Richard K. Winters has been named director of the Salt Lake Area Community Services Council, a private, non-profit agency that coordinates human services in the Salt Lake Valley.
He replaces Lowell L. Bennion, who stepped down Oct. 1 after 16 years of incredible growth in the council programs.Winters, a Salt Lake native, was vice president of the council's board of directors. He and his wife, Mary, have served for more than a decade as volunteers at the Salt Lake Juvenile Detention Center. In 1987 the Utah Correctional Association presented him with the Outstanding Citizens Contributions Award.
Winter is also a member of the executive committee of the Salt Lake County Commission on Youth, works with his three sons on the settlement of refugees through the New Hope Multi-Cultural Center and is district finance chairman for the Greater Salt Lake Council of the Boy Scouts of America.
"I would never suggest that anyone could ever replace Dr. Lowell Bennion," Winters said. "He is one of a kind. We at the Community Services Council are dedicated to the task of continuing and expanding the service activities that he has devoted the past 16 years of his life to building and sustaining with quiet love and tender concern for the needs of everyone."
During Bennion's tenure, the Community Services Council, 212 W. 13th South, expanded its programs and services to include the Salt Lake Food Bank, which is expected to serve more than 100,000 people before the year's over; the Africa Development Project (an alliance of Utahns with people from 72 drought-stricken villages in the Ouelessebougou region of Mali); the Volunteer Center; the Information and Referral Center; home and personal care programs; and the Independent Living Center, established to help quadriplegics lead more normal, active lives.
Bennion said, "During times of economic uncertainty, the people affected most are usually those who can afford it least. Regardless of how budgets are slashed, people still must eat. People still require companionship; and they must still care for their homes and families. That is what the Council is set up to do."