The Rev. David Maitland holds his book and alumnus award at First Baptist Church of Butler on Tuesday, Dec. 27. Maitland took about a year to write the book about growing up in an orphanage. Cary Shaffer/Butler Eagle

The Rev. David Maitland, pastor of First Baptist Church of Butler, 221 W. New Castle St., and director of the Slippery Rock Baptist Camp, 130 Elliott Lane, recently was presented the 2022 Service Award from the Milton Hershey School in Hershey.

This award is given annually to an alumnus of the school who had been nominated and approved by the board of directors of the school’s alumni association. It was presented at the homecoming banquet at the Hershey Lodge, which was attended by nearly 2,000 alumni, as well as teachers and house parents of the school.

“We were flabbergasted when we learned he had won,” his wife, Bonnie Maitland, said. “We thought you had to be a brain surgeon or something to win the award.”

“But they told him it was unanimous that he got the award because it’s based on what you do to continue the mission of Milton Hershey,” she said.

David Maitland was born in Butler and became a student at the Milton Hershey School at age 8.

“He was there nine years,” Bonnie Maitland said. “He was a true orphan. Both his parents died of cancer. He lived on Whitestown Road. He remembers when they came and told him his mother was dead.”

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