Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1479836
93 PHOTOGRAPH BY MELENA WARN GRACE GONZALEZ CONNOLLY Grace Gonzalez Connolly believes that education and healthcare are "two fundamental human needs" and has directed her volunteer work in that direction for years, from serving on the Anna Jaques Hospital board of trustees in many capacities to cofounding the Anna Jaques Hospital Community Health Foundation. She now serves as chairperson of the board at Anna Jaques Hospital and is the first woman to hold that role. She believes that access to good healthcare is an important bedrock of a community, and that it's also part of the community's job to help keep that bedrock strong. "It takes a lot of community effort to have a strong community hospital," says Gonzalez Connolly, who's also a partner in the law firm Connolly & Connolly in Newburyport. "I always looked at this as a community resource, and that my job was really trying to be the very best steward I could be of this community resource." WHAT IS THE IMPORTANCE OF SERVICE? I was born in Cuba, and I came to this country as a little girl. I don't even remember Cuba. And I felt very welcomed here, and I was very grateful for the educational opportunities that I had here, for the healthcare that I received here. And I think—in my family, anyway—there was this sense of obligation to give back to your community. And I've always felt that very deeply, and I think particularly for underserved parts of our community, so I've always had a sense of obligation and a desire to serve. WHAT DOES CREATIVITY MEAN TO YOU? We all have a creative side to us. When I think of a holistic person—a whole person—if you're not an artist, if you're not a ballet dancer, if you're not a poet, or a writer yourself, I think we all derive a certain measure of pleasure and enjoyment and spirituality from that aspect of life. And that's certainly been the case for me. I do a jazz class at The Dance Place [in Newburyport] every Saturday morning religiously unless I can't attend for some reason. Aside from the physical exercise, it is just a great joy. It's a wonderful group of women. And I love poetry. I love reading. WHAT DOES COMMUNITY MEAN TO YOU HERE ON THE NORTH SHORE? Community, I think, is one of the most important words we might have in our vocabulary. When I think of community, I think of people coming together to create an environment that's mutually beneficial to where you live. And certainly in the greater Newburyport area, I think it's such an amazing example of how that works. It's sense of a place where you belong, where you call home, where you feel welcomed and accepted.