CITATION 

The West Point Society of the District of Columbia
2001 Distinguished Member Award
is presented to
Winfred George Skelton, Jr.
Class of 1950

Colonel Skelton joined the West Point Society’s Board of Governors in 1993 and was put in charge of developing a career advisory service to assist graduates leaving the service in finding meaningful employment. At that time, a large number of officers were encouraged to leave the service in the drawdown within the whole Department of Defense to meet new force levels. The AOG had not yet undertaken significant efforts to provide this assistance. Colonel Skelton organized his force with three volunteer assistants and a large number of mentors in many occupations. At any one time, the CAS was handling up to thirty officers seeking assistance. In 1995, he was asked to take over the position of Executive Director of the Society. In this role, he organized all of the Society’s programmed events, including three quarterly luncheons and an Army Navy joint luncheon, Founders Day, golf and picnic events. This included setting the dates, securing facilities, creating the flyers and programs, and overseeing the conduct of the event. Other duties included overseeing the Society’s awards program, the Castle Memorial and Distinguished Member awards, by encouraging classes to submit candidates, and in organizing the selection committees. In addition, Colonel Skelton scheduled and organized five Board meetings a year, including preparing the agenda, providing agenda items to the members, and keeping all members abreast of the proceedings. As Executive Director, Colonel Skelton has been the Society’s point of contact with the AOG, participating in the yearly Society and Class Representatives conferences at West Point.

In the early 1980's Colonel Skelton was asked to serve as his class’ Bursar. As such, he handled all of the monetary duties of the class, and maintained the class data base with names and addresses. In four class five-year reunions, he was a key player on the Board of Governors in organizing and pricing the various events, communicating the information to the classmates, and receiving all of the responses. This included maintaining a headcount for all of the individual events, collecting the money from the classmates, and paying all the bills. Each year the class Board of Governors mails a newsletter, class rosters and other pertinent information to all class members and widows. Colonel Skelton, again, has been a key player in this effort in putting together all the individual items, having them reproduced, and preparing the envelopes for mailing. This is an important undertaking in that it has been instrumental in solidifying classmates and keeping them informed of all class activities present and in the future.

Since 1991, Colonel Skelton has served as a volunteer at the National Archives in downtown Washington as a docent in giving behind the scenes tours for visitors. In addition, Colonel Skelton undertook the task of organizing the some 2,000 facsimiles used by the docents, bringing order out of chaos. He organized the items into recognizable areas, created an index describing the items, and made labels for all the documents. As a result, the docents know where their favorite facsimiles are stored, and are able to return them to the proper storage place. In his years at the Archives, he has been elected to serve as president, vice president, secretary and treasurer of the 300 plus person volunteer association. As such he has been influential in steering the association through many problem areas.

In all of these activities, Colonel Skelton has displayed the outstanding qualities of character, distinguished service, and stature to draw wholesome comparison with the qualities that West Point strives for in its motto "Duty, Honor, Country" while making significant contributions to our Society, his class, and the National Archives. It is, therefore, fitting that the West Point Society of D.C. award Colonel Winfred G. Skelton, Jr., USA (Ret), USMA Class of 1950, the Distinguished Member Award.