Each year at our Community Partnership Celebration, we honor four individuals or groups who have exemplified our four core values in the past year. We value every child and family, excellence, partnership and accountability.
The board of Families as Allies, along with Jo Turlington’s family, are delighted to share with you that our Partnership award is now named the Jo Turlington Memorial Award for Partnership in honor of the life Jo lived and the example she set for all of us.
We were stunned and heartbroken when Jo died suddenly and unexpectedly in March of 2022, but we were also struck by all the goodness she left in her wake. In Families as Allies’ memorial blog about her, we shared these lessons from her life and urged all of us to strive to live by them:
- Be kind, caring and patient.
- Focus on the real needs of real people.
- Be the person people trust with their secrets.
- Fight for families to be at every table.
- If you are lucky enough to have someone you love like Jo loved Roger, stay madly in love with them.
As we pondered these lessons, it struck us that they all exude the value of partnership. Jo found ways to partner with everyone she encountered—her coworkers, strangers, friends, the families she worked with and her beloved husband, Roger.
We hope that in naming this award after Jo, we honor her life and memory year after year. She deserves no less. We hope it will also inspire all of us to live as Jo did and find ways to meet the people around us where they are and partner with them. Be the kind of person that people trust with their most vulnerable fears and secrets.
We hope you will join us at our Ninth Annual Community Partnership Celebration on January 23, 2023, from 5 to 7:30 p.m. at BRAVO! Italian Restaurant. Tickets and sponsorships are still available and can be purchased online or by calling us at 601-355-0915.
