Out & About: 20 good things from 2025

The end of the year is a good time for reflection and for the last five years I have done so by writing a roundup of 20 good things that have happened in the Upper Valley in the last year.

This year, I was asked by an acquaintance if doing this column — which I started during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 — is still necessary. After all, we’re years removed from the pandemic and I suppose a case could be made that this yearly reflection has run its course.

I disagree. Valley News’ web metrics tell us that readers are drawn to stories involving crime, car crashes and fires. I suppose that’s fair, as people want to know about news as it breaks. But as we know, our lives — and those of our neighbors — are made up of so much more than the hardships that befall us.

That’s the reason why I think this yearly reflection is still relevant. We need a reminder of the good that happens alongside the tragic; that at the end of the day we all just want to live in a community where people care for one another.

In no particular order, here are 20 good things that happened in the Upper Valley in 2025:

1. Karen Rich-Smith, the office administrator at Old South Church in Windsor, who took it upon herself to organize a Thanksgiving Day sit-down dinner, after learning the community didn’t have one.
2. The Enfield Public Library Board of Trustees who honored their commitment to Willa Shine Clark, who died in 2014 at age 4 in an accident at an Enfield child care. The newly renovated library — which opened last winter — includes “Willa’s Nook,” a play space that was created in her memory. “It really helped me because I knew that it was something more permanent. People weren’t going to forget Willa,” Willa’s mother, Cara DeLura, of Lebanon, told me in a phone interview last January. “That’s a fear when you lose somebody. This was a way to memorialize her.”
3. The Stevens High School’s girls soccer team which went undefeated and won its first state championship since 1988. This feat would be impressive all on its own but is even more so given the financial uncertainty the Claremont School District is facing and the question of whether the fall sports season would even take place at all. “I think athletics became a safe space — we didn’t talk about it, we didn’t worry about it,” Stevens head coach Tim St. Pierre told Valley News Staff Writer Michael Coughlin Jr. “We just came and got really focused.”
4. Students at Claremont’s Sugar River Valley Technical Center who started a shop to make Cardinal-themed gear to sell to support extracurricular activities at Stevens High School. “Looking from the outside, the news does not look good,” instructor Zack Thomas told Valley News Correspondent Patrick O’Grady. “We want to bring life back into the school system. We are all proud to be from here.”
5. Orange artist Gary Hamel, who had his first exhibition in more than a decade after challenges with his vision caused him to change the way he paints.
6. New London’s Center for the Arts, which opened its first physical location in its 20-year history with a gallery and classroom space at 428 Main St.
7. Lions Club members John Bayliss and Harry Armstrong, who travel all over the Twin States to bring durable medical equipment to people free of charge through the Health Closet program. “If they’ve got it and we need it, we figure out a way,” Bayliss told me in November.
8. Upper Valley fifth-graders Nirali Batra, of Etna, and Mahima Singh, of Lebanon, who were two winners of New Hampshire Secretary of State’s “I Voted” sticker contest. Voters will be able to get their stickers at the polls after they cast ballots in November’s election. “I tried to make it so it was really warm and welcoming,” Nirali told Valley News Staff Writer Clare Shanahan about her sticker.
9. Norwich resident Shelagh Harvard, who after learning her car had been stolen by a man with Alzheimer’s disease, reached out to his family to offer support.
10. Annie Arrington, who realized a longtime dream when she opened Treehouse Gymnastics, a noncompetitive gym, in Lebanon. “Most people just want to come and do gymnastics and have fun with it,” Arrington told Valley News Staff Writer Michael Coughlin Jr.
11. The Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this year and has enhanced the village’s arts scene.
12. The Upper Valley Music Center, which celebrated its 30th year of connecting people, particularly children, to music.
13. White River Junction cocktail bar Wolf Tree, which was named a semifinalist for the James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar.
14. Lebanon’s First Baptist Church, which reopened eight years after a devastating fire destroyed its 1870-era building. The congregation, with support from the community, built a new church. “It’s nice to have a home,” the Rev. Ryan Gabel told Valley News Staff Writer Alex Hanson. “But my focus, and I think our focus as a church, is not this building. It’s serving the community.”
15. Community members who turned out to help Golden Anchor Quilting in Claremont save merchandise after pipes burst, putting the business’ inventory — and livelihood — at risk. “Our focus is community and giving people a place to gather and be creative and create beauty and heal and feel welcome and loved and cherished and valued,” owner Louisa Grindle told me at the shop in early March. “It’s very clear in the wake of this flood that we’ve accomplished that.”
16. Members of the Orford Congregational Church who worked with Lebanon beekeeper Jennifer Mercer and backyard Orford beekeeper Charlie Smith Jr. to safely remove a honeybee colony that made its home in the church’s roof. “It was beautiful that so many people cared about the bees,” church member Melissa Arnesen-Trunzo told me in July.
17. The Newport School District, which worked with experts to remove a colony of bats that made its home in Richards Elementary School. No bats were killed in the process.
18. The Lebanon girls tennis team, which a year after making it to the Division III finals for the first time, won this year.
19. Strafford residents, who worked together to form the Strafford Community Trust to take ownership of the town’s beloved Coburns’ General Store after longtime owners Melvin, Sue and Philip Coburn announced their intentions to step back from running the store. “That was what we wanted from the beginning,” Sue Coburn told Staff Writer Marion Umpleby last winter.
20. Everyone who volunteered for a community organization or entity, ran for elected office or donated to an organization that helps Upper Valley residents.