Recent Award Recipients
Norman Neuerburg Award Recipients
2024 Neuerburg Award Recipient
Damian Bacich, Ph.D.
Damian Bacich, Ph.D., is a fourth-generation Californian and Professor of Hispanic Languages and Literature at San José State University. In addition to serving as Chair of the Department of World Languages and Literatures for 12 years, he has taught courses on Colonial Latin American literature and culture, translation and the history of Spanish and Mexican California.
Damian's appreciation for California history grew while working at the Bale Grist Mill State Historic Park near his home in the Napa Valley, and while taking classes with historian Michael Mathes at the University of San Francisco, where he graduated with a B.A. in History. He later earned a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from UCLA, where he combined his love for history and languages to focus on the transcription and translation of documents from Early Modern Spain and Colonial Latin America.
Damian's book-length translations have been published by the University of Toronto, McGill-Queens University, and Notre Dame University Presses. In addition to the CMF Boletín, he has also published articles in academic journals such as California History, Pacific Coast Philology and Comitatus.
In 2015, he founded the California Frontier Project to help disseminate reliable and well-researched information about early California's history. Since then, the California Frontier podcast and website have reached thousands of students, teachers, and history aficionados worldwide.
Damian joined the CMSA in 2009 and has since presented at numerous CMSA and CMF conferences. He has also served on the CFM board of directors and has been an active member of the Foundation's Scholarship Committee.
2023 Neuerburg Award Recipient
Dr. Lee M. Panich
Lee Panich is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Santa Clara University where he has worked since 2010. He has a PhD in Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley with a BA in Anthropology from Brown University. He is currently the Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Santa Clara University. He has published countless books, articles, and peerreviewed journal articles and well as chapters in peer-reviewed books. He also published articles in the California Missions Foundation Boletín Journal and was a board member of the California Missions Foundation from 2014-2016. In addition to more than 40 academic articles and book chapters, Lee is the author of Narratives of Persistence: Indigenous Negotiations of Colonialism in Alta and Baja California (2020) and co-editor of Indigenous Landscapes and Spanish Missions: New Perspectives from Archaeology and Ethnohistory (2014).
2022 Neuerburg Award Recipient
Dr. Robert H. Jackson
Robert H. Jackson received his doctorate with a specialization in Latin American history in 1988 from the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include historical demography, frontier missions, evangelization in 16th century Mexico, the colonial caste system, and 19th century liberalism. He has authored, co-authored, edited, and co-edited 27 books, and more than 70 professional articles and book chapters. His most recent publications include “Jesuits in Spanish America before the Suppression Organization and Demographic and Quantitative Perspectives,” Brill Research Perspectives in Jesuit Studies 2.4 (2021), 1– 108; “Regional Conflict in the Río de la Plata Borderlands and the Militarization of the Jesuit Missions among the Guarani: A Historic and Cartographic Record,” Boletin: The Journal of the California Mission Foundation 37:1 (2021), 5-46; “The Convent Complexes of the Male Missionary Orders in Mexico City,” Boletin: The Journal of the California Mission Foundation 37:1 (2021), 123-156; and his most recent book The Bourbon Reforms and the remaking of Spanish Frontier Missions (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2022). Jackson lives in Mexico City.
2021 Neuerburg Award Recipient
Dr. Steven W. Hackel
Born and raised in California, Steven W. Hackel earned his B.A. at Stanford University and his Ph.D. in American History from Cornell University with specializations in early America and the American West. From 1994 to 1996 he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture in Williamsburg, Virginia. He taught at Oregon State University from 1996 to 2007 and joined the faculty at UCR in the fall of 2007. Within the larger field of American history, Hackel's research specializes on the Spanish Borderlands and the California Missions. He is especially interested in Native responses to colonialism, the effects of disease on colonial encounters, and new ways of visualizing these processes through digital history. His publications include a biography on Fray Junípero Serra, a monograph on the California missions, numerous essays, a textbook, and two edited volumes. He is the general editor of the Early California Population Project and the Project Director for the Early California Cultural Atlas. He co-curated the Huntington Library’s international exhibition, “Junípero Serra and the Legacy of the California Missions.” He currently is co-chair of the Early Modern Studies Institute’s Seminar on the Spanish Borderlands. His current work involves a study of immigration and community formation in California before 1850.
