DEERFIELD — Roughly 300 people packed Deerfield Academy’s dining commons Tuesday to witness Greenfield Community College President Robert Pura honored as the 35th Recorder Citizen of the Year.
Pura, 65, who plans to retire this coming spring after 17 years as president, described how much Franklin County has reminded him of the neighborly community that he walked through every day while growing up in Miami on his way to school — and the kind of 1950s Ohio community described by Harvard economist Robert Putnam in his book, “Our Kids,” “with all those good folks standing outside their stores making sure I was OK, going to and from school, as if I was a member of their own family.”
Pura described Monte’s March Against Hunger, the Franklin County Opioid Task Force and The Recorder’s annual Warm the Children campaign as an expression of a community where “You care for each child attending the schools of Franklin County as if they were your own. … You are the community that the book ‘Our Kids’ states no longer exists and the very one that is so urgently needed in our nation today. You make happen, every day here in Franklin County.”
Pura, who chose to donate his entire $500 cash prize to the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts and GCC Foundation, and who received citations from Congress, the U.S. Senate as well as the Massachusetts House and Senate and the Town of Greenfield, told the gathering at Tuesday’s Franklin County Chamber of Commerce breakfast, “With this award you honor all at GCC, you honor all in my family, you have given me the honor of a lifetime — and above all, this beautiful award is a celebration in honor of our community.”
Pura, the first in his family to attend college, and the first GCC president to have graduated from community college, described time as “the resource of greatest value.
“That is why you and this community are so special,” he added, “You are a contradiction to our nation’s current narrative. In spite of the fact that you are always on the run trying to do all those things that are on your plate for work and family, you show up to flip burgers, pack the backpacks, decorate the floats, march in the parade, break the boards, you coach our kids, get dunked in that dunk tank, play in the golf tournaments … attend the meetings, make phone calls, cook meals and then deliver meals, help a child attend summer camp, you open the doors to education, and you even make the time to show up for Chamber breakfasts. … Together, with all of our challenges and imperfections, we are creating the community we want the world to become.”
Attorney Mark Berson, one of those who nominated Pura for the award, told the gathering he’s been “a transformative figure in this community, not just this year, but for the past 10 or 15 years. When you go outside of Greenfield, they talk abut the fact that this is the best community college in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He continues to do this by reaching beyond the borders.”
Rep. Stephen Kulik, D-Worthington, said that in giving the award to Pura, “You’ve chosen a really remarkable person. The opportunity to know Bob as an advocate for higher education, because he’s one of the most extraordinary and articulate speakers on the subject, that public higher education is a ladder, an opportunity, for so many people. … Bob has made it his mission to speak on behalf of the college and what it means to the culture and the economy and the values of Franklin County. … You (Pura) make such a huge difference, and after all, that’s what this award is about.”