23 JUN 2015

Board Chairman is ‘Citizen of the Year’

Mac McManigal presents G. Ben Huber of NorthBay Healthcare the Fairfield Citizen of the Year Award.

Longtime NorthBay Healthcare Board of Directors chairman and member G. Ben Huber is the 2015 Citizen of the Year in Fairfield.

At its annual installation of officers event and awards ceremony on June 19, the Fairfield-Suisun Chamber of Commerce announced the results of a recent selection process.

“He is being honored as Citizen of the Year, but much of what he has done over the last half century he continues to do,” noted Mac McManigal, who presented the award to Mr. Huber. “His resume qualifies him to be Citizen of the Year for many years past and present.”

He added, “We are somewhat remiss in not paying tribute to his legacy much sooner than now. His picture should be inserted next to the definition of ‘statesman’ in Webster’s dictionary.”

Mr. Huber moved to Fairfield with a new business in 1965 and ever since has been a stalwart promoter, entrepreneur and believer in his hometown and its neighboring communities.

With the help of his longtime friend and business partner, Frank Burkdoll, he located Explosive Technology outside Suisun City in an old Nike missile site. Their company, which later would become OEA Aerospace, built pyrotechnic devices for jet fighters, the Space Shuttle and missiles, among other things.

Theirs was the first-ever Fairfield-Suisun Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year in 1966.

From 1976 through 1986, he served us as a Fairfield city councilman. It was an era marked by the city’s most industrious, fast-paced development and maturity. His civic involvement continued into the 1990s when he joined the Board of Directors of the Fairfield-Suisun Chamber of Commerce, eventually serving as its chairman.

For the last 23 years – and to this day – he has helped shape the healthcare landscape in Fairfield, Suisun City and beyond. He joined a fund-raising committee in 1971 for what was then Intercommunity Hospital, helping upgrade and add new facilities.

In 1992 he joined the Board of Directors of NorthBay Healthcare and continues to serve as its chairman, a role he’s filled for 10 years. He has guided the evolution of the locally-owned and managed entity as it has gone from a single primary care hospital to a regional provider of advanced medical services. This year, he helped launch a $200 million modernization and expansion of NorthBay Medical Center.

He advocated long and hard for Fairfield and Suisun City to have an independent healthcare system that would ensure his friends, family and neighbors would not travel out of the county for sophisticated medical needs. Under his watch, cutting-edge cancer care, open-heart surgery, neurosurgery and the county’s first trauma center would become a reality, close to home.

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