Meet Bruce Adams, Our 2024 Andrus Award Honoree!

Bruce Adams of Bethesda, Maryland has been honored by AARP Maryland with the 2024 AARP Andrus Award for Community Service, the Association’s most prestigious and visible state volunteer award for community service.

Named for AARP’s founder, Ethel Percy Andrus, the award recognizes an outstanding leader whose deep commitment to volunteerism and legacy of accomplishments leave a deep and meaningful impact in the community, while inspiring others to do the same.

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For decades, Adams championed community service, mentorship, and youth development in the Baltimore-Washington region. In 1998, he co-founded the Bethesda Community Base Ball Club to create Shirley Povich Field, home of the Bethesda Big Train, and raise funds to improve youth baseball fields in underserved communities.

The Bethesda Big Train, an amateur summer baseball team Adams helped establish, has become a vital part of the area, providing college players the chance to develop their skills and gain professional exposure. The team plays in the Cal Ripken Sr. Collegiate Baseball League, which Adams founded in 2005. Since then, league alumni have been drafted nearly 400 times, including the Toronto Blue Jay’s Brett Cecil, who was the first Ripken alum to play in the Major League All-Star Game. Proceeds from Big Train games support local youth fields, and the team is heavily involved in charitable efforts, including the Roberto Clemente Day of Service in support of the Manna Food Center.

Earlier, Adams founded the Lazarus Leadership Program in 1996, which pairs teenagers with mentors to lead community service projects, from hunger relief to tutoring. This initiative has inspired high school students to become active community leaders.

“Bruce is inexhaustible, even-keeled and is not afraid to ask any group or individual to support his community building efforts,” said longtime volunteer Molly Peter in her letter nominating Adams for the Andrus Award. “His decency and hard work attract people who know their hours and dollars will be put to good use. What others dream about, Bruce accomplishes.”

“The Andrus award symbolizes that we can all work together for positive social change,” says AARP State President David Conway. “AARP has long valued the spirit of community service and the important contributions volunteers make to their communities, neighbors, and the programs they serve. As our founder, Ethel Percy Andrus said, ‘The human contribution is the essential ingredient. It is only in the giving of oneself to others that we truly live.’”

The Andrus award was presented to Adams at an 11:00 a.m. ceremony on October 9 at Kurtz’s Beach in Pasadena, MD.

Recipients across the nation were chosen for their ability to enhance the lives of AARP members and prospective members, improve the community in or for which the work was performed, and inspire others to volunteer.