When Tammy Baines Prescott learned her friend Jack Reed would be getting the Columbus Exchange Club’s Book of Golden Deeds Award for 2017, she made sure to attend the award ceremony — where the award was promptly given to her instead.
“Ya’ll really got me this time,” she told Reed and his family when she accepted the award Thursday at the Lion Hills Center.
The corporal deputy sheriff with the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office is the 43rd person in Columbus to receive the Book of Golden Deeds Award, which the Exchange Club gives every year to recognize an individual for volunteer work in the community.
Prescott has served on volunteer boards such as the Lowndes County Adults on Aging, the YMCA and Golden Triangle Crime Stoppers, and she works with community relations programs teaching safety and awareness. But she was recognized especially for her volunteer work with the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts of America and Camp Rising Sun where she’s volunteered since 2004.
“I just can’t think of a much more deserving person,” Exchange Club President Fred Kinder said. “But she is also becoming part of an outstanding group of past recipients as well.”
Exchange Club member Betty Clyde Jones presented the award after telling stories about Prescott’s volunteer work — from setting up a treasure hunt of arrow heads for a Boy Scout troop to driving the grandmother of a sick child home from a Jackson hospital. The grandmother apparently later said it was “the fastest trip from Jackson to Columbus ever made with Tammy behind the wheel.”
After the meeting, among pictures and hugs from friends and well-wishers, Prescott said she felt “humbled” to receive the award and added she was particularly surprised to receive it, given that she thought she’d come for someone else.
She also elaborated on some of the stories Jones told. The Boy Scouts in question had been a group of 7-11-year-olds from Troop 2 who’d been camping out at a farm in the county a few years ago. Prescott, who loves teaching the kids about Indian arrowheads and artifacts, hid some of her arrowheads in the field.
“I told them, ‘They’re out there. Go find them. They’re treasures,'” Prescott said.
She also told a story about taking trustees from the Lowndes County Adult Detention Center out to Camp Rising Sun to clean up the camp and get it ready for campers who would be coming down. One trustee elected to stay in jail an extra night so he could continue cleaning the camp.
“He had some fines to pay, and he knew it would help him with his fines,” she said. “But he had been so sincere of wanting to help the children. … He asked me, ‘Miss Tammy, I’ll be glad to stay for a few extra days if I can.’
“The next day, instead of going home, he was there waiting on the van,” she said.
Her favorite thing about volunteering, she said, is counseling young people on the importance of giving back to the community.
“I think it’s something God instills in us … that enables us to turn around and bless others,” she said.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 42 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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Lowndes County sheriff's deputy Terry Prescott receives the Book of Golden Deeds award from the Columbus Exchange Club on Thursday at Lion Hills Center. Photo by: Luisa Porter/Dispatch Staff
