Write a commentThe Advisory Board of the Oswego County Salvation Army Corps recently elected its officers for 2023.
They included Theresa Sugar-Scanlon as chairperson, Douglas Buske as vice chairperson, Carol Dexter as secretary, and Wynnette Dohse as treasurer. The Salvation Army officers who will continue to lead the Corps are Major Heather Odom and Lieutenant Alyxandra Allen.
Other members of the Advisory Board include Carrie Bixby, Thomas Brown, Brenda and Chris Burritt, Nancy Close, David Granoff, Jacqueline Gregg, Richard Hughes, Cecelia Ladd, Jason Livesey, Jean Niver, Chip Pelton, P. Michael Shanley, Charles and Margaret Spector, Vernon Tryon, and Ned Waterbury.
According to a spokesperson, “The Advisory Board serves as liaison to advise the Corps officers about the community’s needs and resources and to represent the plans and needs of the Army to the community. Board members participate in fundraising and assisting with delivery of some services.”
The Board officers are shown beneath a photograph of Ensign Helen Purviance that hangs in the dining room of the Oswego Center for Worship and Service. She was the officer of the Oswego Corps just before World War I. She went to France during the war and, with another officer, Ensign Margaret Sheldon, they became the first two Salvation Army “Lassies” to provide doughnuts and coffee to the soldiers as they returned from the front lines. Their work gave rise to the universal image of The Salvation Army serving doughnuts and coffee as well as meals at war and disaster sites around the world. Purviance returned to her post at Oswego for a time and eventually moved on through other assignments until, as Lieutenant Colonel, she became dean of the college from which she had earned her education and ordination.
The juxtaposition of these two images, made more than a century apart, is a reminder of the duration of The Salvation Army in the Oswego community and the fact that the need for its work is forever a challenge to every generation.
