The email arrived around 5:30 p.m. Friday. 

Moments later, Ron Angerame was pounding his desk in celebration. It was loud enough his wife ran into the room worried the Glennwilde resident had injured himself. 

“I told her, ‘I’m fine. I didn’t get hurt.’ I was just so excited to read that [email],” Angerame said. 

The message informed him and the 347 Facts Committee they won the Arizona Transportation Partnering Excellence Award from the Arizona Department of Transportation. 

The award, established in 2005 and supported by a coalition of transportation and public works organizations, recognizes teams that work across agencies, organizations and communities to solve transportation challenges. 

“They want to recognize people that work collaboratively with people across all different lines of organization to achieve a common goal,” he said. 

For Angerame, the recognition validates more than four years of grassroots advocacy aimed at securing improvements to State Route 347. 

In four years, the volunteer group built a coalition of residents, elected officials, businesses and community organizations to push for funding along the heavily traveled corridor. Along the way, members attended transportation board meetings across Arizona, launched a public advocacy campaign and generated more than 130,000 emails to transportation officials and elected leaders. 

The effort ultimately helped secure roughly $140 million in funding for SR 347 improvements and earned the project a spot in ADOT’s five-year construction program. Construction begins next month. 

“We’re all volunteers. Nobody gets paid,” Angerame said. “People have put out personally thousands of dollars just because they believe how important it is.” 

The group officially receives the award in September, but that’s not the biggest reward. 

“The nicest thing certainly is that we got the project started. That’s the home run,” Angerame said.