Edna Kimbro Award Recipients
2024 Kimbro Award Recipient
Dr. Jeffrey M. Burns
Jeffrey M. Burns is the Director of the Academy of American Franciscan History located at the Franciscan School of Theology at the University of San Diego. He was appointed in 2002, and he currently teaches at the Franciscan School of Theology. He served for the past nine years as the Director of the Center for Catholic Thought and Culture at the University of San Diego. Prior to that he served as archivist for the Archdiocese of San Francisco for 31 years. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in US History with a specialty in Catholic Church history. He has published widely including a three-volume illustrated history of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
2023 Kimbro Award Recipient
Charlene Duvall
Charlene Duval has been actively involved in the study of California history, architecture, and archaeology for 48 years, with Central California as her primary area of expertise. She is a partner and the principal historian for Archives & Architecture. Now mostly retired, she managed and conducted intensive historical investigations as a part of her public history work. Since 1999, she has been the historian and Executive Secretary of the Sourisseau Academy for State and Local History at San Jose State University. Her friendship with Edna Kimbro began in 1975 and in the late 1990s, she assisted Edna with her quest to save her Castro Adobe in Watsonville, which had been severely damaged in the 1989 Earthquake.
2022 Kimbro Award Recipient
Martha Vallejo McGettigan
Martha Ann Francisca Vallejo McGettigan is an independent California historian. She is descended from four Spanish soldiers who served in California from 1779-1783, Maria Feliciana Arballo Gutierrez Lopez, who came to California with Anza and is the great great granddaughter of General M.G. Vallejo and Doña Francisca Carrillo Vallejo. She lectures on Native American and Californios with emphasis on the Suysun Tribe, the Vallejo Family, and the women of early California. She has presented papers for the California Indian Conference, The California Mission Studies Association, Daughters of the American Revolution, Anza Society, San Francisco Presidio Historical Society and California State Parks.
She produced a CD of a Las Posadas using historic and original California Mission music. Martha was a master Teacher and Presenter for the NEH “Fourteenth Colony Workshop,” and a participant, researcher, and artifact restorer for the San Francisco Presidio Heritage Gallery.Martha is a recipient of a Visiting Scholar Fellowship at the Autry Institute for the Study of the American West. She received The History Award Medal from the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution for her work in California history.
Martha is one of the first women accepted as a regular member of The Society of the California Pioneers, and from a Spanish descent, a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. She has been published in The Californians, The Sonoma Index Tribune, California Mission Studies Association, California Missions Foundations, The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education, and the Centennial Memoirs of the Daughters of California Pioneers. Martha now resides in Santa Barbara.
2021 Kimbro Award Recipient
Andrew Galvan
Andrew A. Galvan is a descendant of the Ohlone, Bay Miwok, Plains Miwok and Patwin Indians whose ancestral lands comprise the greater San Francisco Bay Region. His family’s roots reach back beyond European contact in the area. Andrew traces his ancestral lineage to the laying of the cornerstone of the first buildings at Mission San Jose by his great-great-grandfather Chief Tarino. The cornerstone for the present restored Mission San Jose Church was laid by his father Felipe “Phil” Galvan in June 1982.
Recent research has discovered his great-great-great-great grandfather’s baptismal entry in the Registers of Mission Dolores, dated November 1794.
