Leadership Vestavia Hills has announced the recipients of the 2021 Community Leadership Awards.
Antoinette “Toni” Vines, founder and president of Mercy Deliverance Ministries, will receive the Distinguished Citizen Award. Karen Odle, president of the Vestavia Hills Chamber of Commerce, will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award.
The two will be honored at a dinner Feb. 22 at 6 p.m. at Vestavia Hills Country Club. This event also celebrates the organization’s 25th anniversary.
Vines is a longtime Vestavia Hills resident who grew up in Mulga.
She founded Mercy Deliverance Ministries out of concern about communities in the Birmingham area and beyond where people needed health care and food, as well as a path out of poverty. The ministries’ mission is to break cycles of poverty through the delivery of fresh food and produce, health care and education.
At the ministries, she organizes volunteers to work on such projects as monthly food-box distributions, a mobile grocery store in a bus, distribution of care packages to the homeless, the American Heart Association’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities Scholars’ partnership between Auburn University and Tuskegee University, and the development of a mobile health clinic.
Vine’s family — husband Tim and three daughters, LaTrisha, Hannah and Angelica also are involved in the effort.
For 24 years, Vines worked in nursing, including as a nurse supervisor at Brookwood Baptist Medical Center in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and as a clinical nurse in UAB’s 1917 Clinic, which serves adults with HIV/AIDS and hepatitis patients. She also has served in the U.S. Army Reserve.
Karen Odle
Odle is a native of Jasper who settled in Vestavia Hills as a young professional. She joined the Vestavia Hills Chamber of Commerce staff in 2002 and plans to retire in April.
During her tenure, the chamber has grown from 296 members to 1,102 and has implemented programs to improve the economic well-being of the city and ensure a high quality of life. She has helped many small businesses navigate grant, loan and other funding opportunities to help them keep afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic.
She previously was employed at BellSouth and then was a freelance consultant for large companies in the area.
She is married to Steve Odle, and the couple has two children, Erin and Tyler.
Odle is heavily involved in Vestavia Hills schools and in 2001 was appointed to the Vestavia Hills Board of Education, where she served five years, including a year as president. Before that she was a volunteer and then PTA president at Vestavia Hills Elementary West. During her tenure, she pushed for a computer in every classroom and trained teachers to use them. For that accomplishment, she was given the Golden Rule Award from JC Penney.
She later served as president of the Vestavia Hills PTA Council. She is a 1998 graduate of Leadership Vestavia Hills and a 2007 graduate of Leadership Birmingham.
She and several other Vestavia Hills residents in 1999 formed the political action group Vestavia Voters with Visions to get new leadership in city government by backing a slate of candidates for mayor and City Council.
Tickets for the dinner are $50 and can be purchased at leadershipvestaviahills.com and in the chamber office. For sponsorship informa- tion, contact Penny Lewallyn at lewallyn@aol. com or call at (205) 223-7381.
