Ken Iobst is the Volunteer of the Month for February, for his work supporting the auction with Rob Dahlstrom and his other work supporting IT needs of UUCSS. Ken first came to UUCSS in 1978 with his sons Adam and baby twins Wayne and Paul. He remembers attending Catoctin that fall and hiking with the twins in backpacks. He was one of the founding members of the Men’s Group, which has been meeting since around 1981. He soon became involved in the auction, which was then run on 3×5 file cards. He wrote the first program for automating the auction in 1980 and continued providing IT support for the auction over the years. Currently he focuses on setting up the computer hardware and Ethernet cables for the auction. He and Rob are always looking for ways to improve the IT side of the auction.
After Ken left UUCSS for a while in the 1990s, he kept his connection with UUCSS through his ongoing involvement in UUMAC, a UU summer camp that takes place in each year in Pennsylvania. After his youngest son Nathan was born he returned to UUCSS with his partner Alexa Fraser. Ken focuses his volunteer efforts on IT. Besides the auction, he is responsible for maintaining the UUCSS web domain and the logical email addresses. This role allows him to support UUCSS without requiring the long commutes to the church for meetings. Ken finds enormous value in the people of UUCSS, who support one another as family during difficult times.