a practitioner, a fundraiser, a political ally, a mentor and a force in the evolving discipline of historic preservation in the United States.

Highlight’s from Cheri’s service include working as program assistant for the National Register of Historic Places, two tenures as executive director of the Quapaw Quarter Association as well as a long service on its board of directors, and the distinction of being one of the founding board members of the Historic Preservation Alliance of Arkansas. She is co-author – with F. Hampton Roy and Charles Witsell – of How We Lived: Little Rock as an American City (1984), as well as the author of scholarly articles, National Register nominations and guidebooks. Cheri was involved in successful campaigns to save such notable structures as the Kramer School, West Side Junior High School, and Curran Hall, among others. She has been honored by the Quapaw Quarter Association with both its Jimmy Strawn Award and the Tom Wilkes Award for outstanding board service with the Association’s historic building marker program being renamed in her honor in 2016.

Tickets to the Arkansas Preservation Awards are still available – don’t miss this opportunity to learn more about the preservation of our beautiful state.

Visit the website or call 501-372-4757 for more information.

Inviting Arkansas

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