Ted Davis, vice president of marketing and public affairs at the St. Paul (Minn.) Convention and Visitors Authority, was honored on November 21 in Washington, D.C., for his work as co-founder of Serving Our Troops, an all-volunteer effort to connect National Guard members serving overseas with their families.

Gen. Craig R. McKinley, chief of the National Guard Bureau, presented the first-ever National Guard Civilian Excellence award to Davis at the annual National Guard Joint Leadership Conference.

Serving Our Troops organizes steak dinners for members of the Minnesota National Guard and their families. Each event involves a special meal for National Guard members deployed overseas, in Iraq, Kuwait or Kosovo. In addition to specially prepared dinners, the events feature live video links between Minnesota and the locations where troops are on active duty, giving families an opportunity to share time together. SOT has shipped and served more than 40,000 steak dinners to members of the National Guard and their families at events in Kosovo, Iraq, Mississippi, Oklahoma, as well as in St. Paul and Rochester, Minn.