Tickets available for dinner honoring community volunteer
Searching through the many talented, hard-working volunteer leaders in town, Leadership Morgan Hill has found one standing above all others. Roger Knopf is that volunteer.
LMH, which trains and recognizes community leaders, has chosen Knopf to receive the first Leadership Excellence Award. He will be honored and feted at a dinner Aug. 2 at CordeValle Country Club, surrounded by family, friends and a community that has benefited from his work and care. Tickets to the dinner are available until Friday. Everyone is invited.
When announcing the award, Councilman Steve Tate, a 2002 LMH graduate, called attention to Knopf’s years of efficient and strenuous leadership serving – and in many cases beginning – a wide variety of community institutions, foundations and businesses.
“Roger Knopf embodies every characteristic of a good leader,” Tate said. “He’s benevolent, wise, driven and a great communicator. But first and foremost, he inspires others to lead. For that alone he was a unanimous choice to receive this inaugural award.”
Knopf has been a member and, often past-president or chairman, of the Rotary Club, South Valley National Bank board, on the boards of San Jose Medical Center and Columbia Good Samaritan Health System and countless other groups. He was a founding board member of the new Morgan Hill Community Foundation that gathers and distributes funds for community projects.
Knopf – and his wife, Janie – have worked tirelessly for the Morgan Hill Historical Society, and Roger is frequently seen with ladder and tool box, making repairs on Villa Mira Monte, the old Morgan Hill House that the society renovated in the 1990s.
Born in San Jose and raised in Los Gatos, Knopf moved to Morgan Hill in the mid-1960s after his marriage. The couple has two children and three grandchildren.
The Leadership Excellence Award was established to recognize people “whose vision and leadership advance the spirit of the community and charity, reflect courage and insight and inspire others to lead in a like manner.” The award was designed to honor either a single, beneficial act or a life of continuous leadership service, the latter in Knopf’s case.
Knopf’s past also includes the Santa Clara County Landowners Association, the SCC Trails Master Plan Update Committee, advisory committees for the Planning Commission, the Economic Development Commission, the Architectural Review Board, the Personnel Commission of the Morgan Hill Unified School District, founding director of the Morgan Hill Community Law Enforcement Foundation and of Frazier Lake Airpark in San Benito County, chairman of three MHSD bond issue campaigns and the city/MHSD Joint Corporation Yard Commission.
Among his many awards, Knopf was named Chamber of Commerce’s Morgan Hill Citizen of the Year in 1989 and, in 1992, he and Janie were recognized by the SCC Board of Supervisors for the Human Rights Commission and the Friends of the Human Rights Commission.
Details regarding the Aug. 2, $125 per-person dinner and tribute at CordeValle in San Martin: 782-1008.
