REM Award Honorees for 2021

In 2021, REM had planned to hold an awards ceremony on Wednesday, April 22, at the Waterville Opera House, but the COVID pandemic forced the ceremony's cancellation. REM ultimately chose to present the awards individually in a series of mini-ceremonies, one for each honoree. Except for MaineGeneral Health, which provided its own tribute video, the presentations were held in REM’s Community Forum space at 31 Temple Street and streamed online from Friday, November 12 to Sunday, November 14, 2021. You can view the ceremonies here and read about the honorees below.

Business and Professional Women Futurama Foundation

Lynn Soucy has been involved in her community all of her life, inspired by her parents and the small community of Fort Fairfield. She graduated from Fort Fairfield High School and the University of Maine at Orono, with a degree in Business Administration.

She attained CPA designation, and worked in public accounting firms in Bangor for twenty-five years. Seeking a change, she left the public realm and became Accounting Manager at Pen Bay Medical Center in Rockland, from which she retired in 2018.

She has served non profit organizations as a volunteer and board member, including Good Samaritan Agency, Spruce Run, American Red Cross Bangor Chapter, and Mabel Wadsworth Center, usually in the office of Treasurer. She has served on the Board of Directors of community radio station WERU for many years, and is currently President and Treasurer.

In 1989 she joined UPtown Business and Professional Women in Bangor, and soon became interested in the state organization as well. She served in leadership capacities at both levels. Lynn is now a member of Downeast BPW. She credits the local and state BPW organizations with giving her knowledge and confidence, and introducing her to wonderful, community-minded, hard working women, and she cherishes the friendships she formed with other members.

She served as State BPW President in the 1995 – 1996 year and Futurama Foundation President the following year. In 1997 she became Treasurer of the Futurama Foundation, and continues in that capacity. She also participates in the Futurama Scholarship Committee.

After she retired, Lynn and her husband Peter moved to Portland, and enjoy city life. In retirement Lynn has developed and published a trivia game about Mainers, collaborated with her high school classmates in writing a book about the 45 members of that class who served in the military, serves on the board of her homeowners’ association, volunteered at a COVID-19 vaccination clinic, and remains committed to a wide circle of family and friends.

Fairfield United Methodist Church

The Fairfield United Methodist Church wishes to honor Marc Veilleux as Volunteer of the Year for 2021.

He goes over and above to help those in need. He looks after church repairs, mows the grass, cooks for church events, drives folks to meetings, helps the pastor as needed, plays guitar, works with the men’s group, and keeps community and needs prayerfully connected. Mark is certainly doing his part to create a community where people thrive.

Also, a BIG thanks to all who work behind the scenes to keep things running smoothly even through this pandemic.

Humane Society of Waterville Area

When you hear the name Bonnie Krause, the first thing that pops up in most people's minds is “neonatal guru,” and that is because she is in fact the guru, master, and specialist of neonatal kitten fostering. We were very lucky when Bonnie started to foster with us here at the Humane Society of Waterville Area in March of 2019. She started out with just fostering kittens and pregnant mothers but as bottle babies continue to pop up without mothers, Bonnie took on the challenge and started to learn how to help and care for bottle babies.

From the beginning stages of bottle feeding, learning how to stimulate newborns all the way to digging into the medical aspects of neonates, Bonnie is a self taught neonatal care taker and with the help of the “Kitten Lady” on Youtube, she continued to grow as a bottle baby foster. From 2019 Bonnie has fostered 174 kittens and mother cats and three puppies. She currently has three foster kittens in her home that she has raised from a bottle.

This spectacular neonatal specialist has been through so many medical marvels and has caught the strangest diagnoses from neurological disorders to getting premature kittens with a grim chance of survival. You could absolutely say that here at HSWA we are incredibly lucky to have such a talented and kind-hearted foster that always goes the extra mile to ensure that every bottle baby, no matter the diagnosis, will always get the best chance at survival.

Maine Children’s Home

“It is a joy to recommend Linette Gamache as an outstanding volunteer for Maine Children’s Home. Linette has had a strong connection with our organization for more than 46 years.

