Greenfield Community College opened its doors way back when I was a third-grader at Federal Street School. The college started in the Federal Street North building, next to what is now CVS, and I was a student at Federal Street South. Every day back then at lunchtime, we first-, second- and third-graders got in line and filed across the playground to go into the cafeteria, which was in the basement of the college. To get there, we walked through the often smoke-filled college student lounge, full of tough-looking guys in camouflage, who I now know were returning Vietnam vets. From the very first year Greenfield Community College opened its doors, it was known as the place to go when you needed to open a new door in your own life.
Now, more than 50 years later, I don’t imagine there is a household in this community that has not been impacted in a positive way by Greenfield Community College. In my own family, both my brother and I took classes at GCC back in the day, and our Dad was on the GCC Foundation Board at the time of the purchase of the Downtown Center campus.
In more recent years, our son-in-law was able to complete a degree in fire science at the slow but steady pace of a course or two a semester, allowing him to study, serve as a Greenfield firefighter, and support a rapidly growing family all at the same time.
It is our daughters who have perhaps appreciated Greenfield Community College most of all. One of them, Abby, graduated from high school back in 2000, and as my husband said at the time, “It’s going to be very interesting to follow her life path.” And it has been! But that path brought her to GCC awhile back, where she studied pre-engineering, had a work-study position in the Academic Advising Center, helped get the GCC Food Pantry up and running and served as the student representative in the search for a new director of counseling. From there she moved on to Smith College to study engineering, and she is now working in the growing and much-needed manufacturing sector of our community.
Our youngest daughter, Annie, graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 2006 with a useful degree in African History (the editorializing is mine alone), and was working in Northampton at a marketing company when she received the gut-wrenching news that her partner, Kia, age 27, had been diagnosed with cancer. They both left for Kia’s home state of California in positive spirits, so Kia could be treated near her parents at Stanford Medical Center. As the doctors later acknowledged, Kia was never going to beat this virulent form of the disease, and she died, surrounded by her family and ours, 10 months later.
Had Kia lived, she had decided to become a nurse; when she didn’t, Annie decided that she was meant to follow that same course. But Annie had never taken any college math or science, so off to Greenfield Community College she went to take a year of math, microbiology, anatomy and physiology and God knows what else, before she could even apply for their nursing program. We are very proud that she will graduate from GCC with an associate degree in nursing next month, and has been given the very special honor of being asked by her fellow students to speak at their nurse pinning ceremony.
Whether you were a returning vet in the 1970s or the 2000s, a young parent working toward a better life for his or her family, a 20-year old who isn’t quite sure they have what it takes to go to college, a student of any age who knows very well what they want out of college and recognizes a great opportunity when they see one, or a young adult who has been dealt a blow and needs a new path in life … our local, beloved Greenfield Community College will be there for you. They will understand you, listen to you, challenge you, counsel you, stick by you, give you a second chance, and even support you financially … but they can only do all these great things if we support them first.
Please join me in contributing to the Greenfield Community College Annual Fund as generously as you can … how perfect that the watchwords of this year’s campaign are Opening Doors to the Future!
You can help support GCC students by making a gift to the 2016 Annual Campaign now at www.gcc.mass.edu/give or by calling 775-1600.
Amy Clarke lives in Greenfield.