Outstanding Volunteers Honored at Granby Selectmen Meeting

The Granby Board of Selectmen honored exceptional volunteers in town with its annual community service awards Monday night, in what First Selectman John Adams called his favorite selectmen’s meeting of the year.

The selectmen presented awards to five residents, including two Granby Memorial High School students and two longtime dedicated community members who had passed away in the past 12 months.

Edie Duncan was posthumously honored for her 35 years of broad and varied commitment to volunteer service in Granby. A volunteer poll worker who advocated for and expanded the town’s curbside voting program, Duncan also served on subcommittees that developed the town’s economic development zone and plan of conservation and development.

“Edie was a tireless worker who would gladly giver her all to help out a fellow Granby citizen,” Adams said. “She was famous for saying, ‘I’ll help you with that.’ And she did.”

Duncan was the Granby Drummer’s finance reporter and influential in developing the town website as well as a regular attendee at meetings of the planning and zoning commission and boards of selectmen and finance.

Accepting the award on his late wife’s behalf, Bob Duncan said his wife “worked tirelessly and endlessly to make Granby a better place to live.”

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Bud Murtha also received a posthumous award from the board for his decades of volunteer service. Murtha served for 21 years on the development commission (including seven as chairman of that commission), helped subcommittees develop the town’s agricultural zoning regulations, plan of conservation and development and guidelines for the economic development zone.

Murtha also chaired the town’s building committee. In that capacity, he oversaw the many improvements and additions, including the senior center, police department and board of education buildings, to the Granby municipal complex.

“It seems as though serving as the building committee chair for a single building wasn’t enough for Bud,” Adams said. “He took on the whole complex.”

Even as his health declined Murtha continued his volunteer activities. He chaired a development commission meeting via speakerphone and acting as the prime force in the town’s purchase of the property at 83 Salmon Brook Street.

“He truly did love Granby,” said Murtha’s wife Shirley.

Shirley Murtha was happy for the love that many town residents had for her late partner. She said those positive memories and emotions helped her deal with her husband’s passing.

The third adult receiving a 2012 community service award was Deborah Kulwich, who took the main leadership role in planning Granby’s 225th anniversary celebration. A 10-year program and referee coordinator for the parks and recreation department and nine-year member of that department’s board, she answered Parks and Recreation Director Kay Woodford’s call for Kulwich to serve as the event’s steering committee chair.

Kulwich stepped up to the challenge of spending a year devoting between 30 and 60 volunteer hours per week to the task, going over every detail of the celebration. Kurwich herself raised fully one-third of the event’s sponsorship donations.

“Granby is very fortunate to have had someone commit that much time to this grand celebration,” Adams said.

High school seniors Stephanie Dantos and Rachel Rising split this year’s student award, with both women providing impressive community service resumes.

Dantos provided 426 hours of community service through her high school years according to her own conservative estimate. Besides raising money for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, the ASPCA and the Granby 225th anniversary celebration, Dantos has volunteered at the Holcomb Farm summer camp and at the Granby bantam lacrosse jamboree, written for the Granby Drummer, led her church youth group and helped teach Sunday school.

Rising, a tutor and mentor for Granby fellow students, has performed in benefits for Darfur and Haiti, Granby Stands Up to Cancer and an AIDS and HIV charity. Along with Dantos, Rising helped create a pasta dinner that raised almost $1,000 for the high school, South Congregational Church and the National Honor Society.

Delivering meals to homebound people on Thanksgiving and going on an annual service mission to the Appalachians, Rising performed community service in town and throughout the world.

“Her service has touched those in Granby, wider Connecticut and our wider world,” said Reverend Dawn Karlson, who nominated Rising.