Lately, Andrew Galvan’s efforts have focused on developing ways to preserve information about America’s ancient past for the benefit of future generations. One of his strong beliefs is that Ohlone people need to know more about their ancestors. He views archaeology and physical anthropology as a way of retrieving some of what his people have lost. He believes that studies of archaeological remains are the only way he can discover what the lives of his ancient ancestors were really like. Beginning in 1976 at the well-known Holiday Inn Site in downtown San Jose through the present, Andrew has served as an Native American Indian Consultant and/or Monitor at pre-contact archaeological sites in the Counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara.
Since 1978, he has been an active promoter of the Canonization Cause of Padre Junipero Serra and is currently Vice-Chairperson of the SERRA Cause Board of Directors.Andrew is President of The Board of Directors of The Ohlone Indian Tribe, Inc., as well as President of the Board of Directors for the Committee for the Restoration of Mission San Jose.A long-time member of The California Mission Studies Association Andrew was its Board President from 1993 - 1997.Andrew is a founding member of The California Missions Foundation.
As of February 1, 2004, Andrew has undertaken the duties as Curator of Old Mission Dolores, San Francisco, California.
Since 2006, Andrew has joined the Franciscan Pilgrimage Program assisting in pilgrimages to the Alta California Missions.
In September 2015, Andrew was appointed by the California Conference of Catholic Bishops to lead a cultural study of all 21 California Missions. The Study will include a review of displays and signage, updates to materials used to train docents and guides, and similar updates to artwork and presentations on Mission and related websites.
Andrew earned his B.A. in History from the California State University at Hayward.
Knox Mellon Lifetime Achievement Award Recipients
2024 Knox Mellon Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient
Dr. William L. Fairbanks
William Louis Fairbanks II was born in San Francisco in 1937. When he was in the third grade his family moved to the family farm in Bennett Valley outside of Santa Rosa where Bill attended a one room school. He completed his undergraduate education at Santa Rosa Jr. College and San Jose State University, where he earned Bachelors and Masters of Arts degrees in Social Science. Dr. Fairbanks began his career teaching U.S. History at Yuba City High School in 1962 and Anthropology and Sociology on a part time basis at Yuba College in 1964. In 1966, he began his long career as a professor of Anthropology and Sociology at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo. While teaching and raising a young family with his wife Carole, Dr. Fairbanks commuted from Los Osos to the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he completed a P.h.D. in Anthropology in 1975, his focus was cultural change among California Indians as a result of European contact. He spent 41 years teaching at Cuesta, during which time he mentored countless students and colleagues.
Dr. Fairbanks has demonstrated a strong commitment to CMSA. He began attending CMSA conferences in the early 1990s and soon began taking students and colleagues to the annual meetings. Dr. Fairbanks served as a board member of CMSA from 2000 to 2004, as the CMSA President from 2005-2006, and Immediate Past President in 2007. Dr. Fairbanks hosted the CMSA conference in San Luis Obispo in 2004 and co-chaired the local arrangements committee for the 2011 conference at Mission San Miguel.
Beyond Dr. Fairbanks's direct contributions to CMSA, he has introduced many students and fellow teachers to the organization. Over a decade and a half period, he brought dozens of students to CMSA conferences and events. Some of the current and former members of the Board and CMSA officers got involved with the organization through Dr. Fairbanks' efforts.
Other professional associations in which Dr. Fairbanks remains active include the American Anthropological Association, The Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges, the Southwestern Anthropological Association and an informal association, the California Community College Anthropology Teachers Association.
Currently Dr. Fairbanks is challenging himself as he enters retirement by walking across the United States west to east and studying it from an anthropological perspective as he goes. Before breaking for the winter he reached Paris, Kentucky.
Dr. Fairbanks, through both his direct participation and his activities in connecting students and colleagues to CMSA has, in the spirit of Edna Kimbro, helped "shape [CMSA] into the vital, diverse organization it is today" and is highly deserving of the Edna E. Kimbro Award.
– Ty Smith
2023 Knox Mellon Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient
Fray Francisco Morales, O.F.M.
