People Gather to Honor Hero's

Saint Johnsbury Academy hosted at night for community heroes. This is the sixth year that community members have been recognized.

Susan Garey, "This is the sixth year that we've been doing the community hero's dinner. Prior to that we'd been doing just a free dinner for the community and then we decided that it'd be nice to recognize local folks doing -- going above and beyond in our local community for other people."

Area residents of all ages gathered at the Saint Johnsbury Academy for the 2010 community hero's dinner. They gathered to recognize community member like Lydia Chartier, the Saint Johnsbury School's Traffic Director and a long-time community volunteer. Lydia Chartier said, "To get this award, I was actually surprised at what goes into getting this award and there's no award in the whole world that could describe the things that you get out of just volunteering in the community itself."

Theresa Conant, a retired Emergency Medical Technician who had a chance to help save a life on her way to work. Tom Gould said, "It's hard to put into words what to say to someone who saved your life thank you just doesn't seem enough. Just real lucky to be here." Gould was just moments away from bleeding to death when Conant drive by and stemmed the bleeding until a Medevac helicopter arrived. To Conant his survival was thanks enough.  Theresa Conant, "Because I was there by chance you know he's with us today and he's healthy and working back to work and that's the best part."

Here are some others that were recognized:

• Joan Lint, a long-time community food shelf volunteer.
  

  Celebrating with a dinner

• Susan Shaw, the Director of St. Johnsbury's Good Living Senior Center
• Larry Goldend, St. Johnsbury Academy art teacher
• Tom Tolle of Barnet, a volunteer at the Barnet School and Historical Society.

The Vermont campaign to end childhood hunger's cooking for life program provided a gourmet dinner for attendees. Rebecca O'Reilly: "So, we rely on communities to really get involved, offer to host the program to it's participants, and then when a school or an organization goes the extra mile to actually bring the whole community in and tie Cooking for Life into something that's already happening in the community it really helps spread the importance of the program and it helps show off the skills that the participants are learning."