ABS board member named 2023 Cherry Pie Award winner

The Annual Cherry Pie Award was presented on February 23, 2023, to 2nd VP of the Board, Doug Hall.

(Photo l-r, US Ambassador Ken Salazar, ABS Executive Director Aliki Elias, Doug Hall, ABS president Bill Biese)

This introduction, written by Paulo Prada, was given by Executive Director Aliki Elias:

It is my pleasure tonight to introduce this year’s honoree for our annual Cherry Pie Award.

The award, as most of you know, is for an ABS member who goes beyond what is generally expected of our members and volunteers.

This year’s honoree has done that in spades.

In some ways, this person is one of the faces of ABS.

He is always at our events, broadening our community, and recruiting new members.

He has helped hundreds of Americans register to vote and cast their ballots from Mexico.

Our honoree was born far from the cosmopolitan bustle of Mexico City – in a small, agricultural town in the middle of Georgia.

As a kid in school, his family says, he was enamored of two subjects: Spanish and history.

Both would serve him well when he decided, after a long career as a journalist and communications specialist, to move here – a city where history and the Spanish language abound.

As a young man, he was a reporter and editor of his hometown newspaper, the Dublin Courier-Herald.

There, he pursued stories that didn’t always please the powers that be – especially when it came to civil rights abuses and the lingering social problems of a recently desegregated South.

Later, he helped Excelsior, the Mexican newspaper, cover the United States from its office in Washington D.C.

During that time, he began to visit Mexico City.

“As soon as I stepped off the plane that first time,” he now says, “I knew that I wanted to be here.”

In 2015, he moved to Mexico City for good.

Although retired, he hasn’t sat still.

He has revamped our web site, communications and social media presence.

He brought us, as Aliki likes to say, into the 21st century.

He is also the president of the Mexico City chapter of the University of Georgia Alumni Association.

He also serves as a Citizen Liaison Volunteer with the U.S. Embassy.

For more photos from the 2023 Cherry Pie Festival please visit our Instagram page