Francisco Morales, O.F.M. was born in Mexico City. He received his MA and PhD at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He has published countless books, lectured at a variety of Universities and received a distinguished Alumnus Award from the Department of History at the Catholic University of America. He is also a fellow of the Academy of American Franciscan History. He has lectured at the Pontifical University in Salamanca, Spain and was advisor for the Franciscan General Chapter in San Diego.
2022 Knox Mellon Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient
Dr. Daniel E. Krieger
Dan Krieger is Professor of History Emeritus at Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo. Since 1984, he has written a history column for the San Luis Obispo County Tribune (McClatchy). He has chaired the Historic Resources Committee at Mission San Luis Obispo and created the first Docent Education Program at that Mission in 1987. He is a past President of the California Mission Studies Association.
2022 Knox Mellon Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient
Dr. Robert L. Hoover
Robert L. Hoover received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, with a specialty in California archaeology. He has taught at Stanford University and was a professor at California Polytechnic State University from 1970 until his retirement in 1998. Since 1976, he has specialized in Spanish colonial archaeology, serving continuously as director of the Archaeological Field school at Mission San Antonio for over 30 years and training over 500 students. Dr. Hoover has also excavated at Missions Santa Inés, La Purísima, Santa Barbara, San Miguel, San Luis Obispo, and for nine years at the Presidio of Santa Barbara. He is a recipient of the Award of distinction from the California Council for the Promotion of History and has received the Norman Neuerburg and Fermin Lasuen Awards from the California Mission Studies Association.
Dr. Hoover was a member of the State Historical Resources Commission for 18 years, from 1984-2002, serving three administrations. During that time, he was instrumental in implementing the California Register of Historic Resources through the Office of Administrative Law and establishing an additional Archaeological Information Center in Humboldt and Del Norte Counties operated by the Yurok tribe. He is Past President of the California Mission Studies Association and the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation and has published on prehistoric and historic archaeology of California in English, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. Hoover has completed nearly 1,000 projects for Federal, State, and local governments and for private entities. He has served as a member of numerous other local, state, national, and international organizations, including being elected a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, the board of the Santa Barbara Mission Archive-Library, and the California Mission Foundation.
2021 Knox Mellon Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient
Zella and Hernan Ibañez
It is an honor for CMF to recognize Zella and Hernan Ibañez for their lifetime achievement and commitment to historic preservation in Baja California. For more than two decades, their efforts at leading and keeping alive the CAREM organization has meant so much to making sure that the story of the missions and Native community throughout Baja California continues for the next generation. Many historic preservation projects have been completed as a result of both of their efforts, and their Tecate Museum Museo Comunitario Kumíaí focuses not only on the story of the Kumeyaay who extended north to Mission San Diego, but also to the entire Tecate community. Through CAREM, they have been able to focus attention on the history of the development of the first missions in the California Mission chain specifically the missions on the peninsula of Baja California. They have also been able to portray the history and culture of the Native people of Baja California not only through their museum, but also through written documents as well as programs for students and adults alike.
CMF Chairman's Award Recipients
2024 Chairman's Award Recipients
Mission La Purísima Prelados
Prelado de los Tesoros (Prelado) loosely translates as “Keepers of the Treasures.” Established in 1973, Prelado supports educational and interpretive programs at La Purisima Mission State Historic Park and was one of the first official cooperating associations.Through the dedication of hundreds of volunteers, most of who are Prelado members, La Purisima mission has become famous for high quality and unique programs. The mission comes to life with docents in period dress, portraying another time as they present living history, guided tours, and community outreach programs. Prelado not only financially supports these programs, but also funds research and livestock care. Currently, Prelado is working closely with State Park staff to raise funds for a new Visitor Center Complex. This complex will include exhibit areas and a tour staging area, a multi-purpose room, an amphitheater, a library, an archives, and larger museum store. Prelado funds most of its activities through memberships and sales in the park. Your membership or donation will help Prelado continue to provide quality interpretive programs, build the new Visitor Center complex, and keep the historical treasures of La Purisima mission as vital educational resources. Prelado has proven itself to be a valuable ally to La Purisima mission, the visitors and staff. Join them by becoming a member! For more information about the association and its many activities, or to become a supporter, please visit the Prelado de los Tesoros website.
