The award is named in honor of James S. (Jim) Askins, founder of the National Park Service Historic Preservation Training Program, and recognizes contributions to the preservation trades for the continuance of traditional building skills, advocacy of training in preservation trades, practicing a building trade at  the master level of skill and knowledge, and extraordinary effort given to advancing the awareness of traditional building trade skills and knowledge. 

Winners of the Askins Achievement Award represent more than just quality work and good ethics – they are also recognized as trade leaders who challenge others to work for the betterment of the community around them.

The workshop was held at the campus of Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Sponsors were the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and the Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology. IPTW 2011 brought  together hundreds of the best preservation and traditional trades crafts people, as well as preservation architects, preservation consultants, building trades contractors and others from the US, Canada, Europe and beyond. This year’s workshop offered a unique opportunity to see some of the finest crafts people at work and learn more about how historic building preservation is accomplished in construction.

The 2011 Askins Award recognized the skill and craftsmanship that DeRubis demonstrated with his work on numerous National Historical Landmark and National Register historic structures throughout the USA. DeRubis’ tremendous talent with stone, brick, and mortar, his patience, his knowledge of historic masonry techniques and materials, his humor, and, most importantly, his ability to communicate his trade skill and knowledge to others were cited as supporting factors for his selection.

Dom entered the masonry trade as a young boy.  Later he joined the union and completed an apprenticeship program while working with the family masonry firm in central Pennsylvania.  For the better part of the next 30 years, Dom remained employed as a mason in the private sector.  During this career, Dom developed a broad range of masonry skills, many at the master’s level. 

In 1989 Dom joined the National Park Service’s Williamsport Preservation Training Center, today known as the Historic Preservation Training Center. Dom’s role at the HPTC, until his retirement in January 2011, was to serve as the lead mason on preservation projects and serve a masonry instructor for the center. 

During his tenure with HPTC, Dom taught literally hundreds of employees of the National Park Service and its partners, reaching people from Alaska and Hawaii to Florida and Maine.  Dom’s master level masonry skills were sought out and applied to the preservation of some of America’s great historic structures, including the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, Fort Jefferson, Castillo De San Marcos, and various canals, bridges, and monuments.

The impact of the scores of individuals who have learned the art of masonry preservation by working alongside Dom can be measured through the improved condition of many of this nation’s most treasured landmarks, and  it is for these lifetime achievement s that Dominic DeRubis was presented the 2011 Askins Achievement Award.