HARWINTON — Harwinton's Outstanding Citizen of the Year will be honored at a banquet April 21. This year's honoree is longtime resident and teacher Bruce Burnett.
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The dinner begins at 6 p.m. and will be held at Fairview Farm Golf Course. Tickets are $55 per person and may be obtained by calling 860-485-9683 or mailing a check to 45 Buckridge Road, Harwinton, CT 06791. Checks should be made payable to the Harwinton Award Committee. Reservations are due by April 11.
Burnett has been a Harwinton resident since 1980 when he came to Connecticut to teach social studies at Lewis S. Mills High School. Before that, he taught at Loveland High School in Colorado, according to a statement.
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While teaching at Mills, Burnett earned a master’s degree in history from Trinity College in Hartford. He was named Region 10 Teacher of the Year and in 2006 was Connecticut Social Studies Teacher of the Year.
Burnett served for many years as the school’s Social Studies Club advisor and as advisor for the debate and mock trial teams. He has served on the board of the Make A Mark Foundation for several years; the group has organized the Johnnycake Mountain Music Festival and other programs to raise money for grants to pay for special projects in the Region 10 schools.
In addition to teaching, Burnett was elected to and has served on the Town of Harwinton’s Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Commission since 1982, recently retiring from that commission as chairman. He has served on the Board of Directors for both the T.A. Hungerford Museum and the Harwinton Historical Society for many years. and is a member of both the Scholarship and the Program Committees for the society, according to the selection committee members.
He has also assisted with the annual Harwinton elementary schoolhouse and barn museum tours. Burnett has portrayed historical Harwinton residents for townwide cemetery tours, and has given historical talks for town residents at the public library. He has represented Harwinton and has presented at the Greater Naugatuck Valley Consortium meetings for small historical societies, according to members.
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Bruce and his wife, Karen Newell Burnett, have two grown children, Meghan and Ben, and two grandchildren.
A rotating committee of Harwinton residents selects the recipient of the Harwinton Outstanding Citizen Award that honors volunteerism and community involvement.
To be eligible for the award, a candidate must be a resident of Harwinton for a minimum of five years and must be actively engaged in the civic affairs of the town, whether elected, appointed or voluntary. The 2023 committee consists of Kevin Smail, Pam Lazaroski, Nancy Lyons, Barbara Buys, Terry Ferrarotti, and Chairman Bruce Richard.
March 20, 2023
Emily M. Olson is the community editor for the Torrington Register Citizen, the New Haven Register and the Middletown Press.
She is a 1997 graduate of Western Connecticut State University with a degree in English and a minor in journalism.
She started her career at the Patent Trader newspaper in Westchester County in 1998. After a brief period as a reporter with the Register Citizen in 1999, she joined the former Housatonic Publications group as a reporter. She was managing editor of the former Litchfield Enquirer and helped run the weekly newspapers at Housatonic and the Litchfield County Times. She returned to the Register Citizen in 2009.