As reported in The Concord Journal on April 10, 2008 - click here to view the full article.

Concord - The instructions said to check the box that best applies to the candidate. The options were volunteer service, extraordinary effort beyond job description, involvement and organizing within her community, promoting business involvement for community service and innovations and ideas.

Unable to select just one, state Rep. Cory Atkins, D-Concord, checked each box on the form she used to nominate Nancy Crowley as a Community Unsung Heroine. “Nancy Crowley represents the very essence of Concord’s community,” Atkins wrote on the nomination.

Crowley, executive director of Concord Park and an active member of Concord’s volunteer corps, is one of 286 women honored as Community Unsung Heroines of 2008 by the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women. The Concord resident was chosen from a pool of nearly 600 to be recognized for outstanding contributions to her organizations and communities. A ceremony for the Unsung Heroines will be held Wednesday, May 14, from 1 to 4 p.m. at the State House in Boston.

“I was taken aback. Very humbled,” Crowley said of the honor. “There are so many women in this town who do wonderful things.”

A registered nurse, Crowley has worked extensively with local seniors with healthcare in their homes, nursing homes and hospital settings. Then, as a staff development coordinator at a long-term community she was asked to take Alzheimer’s training and start a program. Just over six years ago, Crowley opened Concord Park, a community of Massachusetts Assisted Living that is affiliated with Volunteers of America. Her role as executive director she considers to be like the culmination of her work with the Council on Aging, Alzheimer’s and business.

“I just fell into it and realized how much I began to have a passion for working with the population with Alzheimer’s and dementia,” she said. “There’s so much that really can enhance their lives, and we can help their families and loved ones and caregivers.”

She is also active in many Concord committees and organizations, which she considers a different avenue to help. Crowley was just elected to the Housing Authority, is a member of the Public Ceremonies and Celebrations Committee, serves on the board at Minuteman Arc. She has held numerous other posts, including, the Council on Aging, Board of Health, Concord 2000 committees, emergency preparedness and multiple business-related volunteer organizations.

“When you volunteer, you meet a lot of wonderful people,” she said. “It’s another aspect of your life. And, it is a good feeling to give back.”

It’s not just what she does, it’s how she does it, said Atkins, who first met Crowley sometime around 1999, when Crowley was running the Alzheimer’s Clinic at the facility now called Concord Health Care.

“The way she ran that clinic was just so wonderfully humane,” Atkins said. “She treated people with so much dignity.”

Today, Atkins sees the same capacity for empathy at Concord Park, where the representative jokes she has a room reserved. “The residents who live there feel like they’re part of something,” she said.

“She just naturally, without any second thought, gets people involved in the community and the community involved with people,” Atkins said. “Nancy is just an exceptional person and she just loves Concord.”

Born and brought up in Concord, Crowley grew up in a “White Lady” alongside the prison where her father, an active volunteer in his own right, worked. She began her own volunteer work as a single mother when her two children, Scott and Megan, became involved in youth sports.

“I love my town, and I like helping out and getting involved,” said Crowley. “The town needs volunteers and there are not enough people who volunteer.”

An active volunteer in town and on-call 24/7 at Concord Park, Crowley still tries to make sure that her weekends are, in fact, her own. “I don’t have to do everything every day,” she said. “I have to space them out.”

Crowley likes to read, work in her garden, and spends time with her old nursing friends and her family — Megan, now a lawyer in Andover, and Scott now a physician’s assistant in Wrentham, who has one child.

“My family is very important to me,” she said. “I try to see them every week.”