Alex Stewart

Nominations for New Canaan’s ‘Volunteer Recognition Awards’ Open Through Friday

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Representatives for an annual awards ceremony that recognizes New Canaan’s generous volunteers is accepting nominees through 8 p.m. Friday. Individuals can visit this page, linked to through the New Canaan Community Foundation website, to nominate people for various categories of the 2018 Volunteer Recognition Awards, recognizing those who give of their time to benefit others. The people who volunteer in New Canaan are “100 percent and totally committed,” Tracey Karl, a member of the committee that helps organize the awards and ceremony, told NewCanaanite.com. 

“That’s why I love this event,” she said. “I find out about people who I know who volunteer and do things and don’t say anything, they just do it.”

Launched 20 years ago, the Volunteer Recognition Awards since 2015 have been sponsored and overseen by the New Canaan Community Foundation. The awards are specifically designed to spotlight people who have not been recognized for their efforts. 

It’s important to do that, Karl said.

Around Town

‘Lovely Little Touches’: Mysterious Mini-Christmas Tree Reappears at Maple and Main

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There would seem to be little room for what’s happening at Maple and Main Streets—after all, New Canaan’s Christmas tree traditions are well established. There’s the Exchange Club’s annual lighting of the Lou Moreno tree at Kiwanis Park, for example, and the Dec. 24 caroling by the tree at God’s Acre—a cherished tradition that the Civic League started exactly 100 years ago, according to the historical record. Even non-tree decorating practices are fixed—the New Canaan firefighters’ precise, orally communicated tradition of decking the firehouse, or the wreaths affixed to public buildings such as Town Hall and the Post Office. So when a tiny Christmas tree began to appear each December in a disused corner of the Center School Parking Lot about 10 years ago, it was a curiosity to passersby catching sight of it.

Around Town

Recognizing New Canaan’s Volunteers: Locals, Community Foundation To Continue Town Tradition

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A group of locals is seeing to it that an important and longstanding tradition—of recognizing those in New Canaan who give of their time through volunteerism—will continue. For nearly 20 years, local volunteers had been honored through a spring program that involved the United Way. When that organization no longer was able to support the effort, locals who served on a committee overseeing the volunteer awards decided to find another way to get recognition for those who have earned it. “We’re talking about the person who usually flies under the radar, who has been doing something for a long time out of the goodness of their heart,” said Tucker Murphy, a member of the committee. Now, with generous support from the New Canaan Community Foundation, the awards will go on, with a Nov.

News

‘Road Kill’ to Others, Squirrels and Chipmunks Receive Proper Burial from New Canaan Woman 

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Eloise Killeffer can remember returning home from St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on an Easter Sunday about 15 years ago. Pulling into the driveway of the century-old Colonial in New Canaan where she’s lived since 1978, Killeffer spotted the body of rabbit that clearly had been hit by a car and killed. “Somebody—on Easter Sunday, of all times—had run over this bunny,” Killefer recalled from outside the house on the corner of Main and Oak Streets. “I was half-angry and half-grieved to see this.