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Hometown Heroes


OUR 2024 COMMUNITY PARTNER

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 the 2024 Hometown Heroes, who were nominated by members of the community and selected by editors of the Concord Monitor.

Nominate your Hometown Hero today.


Hometown Heroes: Lawyers who help make land conservation work
11-24-2024 9:00 AM

By DAVID BROOKS

Preserving land from development is all about woods and streams and birds and beasts. That’s the fun part.But it’s also about laws and contracts and tax rules and finance. That’s the boring part – yet without it, the woods and beasts are in...

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‘Friends for life’: Concord woman becomes Best Buddies champion alongside high school buddy
12-01-2024 9:00 AM

By RACHEL WACHMAN

When Cheyenne Boucher decided to join Best Buddies in 2014, she had no idea her involvement with the organization would shape the trajectory of her life.Best Buddies had just come to the state of New Hampshire. The organization was looking for partner...


‘It’s a calling’: Hospice workers deliver care from their hearts
11-17-2024 9:00 AM

By RACHEL WACHMAN

Maria Pacelli remembers sitting at her father’s bedside as he took his final breaths. She was in college at the time and had, coincidentally, been taking courses on death and loss.She and her brothers held a vigil for the final four days before her...


Concord veteran finds connection through birds
11-10-2024 5:00 PM

By RACHEL WACHMAN

It started with a peregrine falcon. For Robert Vallieres, a veteran of the Gulf War, this was the bird that changed his life once he returned from combat.“They needed people to watch their natural habitats. It’s called nest-watching,” Vallieres said....


Dan Sylvester, the athletic director who is a legend in the making and elevated Franklin High School
11-03-2024 1:35 PM

By ALEXANDER RAPP

Jacob Adler, a junior lineman and middle linebacker for Franklin High School, walked into Dan Sylvester’s office to ask about meeting his community service requirements while also having a commitment to the football team practice before a big game...


Hometown Heroes: Making Halloween fun for the little ones
10-28-2024 1:44 PM

By DAVID BROOKS

For a holiday centered around ghosts, cemeteries, spooky creatures and all-around scariness, Halloween sure produces its share of simple pleasures.“It’s so fun seeing the kids’ eyes light up and watching their reaction,” said Dave Bastien of Concord....


‘It’s rewarding in its own self’: Monitor’s volunteer town criers receive award
10-20-2024 12:01 PM

By ARIANNA MacNEILL

Nearly 30 years ago, Cheryl Stinson decided to respond to an ad in the Concord Monitor looking for a Penacook town crier.A volunteer position, each town crier writes a short weekly column detailing community happenings, dubbed Talk of the Towns...


Hometown Hero: At Pembroke’s ‘fairy house,’ woman engages local kids in collaborative art
10-13-2024 12:00 PM

By RACHEL WACHMAN

To some in her Pembroke neighborhood, Lori Rowe’s home is known as the “fairy house” or the “fairy garden.” It started three years ago when she put out a display of hand-painted fairy houses with little gnomes and knick-knacks. Nestled into the base...


‘How do we serve them for serving us?’: Nonprofit Swim With A Mission aims to give back to veterans
09-22-2024 12:00 PM

RACHEL WACHMAN

Mark Aquilino and Todd Wheatley spent countless hours this summer organizing a fishing tournament unlike any other. They brought together veterans on the seacoast with the Yankee Fishermen’s Co-Op, a local fishing group, for a multi-day competition to...


Hometown Hero: Jim Milliken has spent 8 decades making Concord ‘a better place to live’
07-22-2024 9:02 AM

By SOPHIE LEVENSON

From his seat in a shaded booth at The Works, underneath a picture of wild blueberries, Jim Milliken gestures at Main Street. “I painted every parking meter you can see,” he says.He also changed the lightbulbs in traffic lights and touched up the...


