The 11th annual “Eleanor Wright Unsung Hero Award” will be presented during the 2011 Dan Emmett Music & Arts Festival. The Award will honor one of the many local unsung heroes, those volunteers behind the scenes, who give their time and hard work without any public recognition of their efforts.

For over 35 years, Eleanor Wright has cared for the grave of Dan Emmett. Due to Eleanor’s loving dedication, the gravesite area was cleaned, flowers planted, and needed maintenance performed to keep up the grave of the author of “Dixie”, “Old Dan Tucker” and “Blue Tail Fly.” Eleanor felt the grave of this important Mount Vernon resident deserved so much more, and this “unsung hero” did something about it. Eleanor started the ceremony at the gravesite, which she ran until 2001, as another tribute to the man for whom the music and arts festival is named, a man who had written two of Abraham Lincoln’s all time favorite songs.

The “Eleanor Wright Unsung Hero Award” will be presented at the ceremony, to be held at 6:00 pm on Saturday August 13th on the Square in downtown Mount Vernon. Previous honorees are Eleanor Wright, Curt Cree, Jim Ingerham, M. E. Carpenter, Sally Nelson, John Nixon, Carol Kilkenny, Julie Chester, and Chuck Kindel.