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Keyword search: Hometown heroes 2022

By RAY DUCKLER

LLeanna Lorden has a diminished role when it comes to face-to-face meetings with students at White Birch Center in Henniker. She was promoted to chief operating officer last summer, shifting to an administrative role filled with meetings and phone...

By RAY DUCKLER

Marilia Procopio, the portfolio manager at Elm Grove Companies in Manchester, is flexible like Gumby.How else to explain how she crams three sections of her busy life into one neat little daily package? She’s a single mother raising her 14-year-old...

By SRUTHI GOPALAKRISHNAN

Each day at 2:30 p.m., as the school bus arrives with kids from Beaver Meadow for their after-school program at First Start, Heather Tobine stands ready at the entrance of the building to welcome them.“The best part of coming to work is spreading a...

By RAY DUCKLER

Shilo Lynn of Allenstown read on Facebook recently that residents in the area had given food and money to a woman in the downtown village of Suncook.The woman had been spending an inordinate amount of time on a bench under a street light, alone,...

By MICHAELA TOWFIGHI

It’s hard for Claire Nepa to explain how long it took her to find peas in the grocery store without laughing. It sounds ridiculous now – it’s just a can or frozen bag of vegetables.But when peas sound like “piece” which also sounds like “peace,”...

By SRUTHI GOPALAKRISHNAN

Susi von Oettingen is always on the lookout for endangered species.Take her to a river, and she’ll look for mussels. Bring her to a wetland at dusk, and she’ll watch for bats in the sky. On a sandy beach, her focus shifts to scanning for plovers along...

By RAY DUCKLER

Barbara Hays trained employees at a telephone and communications company for decades.These days, at age 80, the Bow resident is still involved in communications, but she no longer needs to say anything to anybody.Her quilts say it all.“Barbara has...

By ERIC RYNSTON-LOBEL

Steve Garside’s family will welcome some guests to their home later this fall: Buddhist monks from the Drepung Gomang Monastery in Tibet. His wife, Lisa, who owns Ohana Yoga in Contoocook, has been connected with them for several years now. This will...

By RAY DUCKLER

Wanted: 40 employees to bolster the wafer-thin staff at Community Bridges, an organization that provides support of all kinds to those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.“And that is just us,” said Ann Potoczak, the CEO of Community...

By RAY DUCKLER

Aidan Mini and Michelle Fridlington had no idea last spring that their lives would be intertwined forever.They formed an alliance last May, unknown to them at the time, before Aidan’s senior year at Gilford High School. She was the wellness teacher at...

By DAVID BROOKS

When Jonathan Hunt came on board at Whaleback Mountain, which like many independent ski areas had repeatedly flirted with failure for 20 years, he knew that it would take more than speeding up the chairlift to keep things going. “Immediately my job...

By RAY DUCKLER

Mike French’s green thumb means food for the less fortunate.He tends to the Lions Club Community Garden in Henniker and ships his produce to two food pantries, one in his hometown, the other in Hopkinton. And if he has a surplus of food after the...

By RAY DUCKLER

Joan O’Connor wonders how her good friend, Monica Rico, reaches out in so many directions.With her daily schedule of volunteer work and dedication to bringing healthy, organic food to the Granite State, it’s a wonder how she gets it all done.“She’s...

By RAY DUCKLER

Dawn Shimberg of Campton worked at a vendor booth last month at the annual Tilton-Northfield Old Home Day.There, as the director of the Youth Assistance Program in Tilton, she promoted a service that she’s led for a dozen years, aimed at troubled...

By RAY DUCKLER

Tim Blagden is heading in the right direction.For several years, he’s been dreaming of a hiking, biking and walking trail 34-miles long that, with a landowner’s permission, would allow snowmobiling in certain spots. As Blagden saw it, a trail...

By RAY DUCKLER

Finding an impartial voice these days, especially when it comes to certain topics, seems difficult. But when it comes to the world’s religions, Art Rosen plays it right down the middle.He lectures in schools, makes speaking engagements, writes books...

By RAY DUCKLER

Sarah Stanley’s family name, Griffin, is forever part of the Frankin landscape.Her married name, meanwhile, has had its own impact on the town, this one centered at the Veterans Home in Tilton. That’s where Stanley has worked the past three years,...

By RAY DUCKLER

Debbie Miller would have made a nice complement to Dr. Dolittle.While Dolittle carried on conversations with the animals, Miller would have done practically everything else: fundraisers to help homeless cats and dogs, opening the farms she’s lived on...

By RAY DUCKLER

Mary Aranosian of Concord says she doesn’t always follow the rules.Once, while volunteering at the local winter homeless shelter, Aranosian saw a mother drop off her 18-year-old daughter on a cold night, later discovering that the young woman hadn’t...

By RAY DUCKLER

Apparently, it’s going to take more than legal blindness to force John Golembiowski of Hooksett to pull over and stop reaching out.Even with macular degeneration limiting his field of view to the outer edges of what he’s looking at, Golembiowski sees...

By EILEEN O’GRADY

Judy Tibbetts recalls that when she was interviewed for her first teaching job at Franklin High School back in 1970, the superintendent at the time told her he was interested in hiring her only if she planned to stay in the district.“I said, ‘Yes,...