OUR COMMUNITY PARTNER OF HOMETOWN HEROES
While the challenges continue, so do the good works done by our neighbors, our teachers, our health care providers, our volunteers and so many others. This is their story.
Ledyard National Bank is proud to support Hometown Heroes, who were
nominated by members of the community and selected by editors of the Monitor.
Nominate your Hometown Hero today.
Lin Kelly once sat with a young boy in a kindergarten classroom at Abbot-Downing School, teaching him his uppercase and lowercase letters. She remembered the moment it clicked for him because he turned to her and said understanding felt “like magic.”
“That was, I think, the greatest thing I ever took out of it,” Kelly said. “You helped somebody, and you made a difference.”
Kelly spent over 1,500 hours in two years volunteering to help over a dozen kindergarteners at Abbot-Downing improve their literacy skills and find a love for reading.
Looking for something to spend her time on after the COVID-19 pandemic, the 75-year-old Contoocook resident found the Foster Grandparent Program, which places people over 55 in classrooms K-12 to help with lessons and student support. Now, facing health and physicial constraints, she helps tend to babies at the White Birch Center for Early Learning in Henniker through the same program, and she hopes her time at at Abbot-Downing left a lasting impression on the kindergarteners there.
Maggie Logan-Phillips just joined the program as a coordinator when she interviewed Kelly.
“Lin was actually one of the very first volunteers I ever brought into the program, so she really has a special place in my heart,” she said.
Logan-Phillips described Kelly as good-humored, entrancing to listen to and someone with a wealth of stories. Kelly was often assigned to children who needed some extra help in their reading skills, and Logan-Phillips said they all showed significant improvement after her lessons.
“She’s someone who doesn’t just teach people, but I think she teaches people to love what they’re learning,” she said. “It’s one thing to learn how to read, but to learn to love how to read is a very different thing.”
Kelly said she initially started helping out fifth graders in Abbot-Downing for one school year, then was asked to teach kindergarteners the next year. She said she wanted to work with young children because she missed when her own four children were that age.
She came to school four days a week from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., helping the instructor with their lessons and spending direct time with many of the children. She remembers spending time with a little girl every morning brushing her hair, because her circumstances at home didn’t include regular grooming.
“It became our little routine,” Kelly said.
Earlier this year, a representative from the Concord Public Library came to speak to the Foster Grandparent Program and suggested Logan-Phillips nominate someone for the Elizabeth Yates award, given to someone who instills a love of reading in young people. Kelly is among the 45 volunteers with the program who dedicate many hours helping young learners.
“The quality of the work that she’s doing and the way that she’s going about it with such love that made her stand out as an obvious choice,” Logan-Phillips said.
Over the past five years, children K-12 have earned lower scores on reading and literacy assessments in the wake of a changing education landscape and the emergence of AI. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, national average reading scores for fourth and eighth graders were lower than scores in 2022. For 12th graders, there was a 10-point difference between 2024 scores and 1992 scores.
Kelly received the award on Oct. 18 and will have the opportunity to recommend $500 worth of books to be added to the Children’s Room collection in the library. When she was notified of being the award winner, she said she thought it was a prank call.
“I was shocked, to be honest with you, but I was extremely honored to think that somebody thought that what I did was obviously very worthwhile,” she said.
Kelly ended her time with Abbot-Downing in April, and she said she misses spending time with the kindergarteners. She hopes she can encourage other older people to volunteer their time and contribute to something they’re passionate about.
“You may not think you make a difference, but you do make a difference,” Kelly said. “I just think it’s really important that we do something to give back a little bit.”