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.

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...

By RACHEL WACHMAN

It takes James “Jim” Marshall three minutes to snip the netting off a Christmas tree, unwrap it, determine the price, put a ribbon on the top, and add it to the pile of trees to be sold. He’s perfected this skill over 38 years of spearheading...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...