The International Federation of Bike Messenger Associations (IFBMA announces the 2005 "Markus Cook Memorial Award" (MCA) for Services to the International Messenger Community
The MCA was conceived as a way for the international messenger community to thank it's most tireless workers. Nominations are sought from the messenger community for those individuals who have done most for us, for those who have consistently put the rest of us before themselves. The principle means of nomination is the IFBMA electronic mailing list, aka the messengers list at messengers@dccourier.com. A committee of former recipients takes the decision, and the award is now presented on Messenger Appreciation Day, which is October 9th.
This year's recipient is Jean Andre Vallery of Sarasota Florida who is being honored for his work with the Bicycle Messenger Emergency Fund. (BMEF). He will be presented the award at the October 18th meeting of the Sarasota Bicycle/Pedestrian/Trail Advisory Committee in the Sarasota County Administration Building.
The MCA was inaugurated in 1998 to honour the memory of Markus Cook, aka Fur, a key figure in the San Francisco messenger scene, and one of the leaders of the international messenger community. His great dream was to bring the Cycle Messenger World Championships to SF in 1996, but never lived to see his dream realized. He died Jan 3 1996, aged 35, of an accidental heroin overdose.
Cook can be seen as a powerful symbol of the messenger scene, charismatic, creative, energetic, playful, but flawed and to a certain extent trapped by its own failure to love itself enough to give itself a chance to live, and fulfill its potential.
To most who knew him however, Markus was just a great guy who was struggling with a few problems, but whom we expected to work it out. He was the leader of the San Francisco messenger band, Lsid, a founder of the San Francisco Bicycle Messenger Association, the informal nature of which has inspired the world-wide Messenger Association movement, the erratic editor of Mercury Rising fanzine and a friend to all, always at the centre of anything that was going on.
One of Cook's visions was a fund to help injured messengers. In Mercury Rising # 10 from 1994 he wrote:
"As I lay drugged and listless in my bed at General the day after a shoulder surgery, my roommate came in and told me he had just seen a group of Western Messengers on their way to visit a fallen sister, Andrea, who had her pelvis broken by a car. Damn, we keep those hospitals busy. This got me thinking about what SFBMA is and what it could be. We spend thousands every week at the same few bars. If a couple hundred people siphoned off a mere 5 bucks a month and dumped it into some kind of emergency fund thing, that would be $12 000 a year, to help people and invest and keep the fund going. Or maybe you could buy a t-shirt and get a membership card. This kind of thing has been discussed before over the years. Might work, I dunno... could strengthen the messenger community in a variety of ways."
Since March 2004 the Bicycle Messenger Emergency Fund (BMEF) has sent urgent financial aid to 29 injured bicycle messengers around the world. The BMEF is a not-for-profit organization, based in Florida, set up by Jean Andre Vallery in 2001. It exists to provide messengers who have been injured and are unable to work, with financial assistance, namely an unconditional grant of $300.
In a job which was described by a Harvard report as the most hazardous occupation in North America, nothing is more important than making sure that an injured messenger has enough money to pay the rent and put food on the table. For this reason, Jean Andre Vallery is this year's recipient of the Markus Cook Memorial Award for Services to the International Messenger Community.