2024 Chairman's Award Recipient
Shyra Ligouri
2022 Chairman's Award Recipients
Docents of Mission San Luis Obispo
Mission San Luis Obispo’s historical interpretation program began in 1934 when Fr. John Harnett opened a museum above the cloister. Fr. Harnett and his fellow priests served as guide-interpreters. The present-day museum opened in 1955 and the public accessed the museum through the gift shop. Gift shop staff, mostly volunteers, answered any questions concerning largely self-explanatory exhibits.
By the 1980’s more than sixty docents were giving tours of the County Museum and historic Mission Plaza. A new generation of docent’s ably led by Hank Praeger, Connie Pillsbury, Dona Young, Angie Bertrand, Roger Power and many others are taking the large and enthusiastic docent group into 2022, marking the 250th anniversary of Mission San Luis Obispo.
The Docent Society at Mission San Luis Obispo has been leading tours at the mission for decades. Their dedication to hospitality, history and education is to be commended as are their many hours of volunteer service.
Greeting patrons, leading tours for students, families and friends, the docents at Mission San Luis Obispo are an asset to the mission. Each docent takes time to study the history of the mission era to become a valuable resource and enhance the mission experience for all who visit Mission San Luis Obispo.
2022 Chairman's Award Recipient
Robert Powers
Robert Powers is a media designer and consultant based on the central coast of California. Robert regularly assists the California Missions Foundation with their various media projects, including the Boletin, website, and Correo newsletter.
2021 Chairman's Award Recipient
Fr. John Molyneux
Fr. John Molyneux, CMF is the Pastor of Mission San Gabriel. He was ordained a Claretian priest on June 14, 1997. His ministry has included parish work, formation of seminarians, and editor of U.S. Catholic magazine. Fr. John was assigned as Pastor of San Gabriel Mission in July of 2018. He had previously served as Pastor of Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Stone Mountain, Georgia. He is originally from Queens, New York.
2021 Chairman's Award Recipient
Terri Huerta
Terri Huerta is the Director of Development and Communications at Mission San Gabriel Arcángel. The 4th historic California Mission to be founded by St. Junipero Serra, Mission San Gabriel is an anchor in the community and considered by some the “Godmother” of the City of Los Angeles. Over the past three years, Terri has been the driving force behind a renovation of Mission San Gabriel’s gardens, museum, and tour experience including the preservation and conservation of its historic structures and sizable museum collection. Her goal is to revitalize the Mission experience through partnership and collaboration with all those who have contributed to the planning, building, and stewardship of Mission San Gabriel over the past 250 years.
Terri’s dedication to the San Gabriel Mission community extends beyond the walls of the Mission itself, as she also played a critical role as Director of Development & Advancement of San Gabriel Mission Elementary school. At a time when local Catholic schools struggled to grow their programs, Terri employed her strengths in effective communication and community building to reinforce relationships with all stakeholders, plan strategic growth, and the rebrand of the school. Beyond her professional role, Terri is a Commissioner for the City of San Gabriel’s Community Services department and a Board Member of the San Gabriel Chamber of Commerce. She holds a Master’s in Social Work with a focus on social change and innovation from the University of Southern California.
2021 Chairman's Award Recipient
Julie Bogany
Julia Bogany was a Tongva Tribal Elder and she dedicated her life to keeping alive the culture, the stories and the legacy of the Tongva people. The Tongva people have lived in and around Mission San Gabriel for hundreds of years. Julia ttook great pride in telling the story of the Tongva people to students, tourists and everyone who is interested in this important chapter of California history. Sadly, Julia passed away shortly after receiving this award.