Kentucky Red Cross Honors Rickey Porter as Clara Barton Award Recipient

Since 2013, Rickey Porter has been a “Serving Leader” in the Red Cross Kentucky Region and the Western Kentucky Chapter. Rickey maintains incredible empathy, patience and poise while taking the steps to ensure that the Red Cross is prepared to serve our community. 

He has mentored new and seasoned volunteers alike, and has paved the way for others to provide high levels of service to those in their moments of greatest need. For these reasons, we are proud to announce him as a recipient of this year’s regional Clara Barton Award. The Clara Barton Award recognizes service in volunteer leadership positions held over a period of years.

In the nine years Rickey has been with the Red Cross, he has continued to take on additional responsibilities to ensure that volunteers and the region have what they need to grow and be successful. He has deployed to disasters at home and across the country more than 20 times because he believes in providing for those who have been affected. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rickey has deployed 8 times and logged more than 1,060 hours helping locally. He also responds to an average of 200 home fire cases a year and treats each one as they are the most important one.

Rickey is also a member of our Integrated Care and Condolence Team. In this role, he supports not only the Western Kentucky Chapter but the South Central Kentucky Chapter as well, often leading to interactions with hospital social workers, medical professionals and local coroners. He has been essential in the growth of community partnerships within Western Kentucky with various churches and has provided preparedness and safety education to the community. He is a hands-only CPR instructor and a First Aid/CPR instructor and maintains his certifications just so he can teach life-saving skills to our volunteers. He also provides First Aid stations on behalf of the Red Cross when requested for events such as the Owensboro Air Show and the Senior Games in Hopkinsville.

Rickey’s calm, competent leadership has been essential to the success of the Red Cross mission and objectives here in the Kentucky Region and his expertise is invaluable to our mission delivery. As a region, we are grateful for the support of such an outstanding volunteer!