District 49 representative and longtime selectman Allison Hepler and her husband Rob Stevens are this year’s recipients of the Distinguished Service Award for their many years of service to the Woolwich community. Hepler and Stevens will be honored at the 21st annual Recognition Dinner and Silent Auction hosted by Woolwich Historical Society at Montsweag Restaurant in the banquet room, Saturday Oct. 18. The event will begin with a social hour at 5 and Silent Auction featuring a variety of donated items, including gift certificates from local businesses. A buffet dinner will follow with trivia, raffles and the presentation of this year’s award afterwards.

A retired professor of history at the University of Maine Farmington, Hepler is completing her fourth term in the Maine legislature representing Arrowsic, Georgetown, Phippsburg, West Bath and Woolwich. She serves as House chair of the Marine Resources Committee and also sits on the Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee. She is in her fourth, three-year term on the Woolwich selectboard, where she’s been a part of the Comprehensive Plan, Public Communications, Historical and Special Events committees.

Stevens owns a wooden boat building and repair shop based in Small Point, Phippsburg. He’s active in Maine’s First Ship, a nonprofit responsible for the construction and maintenance of the Virginia, a full-size replica of the first English ocean-going vessel built in America and berthed at Bath. He’s presently involved in commemorating the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution and the Arnold Expedition. Recently, Stevens has been lending his boat-building skills to seventh graders at Bristol Consolidated School, Bristol, in the construction of a “batteaux,” a long, flat-bottomed boat used in colonial times on rivers and lakes. 

Reservations for dinner tickets are $60 per person and must be purchased in advanced no later than Friday, Oct. 10. For information, call (207) 443-3932 or contact Selectman Jason Shaw, jshawandsons@comcast.net. Space is limited. If you are unable to attend but would like to make a donation to Woolwich Historical Society in honor of the recipients, you may do so through the same contacts.