Biography:
HOWARD AND JUDY SACKS are recipients of this year’s second Ohio Heritage Fellowship for Community Leadership. They have dedicated their lives to the traditional arts and have shared their knowledge to document, preserve and present those arts to a wide audience. Howard Sacks, a sociology professor and director of the Rural Life Center of Kenyon College, and Judy Sacks, an affiliated scholar in Kenyon’s American Studies department, are lifelong collaborators, folk music scholars, performers (Howard on guitar, Judy on mandolin), co-authors of the award-winning book Way Up North in Dixie: A Black Family’s Claim to the Confederate Anthem and producers of the 1985 album Seems Like Romance to Me: Traditional Fiddle Tunes from Ohio. Fixtures at Kenyon College since 1975, Howard and Judy Sacks directed the Gambier Folk Festival for more than 15 years and were deeply involved with the National Folk Festival for several years. They continued that involvement when Cityfolk brought the National Folk Festival to Dayton for three years (1996-1998), with Howard serving as main stage manager, and as Cityfolk launched the annual Cityfolk Festival in 1999. Howard Sacks was selected in 1994 as Kenyon College’s first recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Teaching Professorship.

Their ongoing educational and community projects about traditional foodways are models for small town and agrarian cultures.