The latest recipient of a Garden of Saskatchewan (GOS) plaque is Norquay resident Marlene (nee Heskin) Jacquemart Hamm, now married to Eldred Hamm.
“Marlene was completely surprised with the plaque presentation that was made at the NICE centre in Norquay on December 22,” said Lynn Schweigert, nominator, on behalf of the Norquay Emmanuel Lutheran Church.
The inscription on the plaque reads: The Garden of Saskatchewan Citizen Ring Award in Recognition of Outstanding Contribution Honoring Marlene Ellen May Jacquemart (Hamm). Thank you for your years of public service in community groups and local government in your community - Service Leadership Contribution.
“We are so fortunate to have Marlene and her family in our area,” said Schweigert, in the nomination paper. “They (her family) walk in their mother’s footsteps in taking part and giving of themselves to this community.
“Marlene is still ‘full steam ahead.’ She doesn’t miss a beat, regardless of how much she has to attend to in her own personal life, she continues to be here for all of us.”
Karlee Griffith is Hamm’s granddaughter. In an effort to collect all the information Schweigert required to fill out nomination forms to be submitted to the GOS committee, Griffith told her grandmother that she was doing a school assignment and needed to ask a whole list of questions about Hamm’s past, her family and her contribution to the community.
With all the information in hand, she passed it over to Schweigert who then submitted it to the GOS committee.
“Karlee was an invaluable help to me,” said Schweigert. “I would never have been able to fill out the papers without her help, and I have to thank her for supplying so much information.”
Hamm was born in Canora to parents Alfred and Helen (Johnson) Heskin, and has four siblings, three sisters (one deceased) and a brother.
She attended Grantsburg country school, six miles northwest of Norquay, for the first two-and-a-half years of her education. The school burned down in 1953, so she took the remainder of her schooling in Norquay School.
Later, as a farmer’s wife (the late Jack Jacquemart), raising a family in the Norquay area, Hamm always found time to work on and off the farm in numerous paid and volunteer positions.
As a volunteer, her long list of credentials include: a councillor at Nelson Lake Lutheran Bible camp, started the Sandy Beach Club, was instrumental in getting the Clayton RM to join the Library so people could borrow books for free, a Red Cross volunteer, was secretary and board member of Norquay local school board, Norquay Lutheran Sunday School teacher, Kinette Club treasurer and bulletin editor, Minor Hockey Association president, president and treasurer for the Norquay Legion auxiliary, secretary and board member of the Fort Pelly-Livingstone Home Care, Norquay Hospital auxiliary president, Norquay Horticultural Society secretary-treasurer, president of Norquay Lutheran Church women from 2000 to the present, treasurer of the Norquay Lutheran Church from 2007 to the present and Norquay NICE Senior Centre secretary from 2013 to the present.
Hamm still finds time to enjoy her family, grandchildren and hobbies of ceramics, crafts, curling, gardening, jigsaw and a variety of puzzles, playing the organ, reading, sewing, snowmobiling, travelling, woodworking and photography.
