The Tamaqua Area Chamber of Commerce announced the winners of its 2022 Citizen and Business Person of the Year.

Jay Hollenbach Jr. will receive the 2022 Joseph M. Plasko Citizenship Award, and Micah Gursky will accept the Business Person of the Year Award during the Chamber’s annual dinner on Oct. 6.

“The two people being recognized are truly deserving of these awards because of their endless strive for the betterment of the Tamaqua community, intolerance for mediocrity and endless efforts of their time, knowledge and expertise,” said Chamber President Linda Yeich.

Hollenbach began his community service at the age of 18. He is a 34-year member and volunteer firefighter at the American Hose Co. No. 1 of Tamaqua. He has worked in multiple engine room officer roles including engineer, lieutenant, captain and as an executive officer including the positions of trustee and company president.

He is an active member of Bethany Evangelical Congregational Church where he has volunteered for countless years with the church’s Operations Commission and Vacation Bible School. He has served as a greeter and an usher, helped on trips to Big Creek Missions in Kentucky and has worked as part of local mission initiatives including Restore 2019 and Restore 2022 to help the less fortunate in the Tamaqua area.

Hollenbach serves on the Tamaqua Borough Council. He and his wife, Gloria, have been foster parents to 21 children, and they have legally adopted two of them, bringing their total number of children to four. He is a member of Tamaqua’s Masonic Lodge and Tamaqua Area Chamber of Commerce and has coached for the Tamaqua Youth Soccer League for 19 years.

He and the staff of his plumbing business donated time to help prepare for the 2016 Tamaqua Remembers opening event, and he spent several days in 2020 assembling the playground equipment at West Penn Township’s J.E. Morgan Park.

He owns Jay Hollenbach Jr. Plumbing and Heating and Hollenbach Home Comfort Services. He and his wife are dedicated financial supporters of many nonprofit organizations in the Tamaqua area, most notably the Tamaqua Area Football Boosters and the Tamaqua Community Arts Center.

Gursky graduated from Head Start in 1978, Tamaqua Area High School in 1991, and was cum laude from Princeton University in 1995, then returning to Tamaqua.

He worked for 15 years as the business development manager for St. Luke’s University Health Network and has led the effort to reinvigorate health care services in the Tamaqua area beyond the full-service hospital in Coaldale. All of the St. Luke’s family practice and specialty offices are in Tamaqua because of Gursky’s direction. It started through his involvement with the Tamaqua Area Community Partnership, where he has served for 27 years as director and a leader when it comes to downtown community development.

The Chamber noted that whether it be the arts center development, the expansion of Hope & Coffee or the other initiatives that he has brought to the table such as Choose Happiness, Tamaqua Has Heart and Tamaqua Night Out, Gursky has been instrumental in seeing it through.

In addition, he has been involved in the restoration of the Tamaqua Train Station, the development of affordable housing units, and has brought business owners to the borough including Wheel-Tamaqua, Stoker’s Brewing Company and Revere Brewery. The nonprofit recently started a new planning effort, Tamaqua Choose Happiness, which is an effort to make Tamaqua a place where people’s happiness is a community goal.

Gursky also served on borough council for 16 years, eight of which he was president.

The Chamber noted, “Without Micah’s steadfast leadership since the 1990s, Tamaqua would still be a struggling rather than a thriving community.”