Hang Gliding and Paragliding Volume 44 / Issue 3: March 2014 | Page 10

ASSOCIATION
USHPA's 2013 Award Winners
The Cream Rises to the Top
by C.J. Sturtevant
If you’re old enough to remember the
days before milk was homogenized,
you’ll know what I mean: The top
several inches in every bottle of milk delivered to your door by the milkman was
a layer of thick, rich cream that, if you
knew what was good for you, you did
NOT pour off onto your cereal before
your parents came down for breakfast! That cream had to be shaken up
and mixed in with the rest of the milk
every time before serving; if somebody
skimmed it off, everybody else was left
with a thin, pale, weak substitute for
the real thing (sorry, all you skim-milk
drinkers...)
And so it is in our flying communi-

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HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE

ties. It’s the cream of the hang gliding
and paragliding crop that, shaken into
the general mix, keeps the whole group
robust, full of energy, worth paying attention to.
Each year at the fall BOD meeting,
the USHPA Awards committee reviews
the many dozens of emails from pilots
who realize that their flying buddy is
someone who enriches the entire community. The committee members discuss the nominations, perhaps add their
own personal knowledge of candidates,
and then select the nominees they feel
are most deserving of recognition. This
is never an easy task, as the nominations make it plain that each and every
nominee is perceived as the “cream” in
his or her own club or group, or within

the entire hang gliding and/or paragliding community. Eventually, consensus
is reached, and the award-winners are
named. Here’s the 2013 list.

Photographer of the Year
Ask anyone who pilots a hang glider or
a paraglider what most captivates them
about flying, and you’ll almost certainly
get some variation on the theme of our
unique visual perspectives, the scenic
beauty of the places we launch from
and fly over. The Bettina Gray award is
presented each year to a photographer
who best captures the spirit of free flight
in his or her images. This year, however,
the Awards committee, unable to rank
the photos of one talented lady above
the other, declared a tie and named both
Desiree Voight and Rebecca Bredehoft
as the 2013 Bettina Gray Photographers
of the Year. Their expertise and vision