Speaker named for R.K. Thompson event

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The Thompson family and Van Wert Service Club have announced the speaker for this year’s R.K. Thompson Self-Reliance Awards banquet.

Van Wert native Sarah Evans Tackett is a former Miss Ohio and talent award winner in the Miss America Pageant. She’s a graduate of Van Wert High School and Bowling Green State University, with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration, and has a 30-year career in college admissions, marketing, and healthcare. She presently serves as executive director of the Foundation for ProMedica Defiance Regional Hospital.

She’s also been a featured speaker and emcee for special events and women’s conferences. Tackett has a background in musical theater, as well as TV and radio commercials, and she and her husband, Jeff, tour the U.S. as The Tacketts, a Christian Country group filling approximately 100 dates a year, along with their band, Powell Creek Junction.

The group has appeared at the CMA Music Festival, was a top five nominee for “Group of the Year” for the 2016 Christian Country Diamond Awards, and won Stanley Music Group’s 2017 Nashville Talent Search.  The Tacketts have consistently had charting success on numerous Christian radio outlets and are now being heard on mainstream country radio as well.   The Tacketts live in Defiance, OH with their four children — Adam, Evan, Anna, and Emma.

This year’s awards banquet will be held Wednesday, April 19. The R.K. Thompson Self-Reliance Award Program was initiated 47 years ago by R.K. Thompson Jr. in honor of his father the late R.K. Thompson Sr. Both men had worked closely with young people and encouraged them to set high, but attainable goals and then apply themselves to obtain those goals.

The program provides cash awards for high school seniors in Van Wert County who best exhibit that character trait. The Self-Reliance Award is designed to seek out and honor a senior who “does the best with what he or she has,” whether he or she is a scholar, an athlete, a student leader, or someone who must seek employment to help their family meet expenses.

The R.K. Thompson Self-Reliance Award is sponsored by the Thompson Family Trust, through the Van Wert County Foundation, and administered by the Van Wert Service Club.