Each year at the JDRF Georgia Chapter’s Hope for a Cure Gala, a person or couple is selected to receive the Living and Giving Award. The presentation of the Living and Giving Award has become the highlight of the Gala and honorees are selected based on their commitment to the Georgia Chapter and dedication to and fulfilment of JDRF’s mission to find a cure for diabetes.

This year at our 20^th anniversary Gala, we are proud to announce that the Living and Giving Award will be renamed the Barbara and Duke Roos Living and Giving Award in recognition of the Roos’s 20+ year legacy to JDRF. At the 2015 Gala on Saturday, May 9^th, the first Barbara and Duke Roos Living and Giving Award will be presented to Laura and Rutherford Seydel.

Barbara and Duke’s involvement with JDRF began in 1977 when their 12 year-old daughter, Debbie, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes (T1D). Two decades later, Debbie lost her battle with the disease. Living with her illness and surviving her death ignited their passion for helping other families affected by T1D and for raising money for research.

Collectively, Barbara and Duke have taken on leadership positions within the Georgia Chapter, including serving on the chapter’s board of directors, leading a top fundraising team for Atlanta’s Walk to Cure Diabetes, supporting newly diagnosed families, and generously donating their time, talent, and financial resources to the Gala.

In 2005, the couple was also the first recipients of the organization’s Living and Giving Award and this year it will come full circle. “We are tremendously honored to have the award named for us, but, really, we share it with so many other people,” said Barbara. “A lot of others have been with us on this journey.”

Although the Roos’s are being honored for their extraordinary support of JDRF, Duke sums up their motivation best. “We keep doing it,” he said, “because you never know whose life you’re going to touch.”