National Space Club honors Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle with award

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Tommy Battle
Mayor Tommy Battle [Photo courtesy City of Huntsville]

The National Space Club honored Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle with its prestigious Community Service award at the 26th annual Dr. Wernher von Braun Memorial Dinner Thursday night at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center’s Davidson Center.

Battle was recognized for his visionary role supporting critical science and the technological aspects of the Huntsville community.

“It was very easy to choose Mayor Battle,” said Alicia Ryan, CEO of LSINC and the program chair for the event. “For one he’s an amazing leader. He has this ability to think about the education, economic development and the community at large. And some of the things he’s done lately have been very significant.”

In particular, Ryan said, Battle was “the driving force” behind the new Cyber Camp that led to this honor. Cyber Camp is a new program at the Space Camp, through a partnership between UAH, Cyber Huntsville and the Space Center, to introduce students to basic cyber skills and hopefully encourage them to enter that field as adults.

“He had the idea, and he had the idea to put it at Space Camp,” Ryan said. “He needs to get full credit for that.”

Mayor Battle said he was honored and flattered to be chosen for the award, and noted there were many others more deserving of the recognition.

“We all know how important the space industry has been to Huntsville, and all the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields are wrapped up in that,” Battle said. “We all need to support that at the grassroots level, in educating our students and the future scientists and engineers of the future, as well as our existing corporate citizens here.”