Hometown Hero: Hats off to this Penacook woman, a crafts lover whose artistic, and altruistic, nature has benefited people with serious illnesses
04-21-2024 11:36 AM

By RAY DUCKLER

Nancy Peperissa’s secrets to help people involve cotton and rice, two items she uses to craft items with others in mind.She crochets cotton to make soft skull caps for chemotherapy patients. The rice she inserts into a doll’s midsection gives it...


Hometown Hero: Quilters, sewers grateful for couple continuing ‘treasured’ business
04-14-2024 11:59 AM

By RAY DUCKLER

When Randy and Holly Silver saw their chance two years ago to open a business they’ve always wanted, they wasted no time moving forward.They went to the bank almost immediately after an offer was made to buy the Bittersweet Fabric Shop, a staple in...


Hometown Hero: Whatever you’re looking for at Concord Public Library, Robbin Bailey can help you find it
04-07-2024 1:39 PM

By CATHERINE McLAUGHLIN

People often go to the library looking for something quite specific: the next mystery novel in a series, a tax form or maybe a political memoir. But, as any regular knows, libraries hold so much more than books between the stacks: free and engaging...


Hometown Hero: Alan Andrian of Boscawen does more than run a beloved local restaurant
01-21-2024 7:00 PM

By RAY DUCKLER

You’ve probably seen the sign hugging Route 3 in Boscawen, near the Penacook border.It’s big and announces that the restaurant located there, Alan’s of Boscawen – a landmark in the region – remains open after a 40-year run. The owner and founder, Alan...


Hometown Hero: Saving People’s Smiles providing dental care for those without
12-26-2023 10:05 AM

By MICHAELA TOWFIGHI

Earle Simpson has a message for every patient who walks through the door of his dental practice: Take today and go forward. For many, a trip to the dentist was a rarity before they visited Simpson’s practice, Saving People’s Smiles. Dental care is...


Hometown Heroes: Tanya Frost helps in any way she can
12-17-2023 3:08 PM

By SRUTHI GOPALAKRISHNAN

When someone is in need, they can count on Tanya Frost to be there.Whether it’s loading up her car to move someone’s belongings or assisting a struggling pedestrian to cross the road, she’s the one who steps up.Although she found excitement in her...


Hometown Hero: Caia Kimball gives back to her elementary school
12-10-2023 4:37 PM

By ERIC RYNSTON-LOBEL

Caia Kimball needed to come up with a project for her Silver Award in Girl Scouts. Who better to help out than Karen McCormack, her former art teacher at Broken Ground School, she thought.She’d seen that McCormack was trying to find a way of getting a...


Hometown Hero: Dance therapist Heather Bigelow Hearne in tune with changing needs
12-03-2023 5:38 PM

By RAY DUCKLER

Lynne Sabien of Hopkinton, a grant writer at the Concord Community Music School, began working there less than six months ago.That was enough time, however, to gauge the value Heather Bigelow Hearne brought to the company.“She genuinely makes everyone...


Hometown Hero: Women-led nonprofit supports local communities in need
11-12-2023 4:41 PM

By JAMIE L. COSTA

Twelve years ago, Deb Horton visited a patient in hospice who couldn’t afford a surgery for his wife.To help the couple, their son took money from his children’s Christmas fund to pay for the $500 surgery. They were broken at the thought of their...


Hometown Hero: Seniors continue to flourish following the merger of the Penacook Community Center and the Concord Boys and Girls Club 
11-05-2023 3:18 PM

By RAY DUCKLER

Before the Penacook Community Center closed last year, Kristen Pinard-Kenney was the intergenerational outreach coordinator, working to bridge the generation gap through activities in an official capacity.She doubled as the senior program director at...


Hometown Hero: Helen St. Pierre never turns a dog away
10-24-2023 11:41 AM

By RAY DUCKLER

Her name is Helen St. Pierre and she owns and operates Old Dogs Go To Helen in Epsom. She cares for dogs – 13 at the moment – who are near the end of the line, be it from illness or old age. She spoils them in a separate building, called the...

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