The Rotary Club of Christiansburg-Blacksburg presented its 2020 Citizen of the Year Award to Raymond “Ray” Plaut via Zoom ceremony at a recent meeting.
The award honors “an individual whose voluntary acts and services have made the Christiansburg-Blacksburg area a better place in which to live,” according to Dr. Doug McAlister, chairperson of the club’s award committee.
Plaut, known as “Mr. Ray” to the kindergartners of Gilbert Linkous Elementary School in Blacksburg, has volunteered with the students for the last nine years for approximately seven hours each day, 180 days per year, which amounts to more than 11,000 hours of unpaid volunteer hours. With approximately 60 kindergarten students each year, he has impacted the lives of at least 540 students during this time.
Kindergarten teacher Tess Brooke said of Plaut’s service, “Mr. Ray’s day involves things you’d assume an elementary school volunteer would do, such as leading learning stations, reading to children and playing with students at recess. But our Mr. Ray does so much more.”
According to Brooke, he remembers all the student’s birthdays, dresses up on the 100th day of school, uses his engineering background to give STEM encouragement, assists with traffic flow to and from school and attends all school events.
“Many of our students think of him as the fifth kindergarten teacher,” Brooke said.
Plaut retired from Virginia Tech’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department in 2008 after 33 years of service. He was the university’s youngest professor when he was hired in 1975 and taught courses in the analysis, stability and dynamics of structures. He was the Dan H. Pletta Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the College of Engineering when he retired.
Plaut began volunteering at Gilbert Linkous because his grandchildren live on the West Coast.Brooke said, “He feels like when he is reading to our kindergarteners, it is as though he is reading to [his grandchildren]. He truly is a kindergarten volunteer extraordinaire.”
