Posanka embodies public service, volunteerism

  • Published
  • By Shawn Jacobs
  • AEDC/PA
ARNOLD AIR FORCE BASE, Tenn. --  Elaine Posanka has vivid memories of her mother reading to her as a child. Perhaps that experience in her formative years is responsible for her love of books today.

"When I read books to my children that my mother read to me, I say sentences the same way I heard my mother say them, so I know that this activity makes an impact," said Posanka, who is the senior intelligence officer at Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC). "It makes a bond between parents and their children and then it makes a memory that kids will pass on later."

Posanka's love of books and belief that children need to be exposed to them at an early age led her to serve on the Coffee County Imagination Library board. The Imagination Library is a program in Tennessee that mails books every month to registered children from birth to age five. The local board is responsible for raising half of the $50,000 a year it costs to send the books. The Governor's Books from Birth Foundation, established by former Gov. Phil Bredesen and country music entertainer Dolly Parton, funds the other half.

Posanka - who lives in Normandy with her husband, Wes Spratlin, and two children, Benji, 8, and Molly, 5 - didn't even protest too much when she was "volunteered" to be the board's fundraising chair at a time when the program is at risk of disappearing in Coffee County due to a lack of funding.

"Every single one of Tennessee's counties has this program, so every county has committed to this and does the fundraising for it," Posanka said. "Coffee County is in jeopardy this year.

"Coffee County doesn't want to be the only county in all of Tennessee to not have this program because there's a lot of affluence in Coffee County. Not only is there a lot of affluence, there's a lot of need in Coffee County as well. Kids need books."

Posanka said she has very little experience in fundraising, but she and her co-chair, Barbara Snyder, are tackling the project head-on, pleading with businesses and individuals to donate what they can.

"If I have to, I will start at one end of Jackson Street and go all the way down to the other end and then I will head up Carroll Street if I need to."

Volunteerism is something that comes almost natural to Posanka. She volunteered for the Air National Guard in order to earn money for graduate school, but she remains in the Guard, where she has risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

As AEDC's representative on the Tullahoma Chamber of Commerce, Posanka volunteered to be a staff lead for the chamber's fundraising concessions at Bonnaroo, where she helped organize and assemble staff. She was so successful, she was honored with the chamber's "Extra Miler of the Year" award. In addition, Posanka is a graduate of Coffee County Leadership and active in her church, the Unitarian Universalist Church in Tullahoma.

The bulk of Posanka's volunteer time, however, is taken up with Cub Scouts, in which her son, Benji, is a member. She holds a number of positions in Scouting, locally, regionally and nationally. Posanka is a local den leader and a member of a pack committee. She's active on the Elk River District level, which includes all the Scouting units in Coffee, Franklin, Moore and Bedford counties. Posanka is the "Popcorn Kernel" for the district, which means she coordinates popcorn sales to raise money for Scouting.

Posanka is an orienteering merit badge counselor for Boy Scouts, assisting Scouts working on that badge and signing off on their requirements. She is on a national committee to define Scouting's activities for the next hundred years and she is also the director of the Cub Scout day camp which is held for one week each summer.

Posanka comes from a long line of civil servants and said that may explain her need to "give back."

"My father's father was a fireman and his wife was a nurse," Posanka said. "My father was military and my mother was a teacher. Her mother was a teacher and her husband was a public servant for safety in Boston.

"I was raised in that environment to be a part of something that's bigger than yourself and to give back. The only way that the world becomes a place that you would want your children to live in is when people act locally and responsibly and give what you think the world needs. You've got to find what your own strengths are and then see how you can help people."

Posanka has been deployed seven times with the Air National Guard: Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom, the Global War on Terrorism, Northern Watch and Southern Watch.

"It was [through] that first deployment and those first years in the service that I realized how deeply satisfying public service is," Posanka said. "Really, the volunteer work I did with the Chamber of Commerce because [then AEDC Commander] Col. Art Huber asked me to. Then I enjoyed it.

"This is another way to give back and it's giving back to my immediate community. Then, when I had children, I had to do things that would directly impact the lives of my children: Scouting, Imagination Library - again local, children, things that are close to my life."