Mickey Guzman helps more than 1800 clients find a variety of services through his work as a bilingual social worker at the Spanish American Center. In addition, he is committed to his community and has volunteered as a Little League Baseball Coach and Soccer Coach. Spanish American Center Director Neddy Latimer said, “ Mickey is always willing to help and has been providing these services for over 22 years." Guzman also serves on the Montachusett Area Regional Board CEDS, the Montachusett Area Rotary Club Board, the Board of Directors of Children’s Aid and Family Services, Unitil Consumer Advisory Board, North Central Minority Coalition, the Twin Cities Latino Coalition and the United Way of North Central Massachusetts Interagency Council. Many area residents are also familiar with his family’s band “Fa’ Unida” (United Family). They have presented more than 50 performances for area groups and organizations. Guzman is committed to helping his community and the clients he serves. “I try to match people with services. I want to empower them to handle their own services. I really believe in the adage, “If I give you a fish; you eat for a day. If I teach you to fish; you eat forever. I want to help people eat forever.” 

 

 

 

Founded in 1979, The Polus Center’s mission is to improve the lives of disabled people around the world by removing the impediments to their independence and providing access to the key resources that will nurture their success.  In 1997, the Polus Center entered into the international arena by coordinating humanitarian efforts in Central America aimed at addressing the long-term needs of people with disabilities, particularly those individuals who had lost limbs due to acts of war, land mines and diseases. Several prosthetic outreach programs and clinics have been established, and access and mobility projects have now been implemented in various countries in Central America and Africa. 

 

According to Executive Director Michael Lundgren, what began as a conversation with a Massachusetts child with a prosthetic arm, prompted creation of this effort.  Lundgren was on Martha’s Vineyard investigating services on the island when he met the young girl and her mother.  They explained that children need to replace prosthetic limbs as they grow.  Because U.S. law prohibits recycling them (all prosthetics must be new and made to fit the individual), she had a closet full of outgrown prosthetics.  Lundgren discovered that this is not the case in other countries—where recycling is not prohibited.  Because prosthetics are so expensive--often more  than the annual salary of a person living in Nicaragua—they are much in demand.  Today, “Walking Unidos” provides more than 100 prosthetics per year.

Lundgren say’s he’s proud of the unique structure of Polus.  “We’re not your typical social service agency.  We look more like a community development corporation.  Our interest is the direct support of people to help them live meaningful lives.”  The organizational structure is very flat.  “We like to keep our people close.  People who make decisions have to know who we’re serving.”

 

Leslie Lightfoot

Jane Duffy

“I’m interested in the lives of the people in our communities,” says Betsy Hannula, Executive Director of the Fitchburg Historical Society and curator, since 1984, of the Westminster Historical Society. Her interest is apparent because of her commitment to local historical preservation since the early 1970’s. She began her work in the years leading up to the American Bicentennial, during a time of renewed national interest in the history of the American people and their communities. In addition to serving as past President of the Westminster Historical Society, initiating the purchase and renovation of its current home, helping to computerize collections, and fundraising, she continues to work with the town’s Historical Commission in a variety of leadership roles. In 1985, Hannula brought her skills to Gardner as supervisor of the Heritage State Park Visitor’s Center, providing the community and local schools with many educational exhibits and programs until the early 1990s, when she started working as a key figure with Gardner, Fitchburg, and Leominster’s Community Development Corporations.

 

Since her appointment as Executive Director of the Fitchburg Historical Society in 2000, Hannula has benefited the organization and the community in countless ways, from securing a new home for the society on Main Street to forming the North County Historical Societies group, where 30 societies across central Massachusetts meet on a quarterly basis for a topical discussion. While working full-time in Fitchburg, Hannula currently volunteers with the Westminster Historical Society on Monday nights and Friday mornings. Whichever community she serves, her goal is to remain “open and available to people” to support the community’s preservation work. As a history educator, Hannula also believes that in order “to remember history and connect with the past, you have to use all of your senses.” She helped create a Civil War-era “traveling trunk” that allows local students to read letters from Fitchburg Civil War soldiers and examine the ingredients that create gun powder. This is only one example of how historical societies “make history exciting and accessible.”

 

 

“You get to meet so many new people and cultures,” says Elizabeth Ellis, a senior at Gardner High School, about her volunteer work in the greater Gardner community. She is well known at Gardner’s House of Peace and Education, having contributed her time and energy to several programs during her high school career. In addition to helping with the HOPE lunch program, she volunteers at the summer school for four to six weeks every summer, seven hours per day, and will serve as a senior counselor this upcoming season, tutoring elementary school children in math, science, and a variety of hands-on activities. For Elizabeth, observing the change in personality of a tutored child is a simple reward for her work. “There was a girl who would barely talk” when she arrived at HOPE, and “now she’s the first to raise her hand in class.”

