Eugene Shirk

Eugene Leid Shirk served two terms as mayor of Reading, Pennsylvania, first from 1963 to 1967 and again from 1971 to 1975, and spent decades as a professor and athletic director at Albright College. In 1976, after leaving elected office, he helped found Berks Community Television and served as its president until his death in 1994 at age 92. Berks Community Television became the public access organization serving Reading and Berks County, and Eugene's founding leadership gave it institutional grounding in a city that had just experienced his own reform mayoralty, marked by a crackdown on corruption and a commitment to clean civic institutions. The ACM recognized his contribution with the Dirk Koning-George Stoney Award for Humanistic Communication in 1986.

Berks Community Television continues to honor his legacy through the Eugene Shirk Community Builder Award, given annually at the station's reception to recognize community-minded leadership in the Reading area.

Eugene's path from mayor to media center founder reflected a consistent civic purpose: the belief that a community's public institutions should be trustworthy, open, and accountable to the people they serve.