Photo by Sarah Finnegan.
Don Lupo, employee in the Mayor's Office of Citizen Assistance, poses with his FBI Director's Community Leadership Award.
One day in this past April will be unforgettable for Don Lupo.
The 66-year-old Birmingham resident was at FBI Headquarters, placed among a crowd of nationally recognizable faces in Washington, D.C.
To his right was Tom Osborne, a former University of Nebraska football coach turned politician, and behind him was Gary Sinise, the actor who played Lieutenant Dan in the movie “Forrest Gump.” Civil rights leader Bernard Lafayette sat perched at the end of his aisle.
“I’m looking around the room, and I’m thinking, ‘What in the hell am I doing in this room?’” Lupo recalled.
Lupo was one of 56 honorees to receive the FBI Director’s 2016 Community Leadership Award. Each of the FBI’s national field offices selects an annual recipient, and Lupo was chosen in early April as the local winner by the FBI’s Birmingham outpost.
The award, according to an official press release, acknowledges individuals and organizations whose achievements in the terrorism, crime, drug use, gang or violence prevention and education fields makes an exemplary impact on the community.
“It truly was one of the most humbling, if not the most humbling, thing that’s ever happened to me,” said Lupo, who was recognized for his work with the homeless.
Lupo has served as the director of the Birmingham Mayor’s Office of Citizens Assistance for the past 17 years. In that position, he said he communicates with the government’s 26 departments to ensure the needs and voices of local citizens are heard and met.
Those citizens include the homeless, for whom Lupo persistently advocates. He has previously coordinated efforts to provide them with basic necessities, such as food and shelter, by carving various charitable channels within the community. For instance, Lupo has helped initiate a program that collects food from local restaurants and delivers it to the homeless. According to the FBI press release, he took steps this past Thanksgiving to guarantee up to 500 people at a local homeless shelter had meal access.
“The mayor has given me a platform and given me the bully pulpit and allowed me to go out there and talk about homelessness,” Lupo said, “and the community has rallied around.”
Lupo, who majored in religion at Samford University, traces his passion for helping others to his childhood in Decatur, where family members instilled the virtue of giving. He watched the impact of generosity unfold first hand as a teenager.
Lupo’s mother, who died of a heart attack at age 36, designated her life insurance policy to a local ministry. The endowment received by the ministry following her sudden passing enabled it to move to a bigger location and expand its impact.
That memory has stuck with Lupo, accompanying him to wherever his job calls — from Birmingham to Washington, D.C.
“We live in a big world, or a little world, and we all have to help each other,” Lupo said. “Somebody lit the path before us, and somebody’s going to light the path after us. We’re just going down the road trying to make it a little bit better every day.”
