HOMETOWN HEROES: If there’s a need in Greenfield, Karen Day is there

Then-Greenfield Fire Chief David Hall presents Karen Day with a plaque in 2017 recognizing her for her work developing the town’s emergency management plan. COURTESY PHOTO
Published: 12-30-2024 12:03 PM
Modified: 12-31-2024 7:32 AM |
If something needs to be done in Greenfield, there’s a good chance Karen Day will agree to do it.
“Volunteers are hard to get,” she said. “As long as I’m able, I’m willing to do some things.”
It’s that “can-do” spirit that led retired Greenfield Fire Chief David Hall to nominate Day – a former member of the Select Board who currently chairs the Conservation Commission and serves as emergency management director – as the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript Hometown Hero for December.
“It has been one thing after the next with her in terms of what she has done for the town,” he said.
Hall said he and Day met after he was asked to come out of retirement in 2014 to serve as fire chief. Day was on the Select Board, and after they met for several hours, Hall said she quickly became a supporter of the reforms he was trying to introduce to the department.
“She rolled up her sleeves and worked with me tirelessly,” he said.
Day’s parents and grandparents lived in Greenfield, and she has lived there since 1972. Talking about her work with Hall, Day said he did a lot for the volunteers, got equipment fixed and got uniforms for the firefighters.
“I would talk about these things and how proud the guys in the Fire Department were,” she said.
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Day said she started serving as recording secretary when the previous secretary left because she was already at the meetings, and she started taking notes. When Hall asked Dave Martin to be emergency management director, Day and Diane Boilard became deputies after Hall asked Martin if he needed any help. She then agreed to take the director position when Martin stepped aside.
“I didn’t want all our work that we had been doing to change,” she said.
That work has included getting a grant for an electronic message board for outside the Fire Department to provide messages to residents in case of an emergency such as a weather disaster and a generator for the library so its basement can be used as a shelter.
“We feel like we need to be prepared,” she said.
A next step is to acquire supplies such as sheets and cots that can be given to residents in the shelter.
“It’s been a long slog to get those materials,” she said.
Day’s 12 years on the Select Board started after she and then-fellow Budget Committee member Aaron Kullgren talked about how it would be good to have a change. They made a deal that he would run that year, and if he won, she would run the next.
“Lo and behold, he did, and so the next year, I felt obligated to do it,” she said.
Asked about her accomplishments on the Select Board, Day cited the time a resident at the budget hearing suggested a particular machine to move bales of materials at the recycling center, but it was too small. She said she did three months of research into why the center needed a bigger machine.
“It was much, much better for the recycling center,” she said.
She described her philosophy as leaving biases behind and doing what is best for the town.
“There were times I got outvoted on some of my decisions, but that’s the way it happens,” she said.
Day is on the Conservation Commission with her husband, Roger Lessard. They are also both members of the Greenfield Cemetery Commission, and after he told her about all the old records that were missing, she said they needed to go online. She found a program called Chronicle to help with the work, and she expects a website for Greenvale Cemetery to be available in the new year. She would also like to do the Meeting House/Old Church Cemetery.
“A lot of the old records are very difficult to find, and they don’t always make sense,” she said.
Day, 76, said she’ll continue serving the town as long as she feels she can do it.
“Right now, I have no intention of quitting,” she said. “I just kind of keep tabs on myself, and if I feel I can’t make decisions, I’ll quit.”