September 23, 2000

SACO — Susan Dudley Gold has won four national awards, including one first-place award, in the National Federation of Press Women Communications Contest, the most comprehensive international contest for all areas of communications. She and her husband, John Gold, own Custom Communications Inc., a desktop publishing and web design firm with offices in Saco and Portland. Gold received first place in the nonfiction juvenile book category for her book, The Pan-ama Canal Transfer: Controversy at the Crossroads, published by Steck-Vaughn. The book, which Gold wrote and designed, is aimed at middle-school and high-school students. She has written more than two dozen books for children as well as two books on Maine history.

Gold also received two second-place awards and a third-place award. Her ad "Science and spirit unite to bring us hope," created for the Maine Alzheimer's Association and published in the Maine Sunday Telegram won second place in the black-and-white display/newspaper advertising category (service). A brochure created for Bergeron's Shoes & Pedorthic Services of San-ford, based on that firm's family history in the shoe business, won Gold a second-place award in the 1-3 color brochure (profit) category. She also won a third-place award in the 1-3 color brochure (nonprofit) category for "Welcome Home to the Wardwell Neighborhood," written and designed for the Wardwell Home retirement community in Saco.

These entries were among 1,200 that competed in 92 major categories, all of which had received first-place awards at the state level. Entries were judged by 26 professionals and educators from across the country.