From Foresight, Vol. 11, No. 2
published 2004
Robert M. (Mike) Duncan, an Inez banker with a national reputation for public service, is the recipient of the 2004 Vic Hellard, Jr. Award. The award, presented annually by the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center Board of Directors, recognizes an individual for his or her contributions to the future well-being of the Commonwealth. It will be presented at the Center’s 11th annual conference on November 16, 2004, at the Lexington Convention Center.
“Mike Duncan is a values-driven, virtuous gentleman who loves Kentucky,” observed Education Cabinet Secretary Virginia Fox. “In all of his Kentucky work in education, economic development, youth mentoring and region building, Mike has recruited staff, program participants, board members and volunteers without regard to race, gender or political affiliation.”
A civic capitalist, Mike Duncan is active in numerous professional and nonprofit organizations. He served as chairman of a state university and a private college. He has served as Chairman for the Center for Rural Development in Somerset, a $30 million state-of-the-art regional center emphasizing telecommunications, training, and development. President Bush appointed him to the President’s Commission on White House Fellows in 2001. Duncan is a Trustee of the Christian Appalachian Project, the fifteenth largest private social services agency in America. Mr. Duncan is a former chairman and current director of the Kentucky Governor’s Scholars Program, a unique educational experience for rising high school juniors. His student-mentoring program, in its twenty-sixth year, was featured on CBS Sunday Morning and in the Los Angeles Times.
Professionally, Duncan was President of the Kentucky Bankers Association and a Director of the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank Cincinnati Branch. In 1989-90, during a sabbatical, he worked in the Bush White House as Assistant Director of Public Liaison. His public service has been recognized with several distinctions including honorary degrees from Cumberland College and the College of the Ozarks.
He has served as General Counsel of the Republican National Committee (RNC) since July 2002. He previously was elected Treasurer of the RNC in January of 2001. Duncan, in his third term as National Committeeman from Kentucky, has served the party at every level from precinct captain, county chairman, state chairman, and national officer. He has been a delegate to the 1972, 1976, 1992, 1996, and 2000 Republican National Conventions and is one of the few persons ever to serve on the four standing convention committees. Mike Duncan and his wife Joanne are 1974 graduates of the University of Kentucky College of Law. They live in Inez, Kentucky, and have one child, Rob, a recent University of Kentucky College of Law graduate. The Duncans are the principal owners of two community banks with five offices in eastern Kentucky.
Given in recognition of service in the interest of Kentucky’s future, the Hellard award is given in memory of Vic Hellard, Jr. and in honor of his long and distinguished career of public service. As Director of the Legislative Research Commission, Hellard was a tireless champion of legislative independence, considered by many to be the cornerstone of modern governance in Kentucky. He is also credited as the principal architect of the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center. At the time of his death in 1996, Hellard, who had retired from his LRC post, was serving as a member of the Center’s Board, contributing substantially to its guidance and efforts to shape a vision for the future of the state and a system for evaluating progress toward its realization.
Previous winners of the Hellard Award are: Judge Anthony M. Wilhoit, retired Chief Judge of the Kentucky Court of Appeals and now Executive Director of the Kentucky Legislative Ethics Commission; Joseph W. Kelly, who served as chairman of the Kentucky Board of Education from 1991 until April of 1998, a period of far-reaching change for education in Kentucky; Mary Helen Miller, a retired state government executive whose career began in the classroom and went on to include high-level posts in both the legislative and executive branches under two governors; veteran journalist Al Smith, a former newspaper publisher, editor, and reporter, and one of the state’s most engaging and enduring media personalities; renowned State Historian for Life, Dr. Thomas D. Clark, author of more than 20 books, recipient of countless awards, and the founder of the Thomas D. Clark Foundation, a private, nonprofit foundation that provides financial support for the University Press of Kentucky; Virginia Fox, long-time Executive Director of Kentucky Educational Television, who helped bring public television into the Kentucky classroom and the 21st century; and Walter A. Baker, a Glasgow attorney with a distinguished career of public service as a legislator and judge.