MARQUETTE – The Folk Alliance Region Midwest has selected Hiawatha Music Co-op founding member and current Board of Directors member, Susan Bertram, for its 2019 Folk Tradition in the Midwest Lifetime Achievement Award.

Each year at the annual conference, FARM presents two awards — the  Lantern Bearer Award  and  the Folk Tradition in the Midwest Lifetime Award.  The annual Folk Tradition in the Midwest Lifetime Award is awarded at the annual FARM Gathering to a living individual who resides in the Midwest and whose involvement in the Midwest folk music and dance community: 1) has been of significant duration, 25 years or more; 2) has been of significant intensity; 3) has involved significant service to the Midwest folk community; 4) has reached, and reaches, beyond a single sector, such as concert performance, into the wider community; and 5) has extended folk music and/or dance outward, into the wider community.

The FARM board has standardized nomination and selection procedures for this award, which is growing in meaning and prestige and which serves not only to honor one person, but to increase awareness of and strengthen ties within and beyond the Midwest folk music and dance community.

Bertram is a founding member of the Hiawatha Music Co-op, a non-profit organization born in 1979 with the sole purpose of presenting, promoting, and preserving traditional music. Over the past 41 years, many founding members have moved away or have found other life tasks to attend to. Many board members have come and gone.  Susan is the sole founding member and regular board member who has been consistently present and actively engaged with the Co-op since 1979. 

Bertram has been active as a board member on twenty-six of the 41 Board of Directors. She has served as president, vice president or treasurer on 19 boards. She remained active as a mother of three young children during years that she was not on the board. Bertram has kept the music going.