Annual celebration of giving highlights LHS connection
It was a morning to celebrate giving and thank key volunteers who provide services to our community. It was also an opportunity to welcome Joshua Kraft, president of the New England Patriots Foundation, and learn about his family’s twin priorities: winning football games and supporting community work. Kraft was a speaker at today’s Greater Lowell Community Foundation Philanthropy Day Conference, which was the best I’ve attended. The speeches were short, the anecdotes poignant, and perhaps best of all for me, the connections to Lowell High School were palpable. Many of the speakers, award founders and recipients, and major players in local philanthropy are former LHS students and faculty—a tribute to our public schools and our future. In fact, the Youth Service Group Award went to Lowell High’s National Honor Society, one of the oldest, largest, and most diverse in the country. The LHS Honor Society started in 1927 with a Jewish student president under the guidance of a female faculty advisor—just seven years after women got the right to vote. (The second student president was an African American.) The current Honor Society president is senior Tim Bergeron, who also received the Coach’s Award for Track last night and was named LHS Idol a few months ago—a talented athlete, performer, honor student, community volunteer, and genuinely nice boy. Eddie Mercado, another youth leader honored at the breakfast, received the Rising Star Volunteer Award for his work at UTEC and his role in the creation of the Governor’s Statewide Youth Council. Mercado’s $1,000 award will go toward UTEC’s continued work with youth in the city. Although not quite as young but certainly as inspiring, Stephen Conant received the Banker’s Volunteer Award for Lifetime Achievement. Conant, a 1972 LHS graduate and successful businessman, has been committed to protecting Lowell’s natural resources for more than a decade. The annual event provided a glimpse of key people making a positive difference, and it offered an update on the foundation’s $128,000 in awards to 50 different groups this year—both significant in their impact on our communities.