AIA President Douglas L Steidl, FAIA, reminded the audience at the May 21 closing session of the AIA National Convention that Executive Vice President/CEO Norman L. Koonce, FAIA, who has served the Institute in that position since 1999, will be retiring at the end of the year. “Norman, your service to this organization over a lifetime, but especially over the past two decades, first as president of the Foundation and then as the Institute’s EVP/CEO, has been phenomenal,” Steidl said. “What can we say that would express all the thanksgiving we feel for your many accomplishments?”

Steidl enumerated among Koonce’s achievements:

• Achieving financial stability
• Staff development and team building
• Visionary leadership
• Vastly increased trust at all levels of the organization
• Profit-sharing for all chapters of the AIA
• Vastly improved documents and distribution system
• Effective advocacy programs
• Relationship building between the collaterals and other professional organizations
• Providing an exemplary model of ethical leadership.

Citation highlights “moral compass”
“The Board wishes to acknowledge your exemplary service to the profession and to the public, here in front of those who have been enriched by your service, the members of the AIA,” Steidl told Koonce. Steidl, with visible emotion, read the commendation signed by every member of the national Board:

“The American Institute of Architects,
through its Board of Directors,
confers with gratitude this
Citation for Exceptional Service
upon its distinguished and beloved
Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer,

Norman L. Koonce, FAIA

A thorough accounting of his many contributions
to his profession, which he loves;
to his community, which he engages
with a passion driven by a commitment to serve;
and to the staff of the National Component,
which he considers his second family
would fill a shelf of many volumes.
Suffice it to say, in this brief space,
that during his tenure as the Institute’s Chief of Staff,
his actions have embodied the noblest traditions
of the AIA and his profession,
and his character offers a moral compass
that will guide future generations
to believe in the beauty of their dreams,
ever mindful that the right
to be honored by posterity as a worthy ancestor
comes not by chance, but by choice.

Douglas L Steidl, FAIA
President
21 May 2005

Steidl then asked Norman’s wife, Suzanne Koonce, Hon. AIA—known affectionately as “Sue”—to join them on stage. “Sue Koonce has been a wonderful ambassador, a trusted advisor, a gracious hostess, and, when necessary, an effective peacemaker,” Steidl said. “Sue, on behalf of this organization, please accept our gratitude for all you have done and will do for this profession.”

LSU Award, scholarship fund
Steidl then introduced David Cronrath, AIA, interim dean, School of Architecture, College of Art and Design at Louisiana State University, Koonce’s alma mater. “Norman Koonce has been a passionate and dedicated champion for the idea that architecture has the power to elevate and enrich the human experience,” Cronrath said. “On behalf of the LSU Chancellor, Sean O’Keefe, I am proud to award the College of Art and Design Distinguished Alumni Award to Norman L. Koonce, FAIA.”

“Anyone who has spent time with Norman soon learns an important character trait of the man: the importance he assigns to education, to architecture in particular,” added President-elect Kate Schwennsen, FAIA. “Norman, your friends on the Board could not think of a better way to honor your commitment to education, your faith in the future, and the abiding love you surely have for your alma mater than to announce from this stage the establishment at LSU’s School of Architecture, an endowed scholarship in your name.”

“Every member of the AIA Board had made a personal contribution to fund this scholarship, and they invite any touched by the service of this good man to join them in contributing to this special celebration by helping to fund this scholarship,” Schwennsen concluded. “A Web site has been set up to accept contributions.”

The audience gifted Koonce with a standing ovation—the third during this session and the longest and loudest one yet. Koonce, deeply touched, said simply in response, “Thank you very much from the bottom of my heart for the opportunity to serve this profession and for this honor.”

—SS

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