Friendship Honors Community Leaders at 6th Annual Vision & Values Awards
Friendship celebrated three individuals whose lifetimes of service have helped educate, strengthen and give voice to others during its 6th Annual Vision & Values Awards on Wednesday, August 26, at The Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center.
This year’s awards honored Ted Edlich, Richard Chubb, and Dr. Kris Tilley-Lubbs — three leaders whose work has touched generations throughout the Roanoke Valley and beyond.
The Vision & Values Awards recognize individuals who embody Friendship’s vision of transforming perceptions and embracing aging and its core values of accountability, compassion, positivity, respect and teamwork. This year’s honorees have each demonstrated those ideals through careers defined by service, advocacy and a willingness to stand up for people whose needs and voices can too easily be overlooked.
Emmy Award-winning WSLS 10 News anchor John Carlin served as emcee for the celebration, helping share the stories of the three honorees and the extraordinary impact each has made.
Ted Edlich: Giving Others a Foothold on Life
For Ted Edlich, fighting poverty has never simply been about addressing an immediate need. It has been about creating opportunities for people to build better lives.
In 1975, Edlich became President and CEO of Total Action for Progress (TAP), beginning a 40-year tenure that would help transform the organization into one of the nation’s most respected and innovative Community Action Agencies.
Under his leadership, TAP created educational, employment, housing and business-development opportunities for thousands of families throughout the Roanoke Valley. His vision also helped give rise to programs and organizations including Virginia CARES, Project Discovery, the Child Health Investment Partnership, Feeding America Southwest Virginia, the Legal Aid Society of the Roanoke Valley and the Roanoke Area Office on Aging.
At the heart of that work was a simple conviction: strong nonprofit organizations should be willing to step forward and address needs that no one else is meeting.
Even after retiring from TAP, Edlich has continued serving others as a mindfulness instructor and licensed professional counselor, helping people ranging from students to seniors find calm, direction and purpose.
His decades of work have been guided by a belief that continues to resonate: everyone deserves a good foothold on life.
Richard Chubb: Carrying the Dream Forward
For nearly four decades, Richard Chubb — known to generations of students as “Coach Chubb” — dedicated his career to educating and mentoring Roanoke’s young people.
A 1954 graduate of Lucy Addison High School, Chubb earned degrees from Bluefield State College and Western Kentucky University before serving Roanoke City Public Schools as a teacher, coach, guidance counselor and eventually principal of Harrison and Hurt Park elementary schools. His commitment to young people continued long after his retirement in 1991, when he founded R.L. Counseling Services and created a program serving at-risk youth.
But Chubb’s legacy reaches beyond the classroom.
A lifelong resident of Roanoke’s historic Gainsboro neighborhood, he has worked for decades to preserve the stories of the once-thriving Black community that was dramatically changed by urban renewal. Through his conversations with journalists and historians, Chubb has helped ensure that the experiences, contributions and resilience of the people who called Gainsboro home are not forgotten.
As an educator, mentor and historian, Chubb has spent a lifetime living the words he has shared with others: “Carry the dream on.”
Dr. Kris Tilley-Lubbs: Building Bridges Through Education
Throughout her career, Dr. Kris Tilley-Lubbs has used education as a way to build connections between people, cultures and communities.
Tilley-Lubbs joined Virginia Tech’s School of Education in 2003, beginning more than two decades of teaching, research and community engagement. As a faculty member, she served as principal or co-principal investigator on grants totaling more than $970,000, with work dedicated to helping Latino communities throughout the region develop English language and literacy skills. Her accomplishments earned recognition including Teacher of the Year from Roanoke County Schools and the Teaching Excellence Award from Virginia Tech.
Her commitment to service has extended far beyond the university.
As President of Casa Latina Roanoke Valley, Tilley-Lubbs has helped the organization connect Spanish-speaking families with vital resources while working to ensure their voices are represented in the conversations and decisions shaping the community.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, she also helped organize vaccination clinics and outreach efforts designed to provide Roanoke’s Hispanic and Latino community with trusted information and access to care. Her ongoing partnerships continue to preserve oral histories, address public health needs and create greater understanding throughout the region.
Through that work, Tilley-Lubbs has become not only an educator and advocate, but a bridge between communities.
Celebrating Lives of Purpose
Although Chubb, Edlich and Tilley-Lubbs followed very different paths, their stories share something important.
Each saw people who needed an advocate.
Each recognized opportunities to make the community stronger.
And each chose, again and again, to serve.
Together, they represent what the Friendship Vision & Values Awards were created to celebrate: people whose leadership is measured not simply by professional accomplishments, but by the lives they have changed along the way.
As Friendship celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2026, those stories carry special meaning. Friendship itself was founded in 1966 by community leaders committed to providing compassionate care and dignity to older adults in Southwest Virginia — a mission that today serves approximately 3,000 residents each year across four campuses in Roanoke and Salem.
The Vision & Values Awards offer an opportunity to recognize that same spirit of service in others.
Friendship congratulates Richard Chubb, Ted Edlich and Dr. Kris Tilley-Lubbs and thanks them for the countless lives they have touched — and for reminding us of the extraordinary difference one person, living and leading with purpose, can make.
With Gratitude to Our Sponsors
Friendship is grateful to the generous sponsors whose support made the 6th Annual Vision & Values Awards possible and who share our commitment to caring for and strengthening our community.
Presenting Sponsors: Cary Street Partners, Clearstead, MarshMcLennan Agency, and StarCare Pharmacy/Fort Lewis Pharmacy
Gold Sponsors: GloFiber Business and Woods Rogers
Silver Sponsors: Acomplis Technology, Connection, and GroveMed
Benefactor Sponsors: Layman’s Contracting and Roanoke Gas
We thank each of these organizations for helping us celebrate extraordinary community leadership and for their continued support of Friendship and the seniors we serve.