Paula Crevier Named Winner of Dorothy Hilbert Award

Paula Crevier, EAA 477989, has been coming to EAA for years. She, along with her husband, Lee, EAA 355459, started volunteering in 1991, and went on to work in volunteer positions all across the board. After 31 years of volunteer work, Paula is being honored with the Dorothy Hilbert Award.

The Dorothy Hilbert Award is given to a female volunteer who exhibits the passion, dedication, and devotion for volunteerism that Dorothy presented throughout her life and time spent at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh.

Paula has spent much of her time volunteering in the ultralight world.

“When I started out, I was like a line guard at the ultralight runway,” Paula explained.

However, her dedication to EAA didn’t end with ultralights.

“I’ve done a little bit of everything,” she said. “I did admissions at the [Ultralight] Barn for a few years, I did retail, now I work at Convention Headquarters.”

While Paula has been involved in a lot of areas of the EAA volunteer world, her most memorable position was as “Miss Hollywood,” a term coined by her fellow volunteers for taking up some notable people on behalf of EAA. The biggest one involved a live interview.

“CNN was live at Oshkosh on opening day,” Paula said. “I took a CNN reporter for the 6:30 or 7 o’clock in the morning newscast up in an experimental. It was a nice interview. He interviewed me live while flying, so it was kind of cool.”

Thirty-one years is a long time to stay committed, but Paula said it’s all because of her fellow volunteers.

“We’ve made so many friends over the years volunteering,” she said. “I’ve met all these people over the years that are still coming. There’s a lot of us that have volunteered for years and will continue to volunteer for years to come — it’s the cool thing about EAA.”

Paula also had advice for newer volunteers.

“Make sure you find something that you like to do or enjoy doing,” she said. “It will never be work, because you have fun with the people that you work with. It’s a rewarding aspect of EAA, being able to volunteer with other people that have a like passion. I don’t know that any of us think of it as work, necessarily, because we have such a good time usually being with our friends.”

Thank you for all the work you’ve done for EAA, Paula!