OCEAN CITY – Five women who have done outstanding service for their communities were honored with Women of Wonder Awards at a luncheon at the Flanders Hotel in Ocean City Thursday, Nov. 2.
The award winners were Tracey Boyle-DuFault, the executive director of the Greater Wildwood Chamber of Commerce, Sandra Lockhart and Terri Mascione of The Branches Outreach, and Jennifer Shirk, author and president of the Ocean City Free Public Library board of trustees.
For the first time, a posthumous award was given, to Laurie Johnson of Family Promise, who died in May from cancer.
The Women of Wonder Awards, now 12 years old, are given by the Women of Wonder League, which honors several outstanding women in the community each year and also provides scholarships for students attending Atlantic Cape Community College.
DuFault has been the director of the Greater Wildwood Chamber of Commerce for 17 years; she has helped to develop it into the 12th-largest chamber of commerce in the state. She is involved with Boy and Girl Scouts, and with Lower Cape May Regional High School track and field and volleyball. She also serves on the Cape May County Vocational High School advisory board.
She has been a member of various boards over the years, including the Greater Wildwood Chamber of Commerce Foundation, the Cape Regional Medical Center Foundation, American Red Cross Southern Jersey and Atlantic County Boys and Girls Clubs. As she did at the Cape May County Chamber of Commerce installation dinner, she credited the first executive director of the county chamber, Robert Patterson Jr., with inspiring her to succeed regardless of the obstacles.
Mascione is the program director at The Branches Outreach, and Lockhart is the operations director of the homeless outreach in Rio Grande.
Lockhart was there when The Branches began along with her late husband, the Rev. Ron Lockhart. She had a career in special education in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, and was active in parish life. She had a family member who had addiction issues, and it caused her and her husband to enter the addiction counseling program at Villanova University.
Lockhart called it an incredible honor to be named a Woman of Wonder and said she was grateful to be able to work with Mascione for nearly 10 years. She said they never considered themselves “women of wonder,” and they could not do what they do without their volunteers.
Mascione came to The Branches in 2015 after losing her son to an overdose. Newly retired, she saw the work as a way to honor her son. She is particularly involved in special events for children. She thanked everyone for the award.
Shirk, author and president of the Ocean City Free Public Library board of trustees, worked as a pharmacist in the initial stages of her career. She now writes romance novels and has published 10 books. She has served on the Ocean City Education Foundation, as treasurer of Straight Ahead Ministries and as a contributor to the Cape Atlantic Fellowship of Christian Athletes. She was recently chair of the Ocean City Exchange Club’s Halloween parade.
Shirk called it humbling to be named a 2023 Woman of Wonder, giving credit to her mother and grandmother. She said she was encouraged by her mother and supported by her parents to become the first college graduate in her family.
Johnson, executive director of Family Promise, died in May after a long battle with cancer. She was born and raised in Cape May County and operated the A La Carte restaurant and Oma’s Doll House, taking over the latter from her parents. She was a member of the Cape May United Methodist Church, where she was very active, and eventually was ordained.
Along with the Rev. Rob Crouch, she helped bring Family Promise to Cape May County in 2009. Over the next 14 years, she and her family advocate, Kathleen O’Neill, worked with 500 volunteers and 33 churches to shelter and serve 72 homeless families in the county.
Violet Rixey, who presented the award to O’Neill on Johnson’s behalf, said she didn’t know Johnson long, but felt she did not consider herself so much an executive director but as one who tried to be faithful and giving to other people.
“Family Promise has big shoes to fill,” Rixey said.
O’Neill said of Johnson: “If she were here she would say she would not have wanted to be nominated.” She described Johnson as someone who was “full of love” and who helped 75 families become homeowners.
“She just had a way with people,” she said. “And she was the same wherever she went.”
O’Neill said Johnson would have credited her husband, Leif, for her being able to do what she needed to do, often calling him “the wind beneath my wings.”
Women of Wonder Scholarship Winner
Roxanne LaPlant, 31, was the 2023 Original Women of Wonder scholarship recipient. LaPlant told the audience at the luncheon that she was the first in her family to go to college. A Villas resident, LaPlant said she was born in Philadelphia, but her mother ended up in Cape May County and her father in Philadelphia.
As a child she would go back and forth until she was 12, when she got a boardwalk job and started spending her summers here. By ninth grade she was spending half her time here and half in Philly.
“When I was 15 I moved here permanently,” she said.
Life wasn’t easy for LaPlant. When she was 12 she learned that her biological father was in prison; she said she’d been molested by someone from the family of the man she thought was her father.
“That is when I spun off the rails,” she said.
At 16 the family experienced a house fire, and it was around this time that LaPlant figured out that if she was going to succeed in life she was going to have to do for herself. She thought education would be the way out for her and, given the problems she was experiencing in her personal life, she was very thankful for the Cape May County Compact School, a school for at-risk students that was closed by the county freeholders, now county commissioners, in 2017.
LaPlant said she was able to do better at the Compact School, where a number of the students were adults. She said she was able to do well in the smaller classrooms, and she would get credit for going to work.
“I was dedicated, and I would take the bus from home to work and bike to class,” she said.
She said the Compact School got her connected with college.
LaPlant got a scholarship to Atlantic Cape Community College, but lost momentum, she said, due to drugs. She said she had a good job but then lost it, and was introduced to even harder drugs. She said she went from abusing prescription Adderall to taking methamphetamine.
She was homeless for a while. She managed to graduate from Atlantic Cape in 2016, and was eventually able to get herself back on track.
“I just celebrated three years sober,” she said.
LaPlant gave birth to her daughter, Lennon, about the same time she started to get her life back. She has decided to continue her education and perhaps become a paralegal, in part due to her experience with the state Department of Child Protection and Permanency.
She is also considering going into recovery work. She said she is working on getting 500 hours of work experience through Oxford House, a sober living organization that has been around for 50 years.
“Everyone working there has been there,” she said.
LaPlant is currently working at the Renault Winery. She said as a single mom she can only take two courses per semester. She said it is definitely tougher to be a student when you add children to the equation. She said she has remained “super connected” in the Alcoholics Anonymous community and continues to be supported and inspired there.
Contact the author, Christopher South, at csouth@cmcherald.com or 609-886-8600, ext. 128.
