Lyme Foundation names Patty Jenks the 2010 Citizen of the Year

Whether you’ve lived in Lyme for 6 months or 60 years, you are likely to know the recipient of Lyme’s 2010 Citizen of the Year Award. Not only do you know her, but you have most likely experienced firsthand her friendliness, helpfulness, generosity, and genuine interest in you and your family.

A descendant of the first family that settled in Lyme, she spent much of her childhood in her grandmother’s house. Somewhere along the way, she learned about public service, and became a dedicated practitioner of it in our little town. Her interest and skills in serving our community are acknowledged far and wide for as long as anyone can remember. No matter what your question, concern, need, or emergency, she will be there to help you. Lyme’s two recent lengthy power outages provide good examples of her commitment, putting in long hours at the Emergency Management Committee headquarters, working to locate every single person in town and make sure that they were OK.

As an active part of the Town Offices committee, she helped negotiate the myriad of decisions about location, building designs, and budgets, in order to be certain that we built offices that would serve our needs now and well into the future. That job was barely finished when she jumped into planning the town’s 250th birthday celebration. This is familiar territory, as she has organized countless town and church activities over the last several decades, including Old Home Days, Christmas pageants, bazaars, breakfasts, picnics, and dinners. As one person recalls, “She organizes!”  When her children were in school, she was the mom that would be called when anyone needed to know what was going on or when something needed to be organized and done.” A fellow member of the school board on which she served, reminisced that “she was a wonderful member, intelligent, willing to state her views, well reasoned, and willing to listen to others.  Her qualities were much appreciated.”

In her private life, she raised her family and is now an enthusiastic grandparent. She also works in her husband’s business, and volunteers countless hours to those who need that extra something to keep going. If she knows that you are sick or hurting in some way, it’s very likely that you’ll hear from her, not because she views it as a professional responsibility, but because she cares about your welfare.

She is the ultimate example of someone who is eager to pitch in, to help us help each other, to get things right, and to do it all with the degree of grace, wit and poise for which she has become known.  

She is known to some as an Earth Angel, or maybe as the good witch in the summer revels, to some as a neighbor, or a warm, smiling face at the town office, to a few fortunate people, a friend, a Mother, Grandmother-- but we all know her as “Patty”.

As one resident put it, she's “like our very own Rome: all roads lead to Patty.”

We are delighted to award the 2010 Citizen of the Year Award to Patricia Grant Jenks.

Former Citizens of the Year

2009 Carola Lea

2007 Bill Murphy

2006 Laura DeGoosh

2005 Betty Lee

2004 Fred Phillips

2003 Albert Pushee

2002 Don and Julia Elder

2001 Becky Franklin

2000 Kenneth Elder

1999 Dorcas Chaffee

About the Citizen of the Year Award

Every year for the past decade, the Lyme Foundation has recognized its Citizen of the Year as someone who has rendered outstanding service to the Town of Lyme.  This annual award is made possible through a gift from Rachael Miller, and is presented at Town Meeting.