| | | |
| |
Presented to
Bill Honerkamp
Bill Honerkamp received the 2001 A.H. Pankow
Award from Governor William J. Janklow.
The annual A.H. Pankow Award honors a member of South Dakota’s print or broadcast media whose coverage and promotion of the state’s visitor industry is distinct and unequaled.
Even though our recipient carved out a niche in the tourism industry, fate had a hand in the beginning. Being a native South Dakotan and growing up in the Black Hills, Bill Honerkamp saw the effects of the visitor industry firsthand. Throw in the fact that Honerkamp grew up in a camping resort, the doors of fate for a career in tourism were almost sealed.
When the time came to choose a college and career, Honerkamp focused on journalism and communications, receiving a BA in Communications from Black Hills State University. Like most college graduates, Honerkamp needed to see the world and the Navy provided the vehicle … often a floating one. For four years, Honerkamp took on the title of roving reporter covering Apollo moon mission splashdowns, presidential visits and several missions to Viet Nam with combat camera teams.
In 1972 Honerkamp took another mission, this time back to South Dakota where he landed a job with the South Dakota Division of Tourism as a publicist. A year later, he was promoted to State Travel Director and energized the state’s tourism campaigns for eight years.
In 1981, a new mission presented itself back in his stomping grounds. The mission: preside over the state’s oldest tourism association, the Black Hills, Badlands and Lakes Tourism Association. Today, Honerkamp is president of this association and oversees the management of the new $3.2 million Black Hills Visitor Information Center, a staff of nine employees and a budget of more than $1 million.
| |
| | | |
