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The Community Arts Center’s Director’s Chair Award for 2016 went to Frank Pellegrino Sunday night.
Pellegrino, who is considered to be a man who shuns the limelight, choked up with emotion as he accepted the award given annually to recognize and honor those who have had a significant impact on the success of the Community Arts Center and its delivery of programs supporting music, arts and entertainment.
Appearing modest to the core, Pellegrino acknowledged that he needed to be coaxed and coerced into accepting the award that’s given each year at the Capital Lounge, a room named after the former Capital Theatre that was the predecessor to the Community Arts Center.
Pellegrino said he believed there were more worthy individuals to receive the award but focused on the institution and its supporters, calling the Community Arts Center a “gem of the community” and said it would be “hard to imagine life without the arts.”
Celebrating the night with the more than 130 individuals in the room, after a catered dinner by the culinary staff and students of the Pennsylvania College of Technology, Pellegrino said he considered most of those in attendance, including the prior year’s Director’s Chair Award winners, as mentors.
He said, like him, they share in their love and support of the arts and the programs delivered each year by the Community Arts Center.
Pellegrino thanked his parents. “My parents – I had the best mom and dad,” he said. He described his mother as a lover of the arts, one who’d listen to Frank Sinatra and watch performances, such as “Madame Butterfly.”
He also thanked his family and extended family. His friends considered him to have solid business management and financial skills that lead a company that provides 500 jobs and adds to the local economy.
Using a keen business acumen, Pellegrino was easily a welcome addition to the board of directors, according to William J. Martin, chairman of the Community Arts Center Board of Directors.
Pellegrino was instrumental in the recently announced collaborative effort as the Community Arts Center and Pennsylvania College of Technology, which is its parent and owner, took steps to become partners with Lycoming College.
The award is the “mechanism chosen to recognize individuals who contribute to the performances and enrichment of the lives of those in the Williamsport area,” Martin said.
Pellegrino ended his thoughts with a quote by slain President John F. Kennedy: “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them,” he said.