Prattville Civitan Club Honors 12 Local Clergy at Annual Dinner

The Prattville Civitan Club honored 12 local faith leaders at its annual Clergy Appreciation Dinner on Feb. 19 at The Smith Center, combining a formal dinner with brief remarks and featuring special guest Stacey Little. The event recognized clergy service and leadership in the Prattville area and followed the club’s longstanding February observance of clergy appreciation.

According to an Elmore/Autauga News Facebook post promoting the event, Stacey Little was the evening’s special guest speaker. The post described Little as a Prattville resident, creator of the award-winning Southern Bite food blog, a Wall Street Journal best-selling author, a television personality, a former Prattville High School Junior Civitan President, and a former Alabama West-Florida Junior Civitan Governor.

The event’s stated purpose was to recognize local clergy “for their service and leadership” and, in Elmore/Autauga News language captured in a program snippet, for their “service, leadership, and compassion.” The Prattville dinner followed the Prattville Civitan Club’s program format of a formal meal combined with brief remarks honoring each honoree, as described in the club’s event summary.

Elmore/Autauga News’ social post about the dinner drew modest online engagement: the captured post showed 10 reactions, 1 comment, and 7 shares. In the Facebook comment thread, the Prattville Civitan Club replied to the publisher with a public thank-you: “Thank you, Elmore/Autauga News, for helping us share about this special evening! We are honored to recognize the incredible clergy who serve our community and are excited to welcome Stacey Little as our guest speaker. We appreciate your support in highlighting this meaningful Civitan tradition.”

The Prattville event fits into a broader Civitan International observance. Civitan International materials note that clubs have set aside a week in February since 1963 to honor leaders of all faiths, and that the project was chronicled in the October 1965 edition of Civitan Magazine. Swark TODAY’s February 12, 2026 press release recounts the project’s inspiration in the story of the Four Chaplains, who on February 3, 1943, a Methodist minister, a Catholic priest, a Reformed minister, and a Jewish rabbi, gave life jackets to other passengers and locked arms in prayer as the USS Dorchester sank. Swark TODAY also reported that nearby Hope’s mayor, Don Still, signed a Clergy Appreciation proclamation calling “upon all of our citizens to show their appreciation and support for the clergy whose efforts make this community a better place in which to live,” and that Hope Civitan holds a banquet in early February to invite local clergy.

Event materials available publicly did not include the names or congregations of the 12 honorees. The Prattville Civitan Club’s promotional post and the original event summary confirmed the count and program format but did not list individual honorees, award text, attendance figures, or the full text of remarks delivered at The Smith Center.

Civitan International frames Clergy Appreciation Week as “a week of celebration and appreciation for the men and women who dedicate their lives to the service of others in their community,” rather than as a memorial. The Prattville Civitan Club’s Feb. 19 dinner continued that local practice of recognizing clergy service and leadership as part of the organization’s February observances.