Rockland Distinguished Service Award To Educator, Advocate

Rockland County Legislator Alden H. Wolfe presented a Distinguished Service Award to educator, youth advocate and humanitarian Donald Cairns in October in recognition of his service to others. Cairns was further recognized with the Father F. Peter Malet Service to Youth Award from Rockland County, cited for his extensive unpaid efforts, including serving as chairman of the Town of Ramapo Youth Court and chairman of Hudson Valley Blood Services.

“Donald Cairns has spent his life in such service, giving in so many important ways to our local community, and to people on the other side of the world during some of their most desperate days,” Wolfe said in a press release. “It is an incredible honor to present this award to a person who epitomizes what it means when we say, ‘To Be Of Service To Others.”

Cairns taught at Ramapo High School for more than 30 years. That's where Wolfe said he first met him, as a student in a Russian history class, and where members of the National Honor Society voted him Teacher of the Year.

Some of Cairns' other volunteer activities included service with the March of Dimes, helping to raise thousands for the nonprofit organization which works to improve the lives of babies by preventing birth defects. He also chaired the Village of Suffern Recreation Committee.

Wolfe said Cairns enjoyed taking students on educational trips to other nations, so they could experience history – not just read about it. He’d been doing that since 1972, without any real incidents. That changed on April 25, 1986, as he was touring the then-Soviet Union with 38 students – and the Chernobyl nuclear accident occurred. The group immediately left and all made it home safely, only the soles of their shoes testing positive for radiation exposure.

In 1988, after a friend asked for help, Cairns took $35,000 worth of vitamins to Belarus. Although the accident happened in Chernobyl, Ukraine, the wind blew most of the radiation north to Belarus, and the vitamins and other medical supplies brought by Cairns were needed by the people there.

Over the next 13 years, Cairns, students, faculty members and others raised more than $25 million for the Children of Chernobyl Fund, set up to benefit the people of Belarus. For his part in the effort, Cairns was awarded the Francis Skaryna Medal, Belarus’s highest honor.

This spring, Cairns and the others were recognized by the United Nations for their involvement in the successful humanitarian effort, Wolfe said.

“It’s important to note that the incident at Chernobyl and the ensuing years of aid took place during the midst of the Cold War, and it was outreach – the kind of things that Don did, the personal connections that he built - that I believe helped bring an end to the Cold War,” Wolfe said.

Cairns retired from teaching in 1999 and became executive director of the Rockland Community College Foundation, which raises money for scholarships, student support, campus improvements and faculty development. He retired from RCC earlier this year.

PHOTO/ Rockland County Legislature