DeafROC

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 19, 2007

ROBERT R. FULLER RECEIVES
SONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION’S
TOP AWARD FOR DISTINGUISHED SCOUTING SERVICE

The National Society, Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) today honored Robert R. Fuller with its Robert E. Burt Award for distinguished service to the Boy Scouts of America. The award is that organization’s top recognition for Scouting service. Only 18 have been so honored in the entire United States.

Fuller, of Henrietta, recently completed his 50th year of membership as a Boy Scout and as an adult leader. Fuller earned his Eagle rank in 1963 in Evanston, Illinois, along with a bronze palm, and was inducted into the Order of the Arrow.

At the time, he was the only totally deaf person in his local Council, earning his Eagle rank without any help from note takers or interpreting services. Then, while a student at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) in Rochester in 1972, he volunteered as Scoutmaster of the Rochester School for the Deaf’s Troop 29. He served in that role for almost seven years, and is believed to have been the first deaf Scoutmaster in the area, and if not the first in the nation, certainly one of the very earliest.

In addition to his Scouting service, Fuller has served as secretary, board member, and warden of Ephphatha Episcopal Church for the Deaf; president and secretary of the Rochester Civic Association for the Deaf; secretary, board member, and vice president of the NTID Alumni Association of Rochester; board member of the Rochester Tel-Com Association for the Deaf; member of the Rochester Fraternal Society of the Deaf; membership chairman of the World Recreation Association for the Deaf for seven years; and subscription manager for Rochester Deaf News. He also currently serves on the Board of Managers of the Rochester chapter of the SAR.

He has been married to the former Barbara Lee Menge of Natick Massachusetts for over 29 years. Formerly employed by Eastman Kodak and Monro Muffler and Brake, Fuller currently works at Wegmans and the Christmas Tree Shops.

The Sons of the American Revolution was founded in New York in 1888, and consists of men descended from a patriot who served in the American Revolution. It is actively engaged in a number of community services and outreach programs, including education, historic preservation, youth award and recognition programs, gravesite restoration, color guard, and battlefield and historic property maintenance. Its past members have included such distinguished New Yorkers as Rochester’s J. Warren Cutler, who endowed the Otetiana Council’s Camp Cutler; Frank E. Gannett, founder of Gannett Newspapers; John D. Rockefeller; his son, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and grandson, Nelson A. Rockefeller, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Chauncey Depew, Cecil B. DeMille, William Randolph Hearst, and Walter F. Chrysler.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

Michael Tunison, President, Rochester Chapter, Sons of the American Revolution, mlt7135@yahoo.com, (585) 335-7114