| Award | Leibrock Lifetime Achievement Award |
| Name | Melany Thomas |
| Year | 2011 |
| Description | The average delegate to the Council of State Neurosurgical Societies meeting each spring and autumn is a highly motivated and intelligent neurosurgeon with a limited understanding of the CSNS and how it works. At the crack of dawn on the first day of each Council meeting, these delegates, many suffering from jet lag and lack of morning coffee and all harboring some angst about being away from home and practice, stagger into the CSNS office looking to register for the meeting and for guidance as to exactly what to do and when to do it. The CSNS office, always brightly lit and with the coffee on, is populated by multiple copy machines, computers, tables laden with boxes filled with registration items, a few chairs, and for 23 years it also contained Melany Thomas.
Melany began her stint with the CSNS on loan from her day job as administrator for Neurosurgical Associates (aka Russell Travis and Jim Bean) in Lexington, Kentucky. In 1988, her first year at the CSNS and when Dr. Travis was Council Secretary, she was armed with one typewriter, no coffee, a lot of white-out, one Xerox machine and an attitude. That attitude was then and always has been one of a bright and cheerful nature and a willingness to function as a lighthouse for each and every delegate as they navigate the somewhat misty, confusing atmosphere that always seems to suffuse a CSNS meeting. All CSNS officers and delegates have visions of how it should be but getting the vapors of the future condensed down to tangible stuff actually done needs the people chemistry talent of an in the trenches coordinator/administrator. Melany filled this role for 46 CSNS meetings and has always been available for inter-meeting assistance as a go-to gal when a doc has a need. Just how Drs. Bean and Travis managed to make Melany available over the past 23 years mystifies us all but perhaps is explained by their catching the CSNS bug which resulted in both serving in many CSNS positions including the CSNS Chairmanship. Every CSNS Chairperson following the Travis/Bean era has requested that Melany continue in her position with the CSNS and thus, with the kind support of the Lexington duo, came the 23 years. Considering Melany’s commitment to Lexington (which will continue) and the CSNS, just how she found time for her marriage to Richard, her two stepsons and two grandchildren and numerous avocations is hard to fathom. Remember if you will, each CSNS meeting is not populated by a cohesive, disciplined army of neurosurgeons but, consistent with its history of grass roots activism, is attended by neurosurgeons with diverse agendas and opinions about the exact color of their local grass, all of which needed to be addressed and potentially amalgamated into a consensus opinion for the AANS and CNS to consider. Attending to this polyglot group takes a particular talent, which like pornography, is hard to define but you know it when you see it. And Melany has this talent in spades. And thus, in this year of our Lord 2011, we see who we have come to know and appreciate, perchance to love, doing what we knew was inevitable, much like we know the snows will follow sunny summers and crisp autumns. Melany has decided to step down. It is definitely down since she has elevated the task of CSNS meeting coordinator to a high level. Just how we will survive this loss is currently not totally clear but we will survive, just less smartly than we would have with her. So now comes how to formally recognize the lady who has been the binding keeping the CSNS book together these last two plus decades. The Lyal Leibrock Lifetime Achievement Award was created in the memory of the late Dr. Leibrock to recognize individuals with long dedication to the grass roots effort that is represented by the CSNS. Recipients of the award are to have labored long and hard for the organization and have had a significant impact on the members and the socioeconomic efforts of the Council. No previous recipient of the Leibrock Award has worked so hard for so long as has Melany Thomas and were Lyal still with us, it is inconceivable he would not be first in line to agree. It would seem the award was created with her in mind. How appropriate to have it bestowed this year upon her-- alas as she leaves us. Another like her is unlikely to walk this way again. Randy Smith |