 

As a National Honor Society member, Ellis is involved with many activities that benefit her school and community. She currently tutors a high school and middle school student in math for two to three hours every week and has worked on the Rotary Club’s highway clean-up initiative. At Thanksgiving and Christmas, Ellis aids the American Legion in a Meal Delivery Program for elderly citizens. Along with other high school students, she spent several hours during the holidays helping families in need by baby sitting young children and allowing parents to find gifts for their children. In the past, Elizabeth has done Irish step-dancing in nursing homes and plans to perform later this spring at her school’s Multicultural Festival. She also serves as Vice President of Diversity Works, a student group that aims to educate people about discrimination and racism, and is helping to produce a slide show to illustrate the harmful effects of graffiti messages and other examples of hate speech at school and in the community. “We want to show how much it hurts people.”

 

 

Westminster’s Nancy Green “is an incredibly ambitious, unselfish person who truly loves helping others,” according to Tammy Dwelly, a volunteer with the Westminster Benefit Fund. “Nancy is an Unsung Hero because she prefers the anonymity and confidential nature of the Westminster Benefit Fund’s services over public recognition.”

 

For almost 18 years, volunteers with the Westminster Benefit Fund have been helping residents of Westminster through crises in their lives. A family may need a few months of their mortgage paid, a tank of oil or food stamps to get through a sudden crisis. The WBF’s board works with each family to determine what they need. The goal is to help them “so they don’t end up so far behind they can’t get back on their feet,” Green explained. “It’s one of the few passions I have in life.”

 

Green joined the WBF in 1990 and has held the treasurer and president positions. She is the current treasurer. “Volunteering comes naturally to Nancy,” Dwelly said when she nominated Green. Green also is an active member of Westminster’s Ladies Auxiliary of the American Legion, and she was instrumental in generating donations to purchase 50 American flags to line Westminster’s Main Street for Memorial Day.

 

“I think it’s made me a little more humble,” Green said of her WBF service. “I’m comfortable with where I live. I don’t think I need the fancy things in life if others are getting the basic things they need.”

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The Reverend David R. Cote has worked with people who have witnessed unspeakable traumatic events.  As Chaplain for both the Gardner Fire and Police Departments and his work as a board member with the On-Site Academy, he said the most important thing he can do is to listen.   Cote spent a week at the morgue following the 9/11 tragedy working in 12-hour shifts “debriefing” emergency workers affected by the tragedy.  In addition to offering resources, “we try to help them understand that they are having a normal reaction to an abnormal event.”  

 

Cote was also there when six Worcester firefighters perished in the Worcester Cold Storage and Warehouse fire on December 3, 1999.  It was the first mobilization of the newly formed Massachusetts Corps of Fire Chaplains.  They remained at the scene for ten days consoling the many affected families.  “It was an event no one was prepared for. and it validated the need for an organized network of fire chaplains,” said Cote.  Now retired as Pastor of the Covenant Lutheran Church in Gardner, Cote is devoting more of his time as Chaplain and to the Academy.   The On-Site Academy is a non-profit residential treatment and training center for critical incident stress management.  It serves all law enforcement, fire service, EMS, or other human service personnel who are themselves temporarily overwhelmed by the stress of their jobs, what they have seen, and what they have been through.  It is one of only two residential treatment facilities of its kind in the world.  Larry and Karen Payne, who nominated Cote, said, “Pastor Cote performs many acts of compassion that people don’t know about; he is always there in times of crisis.  We believe that Pastor Cote is the ultimate human being, helping people and caring for his fellow man—truly an unsung hero.”

 

 William “Bill” Webber

Ashburnham's Bill Webber is "always willing to help," according to Josie Cormier, coordinator and floor supervisor of Our Father's Table in Fitchburg. "Even if we don't have enough volunteers, he's willing to do whatever needs to be done." A retired high school math teacher, Webber has served as a cook for the feeding ministry since 1983, after recruiting student volunteers from Oakmont Regional High School to help the newly-formed organization. At that time, feeding the hungry was a greatly needed service, and Webber thought they might help people "for a few years, and then [the need] would go away. But it never goes away." As a requirement of his volunteer work, Webber enrolls in "Safe Serve" refresher courses in food preparation and storage through the Worcester County Food Bank. He is also grateful to the communities of Worcester County and recognizes the important role they have had in sustaining Our Father's Table. "It's amazing how much food is donated," he says.

 

Having recently ended his 24-year tenure as town moderator of Ashburnham, Webber continues to serve his community by leading silent auctions and teaching confirmation classes at the St. Denis Church, as well as tutoring high school students as they prepare for MCAS testing. Since his teaching retirement 12 years ago, Webber has volunteered at Our Father's Table every Tuesday and Thursday, regularly feeding over 50 people per day and many more on holidays. As he does for Thanksgiving and Christmas, Webber oversaw the cooking of nearly 20 turkeys for the organization's 22nd anniversary celebration at the end of February. Webber remains modest about his steady work with the feeding ministry; he says he began volunteering when "somebody called and said they needed a cook."

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