“Although Linette was involved at first as an enrolled teen parent in the Sharon Abrams Teen Parent Education Program, she has volunteered and assisted with many roles over the years. Linette has been an advisor, mentor, and has served on fundraising committees and in many roles on the Board of Directors, including two separate terms as the President of the Board of Directors. Linette went on to hold a number of key positions in the insurance industry and eventually found her passion as the owner and operator of the Mane Management Salon in Vassalboro. We are very thankful for Linette’s commitment and concern for teen parents and Maine Children’s Home.

“In addition to her support of MCH, Linette does amazing great good in the community with her business, Mane Management, and is tattooed into the heart of the community through her uplifting drumming. Thank you for touching so many lives in such a meaningful way, Linette!”

—Rick Dorian, Executive Director of Maine Children’s Home

MaineGeneral Medical Center

While the pandemic prevents us from having an in-person event to celebrate greater waterville area volunteers, MaineGeneral Health wishes to honor the more than 350 volunteers who give selflessly to benefit our patients and families. This past year was like no other, but one thing that remained constant was the incredible dedication of MaineGeneral volunteers, who gave more than 17,500 hours of service to the medical center in 2020 alone. Volunteers fulfill an important role in our mission to provide the very best care to our community. In addition to helping patients in our facilities they made masks, dolls, blankets, and prayer shawls at home for our community members.

Jim Moore represents all of our volunteers. He epitomizes care and compassion. He certainly is among our longest serving volunteers here at Thayer Center for Health and throughout our community. While Jim’s volunteer service at MaineGeneral predates our digital record keeping of volunteer hours, we have verified he’s given more than 10,400 hours over 20 years serving as a MaineGeneral volunteer. You have no doubt seeing Jim, whether it’s helping with information technology, Maine Dartmouth Family Practice, blood drives, or one of the many special projects he’s involved with. Jim always has a warm smile for everyone he meets. He’s quick-witted in conversation and is really cherished by all who have the pleasure of interacting with him. Jim’s also always looking to help. Even during the pandemic, he’s been keeping his regular volunteer schedule. Jim and his wife Connie live right here in Waterville. They are treasures to our community on behalf of all MaineGeneral. We thank Jim and all our volunteers for giving of themselves to make other people’s lives better.

Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter and Services

Kelly Rancourt was born and raised in Central Maine and now lives in Clinton with her husband David. She started volunteering at the Shelter in 2005 when it was located at 28 Ticonic Street in Waterville. At that time the Shelter housed 18 guests and she assisted every Monday with preparing and serving dinners.

While working for Kennebec Savings Bank in Waterville, she joined the Events Committee in 2013, and later became the Chairperson of the Committee. During her time on the Events Committee, she organized and volunteered at a number of fund-raising activities. Kelly also served on the Finance Committee from 2016-2021. She and her husband have cooked and served Thanksgiving dinner for the last five years at the Shelter and remain loyal supporters of the organization.

Kelly has contributed to and supported with passion the needs of our growing organization. Kelly’s recommendations, follow up and partnerships have been instrumental in the strength of MMHSS’s financial base.

Kelly will often go beyond the role of a committee member with serving in whatever capacity is needed.

REM

The pandemic has been hard on everyone. However, when your mission is to bring people together and bringing people together is no longer safe, major changes have to be made.

In 2020 REM had to cancel all of its events...even our favorite, the REM Awards. But in that year we learned a lot about how to retain our connections to each other and to our community.

This year’s REM Award honoree is Amy Harrington. Amy and her team have brought the REM Craft Fair to our community for the past 4 years. Last year the pandemic made that impossible. But Amy worked hard to create an online presence for the crafters even though face-to-face sales were not possible.

This year, Amy has worked to make sure that those who signed up for 2020 will be able to present their crafts for sale at the REM Craft Fair. That’s truly amazing because not only has she been helping her 4 young children with schooling during a pandemic, dealing with the pandemic and creating her own crafting business, “Scrapnsewmom”, but also moving her home from Fairfield to Winslow. Moving 4 children, a whole household and 13 cats while at the same time organizing the REM Craft Fair shows you that, for Amy, pretty much anything is possible.

We are deeply proud to honor Amy Harrington with this year’s REM Award and are deeply grateful for all the effort she had to put in to pull together the 2021 REM Craft Fair.

Watch video tributes for each of the honorees!

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