PARIS – Myron Pierce of Paris and Andrea Burns of Waterford share a love of teaching and serving their community. On Wednesday, it was announced they will also share the honor of receiving this year’s Community Service Award from the Oxford Hills Chamber of Commerce.

The Employee of the Year award went to Philip Waterhouse of West Paris, a machinist at Maine Machine Products Co. who hasn’t missed a day of work in 35 of his 36 years with the Paris precision manufacturing company.

All three will be honored at the chamber’s annual dinner Jan. 16, at a location to be announced.

Chamber Executive Director John Williams said each of the honorees “represent the very best of what the Oxford Hills means to us all.” Each has shown a consistent willingness over the years to go above and beyond the call of duty to make their jobs and the community a better place, he said.

Pierce is a retired business education teacher. He’s also a veteran of World War II and the Korean War who has remained a strong leader on veterans’ issues in Maine.

“He has been a kingpin in organizing annual reunions of the units that he served with in World War II,” said Major Gen. Earl Adams of the state’s Department of Defense, Veterans and Emergency Management.

Pierce was very involved in the years-long effort to locate the Maine Veterans Home in Paris.

“To know Myron Pierce, is to know a true American patriot,” wrote state Rep. Ted Heidrich of Oxford. “Not only has Myron served with distinction and honor in two wars, he has served his community with unselfish devotion. If a civic or veteran issue arose, Myron was always in the front lines.”

Pierce has been an active Shriner, and has been active helping younger people assume responsibilities as good citizens. He continues to be active in the V.F.W. programs Voice of Democracy and the poster contest on Americanism.

“Individuals like Myron Pierce demonstrate that to have a wholesome community you must volunteer your time and knowledge,” said Joseph Cooney, chairman of the Western Maine Advisory Committee.

Burns, her colleagues say, is a team builder who leads by example. She became an elementary school teacher for SAD 17 in the early 1970s, retiring in 1996.

Since her retirement, by focusing on “the big picture,” she helped restructure the Stephens Memorial Auxiliary in a way that made everyone – longtime members and newcomers alike – feel ownership in a new plan for Stephens Volunteer Services, wrote Lynn Schiavi.

“I know of few people who can manage to get things done in as efficient, creative and thoughtful a way as Andrea Burns,” said Nancy Marcotte, an art teacher at the high school.

Cynthia Burmeister, who works with Burns on behalf of the McGlaughlin Foundation, wrote in her nomination letter that Burns has a “tireless devotion to causes she believes in” and “is a model for all of us who volunteer in the community.”

McGlaughlin Executive Director Lee Dassler said Burns was instrumental in saving the endangered McGlaughlin Garden, and served as its first board president.

Waterhouse is the kind of employee, who, “If you had 100 of them, you can go to the moon and back,” said Roland Sutton, Maine Machine’s chief executive officer. Waterhouse began by taking an extensive company apprenticeship course, “and he’s been outstanding with us ever since,” Sutton said.

His brother, company President Jeff Sutton, wrote in his nomination letter that Waterhouse’s “work ethic and work habits truly separate him from the pack and make him a constant shining example to point the way for others. He is always at his work area, productively engaged in the job at hand.”

For his part, Waterhouse said his parents always taught him “to give a good days’ work for a good days’ pay.”

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