The Alaska Miner Spring 2024 58 Fairbanks Convention: Award Winners Curt Freeman, Charles C. Hawley Lifetime Achievement Award Presented by Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse The Charles C. (Chuck) Hawley Lifetime Achievement Award is named in honor of the longtime AMA member and former Executive Director Emeritus who dedicated his entire career to advancing Alaska’s mining industry. This award seeks to recognize the service contributions of a mining industry pioneer, individual, or employee who, like Chuck, devoted his professional life to ensuring a successful mining industry in Alaska. This award will honor the dedication and success Chuck exemplified during his career: devotion of time, effort, thought, and action consistently shown in his mining industry service, perseverance and ambition, and a love for educating Alaskans on mining industry endeavors For all his exploration work in Alaska and his contributions to AMA and the Alaska mineral industry, we are proud to announce Curt Freeman for the 2024 Chuck Hawley Lifetime Achievement Award. Like many individuals of his generation, he came to Alaska to pursue a degree at the University of Alaska. Rumor has it that he may have known how to shoot the rock, but that part of his Alaskan career is lost in the mists of time. Instead, he is known across North America and beyond for knowing rocks and finding valuable mineralization in those rocks. He stayed in Fairbanks after getting a geology degree from UAF and pursued a career in mineral exploration. This career took him around the world, pursuing that next big discovery, but he always returned to Fairbanks. He and his team of professionals have been credited with a number of golds, copper, silver, nickel, platinum group, and rare metal discoveries in Alaska and other parts of the world. In November 1996, he began writing quarterly Alaska mining news summaries for the Society of Economic Geologists and eventually added writing monthly Alaska mining news summaries for Mining News Alaska, the predecessor to North of 60 Mining News. His articles were the thing to read if you wanted to be current on the Alaska mining scene. Those articles continued for 23 years, through three economic downturns and their accompanying upswings. Through all the years, these articles inspired new mineral exploration companies to come North for their chance to find the Mother Lode. He has been a member of AMA since 1978. He has also served several times as an AMA Board member representing the Fairbanks Branch. His contributions to AMA have guided AMA as well as grown the corporate and individual membership pools for AMA. Like the namesake of this lifetime achievement award, geology is always more than rock science for him. He has made numerous friends across the globe while breaking rocks on an outcrop or intently analyzing geologic maps and data. Employment at his company gave many geologists experience that started or advanced their careers. His service as a member, and then Chairman, of the Geologic Mapping Advisory Board for the State of Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys help guide DGGS work to areas of interest for natural resource extraction companies. Mineral exploration companies benefited from geologic investigations in areas of high potential for the discovery of valuable ore deposits. He is also a long-serving member of the Board of Directors for the Alaska Mining Hall of Fame Foundation. His interest and research of Alaskan mining pioneers is an outgrowth of studying Alaska mineral deposits and the people who discovered and mined these deposits. The Alaska Mining Hall of Fame ceremonies that are conducted at AMA conferences are well-attended events. The ceremonies are one way that AMA’s current members stay connected to the pioneers that built the Alaska mining industry. Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Zoom Szumigala and Ted Hawley present the award to Curt Freeman.
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