Above: Two annual awards were publicly announced this week. (images cropped from contributed photo and photo from NSBORO Schools newsletter in March 2024)
Before Town Meeting opened on Monday night, the forum was used to honor two community members for their service to Southborough.
Neither are town residents, though one is a native and the other a neighbor. But both have been serving the community through their jobs for years — one through the library and the other through the schools and related organizations.
Below are the details on the annual awards announced for Kim Ivers and Mary Ellen Duggan.
Kim Ivers wins The Peggy Tuttle Award for Library Service Distinction
Southborough Library Director Ryan Donovan presented the annual Peggy Tuttle Award for Library Service Distinction to Assistant Library Director Kim Ivers:
The Peggy Tuttle Award for Library Service Distinction is named in honor of library staff member Peggy Tuttle, who contributed over 30 years of public service to the town.
This year’s recipient is a current library staff member and longtime contributor to the Town of Southborough.
In the words of last year’s award winner, Beth Melo1, this employee is “always friendly and professional. [She is] always enthusiastic with kids. [She is] patient in reading [and great leading] book groups. [She always] puts a smile on her face no matter what kind of day she is having.”
The Southborough Library would not even be half as successful as it is without her. I personally cannot imagine running the library without her.
Please join me in congratulating the 2025 Peggy Tuttle Award winner, the library’s assistant director, Kim Ivers.
In accepting the award, Ivers explained why the award was meaningful to her:
I just want to say that I worked with Peggy and I was a dear friend of Peggy for so many years. And I’m so glad and fortunate that I got to be able to do that. When I started as a library page, I was 15 years old and Peggy was training me. And she told me “Always treat people right and you’ll be fine.” She said, “If you make a mistake with the books that can always be fixed. If you make a mistake, if you don’t treat people right, that doesn’t be can’t be fixed.” So I’ve always remembered that and passed that on to anybody who I’ve trained in the years since then. So this is a big honor and thank you.
Worth noting, Ivers is a Southborough native who has worked at the library for over 35 years and been serving the library even longer than her speech acknowledged.
Prior to be coming a page, she began volunteering there when she was 9 years old. That became a job when she was 15. She continued that through high school, over college vacations, and as she was earning her Masters in Library Science. Upon graduation, she became a full time staff member. Eventually, she became the Children’s Librarian. She is now the Assistant Library Director, but continues to run the Children’s Room and its programs.
Doc Stone Award goes to Mary Ellen Duggan
Board of Health Chair Chelsea Malinowski announced the winner of the annual Doc Stone Award. It went to Mary Ellen Duggan, the Northborough-Southboro School District Nurse Leader and Wellness Coordinator.
Malinowski told the hall:
Mary Ellen has been an invaluable partner with the Southboro Health Department for several years now. She has worked collaboratively to enhance our programming in the areas of CPR, Encompass, vaccination programs, migrant families, town wellness programs, Narcan training for school nurses, and STEM conferences for women. She is involved in various groups of school and town leadership whose primary focus is the overall well-being of people in our community, especially students and teachers. She is a wonderful resource and advocate for our community as a whole. The Health Department is very grateful for her unwavering support of public health.
Malinowski explained that Duggan wasn’t in attendance, because she didn’t know that she won the award.
It’s not the first time that Duggan has been honored for her service. Back in 2019, she was the first recipient of the annual Laurie Sugarman-Whittier Wellness Award given out by Southborough Youth and Family Services. (At that time, Duggan was the Woodward School Nurse and co-organizer of a free before-school fitness program for kids called “Wake Up and Work Out”, plus a leader of an after school “Green Team” program.)
Last spring, she was awarded the School Nurse Administrator of the Year by the Massachusetts School Nurses Organization. And last fall, the Northborough resident was honored by the Town of Northborough when they named her the Grand Marshall of their big annual community festival, Applefest.
