Mini-bio

Dear Friends,

I've been asked to draft a mini bio since I was recently selected for NEF's (Natick Education Federation) Harriet Siegel Shining Light Award.  I apologize for the boasting.  It was a total surprise.  But it indicates that some folks appreciate a few of the initiatives that I've undertaken to get people "fired up" about the local environment and give back to the community.  Here's a link to a little slide show about some of these activities and my bio.   Pat Conaway – A Biography

    A former middle school special needs teacher in Wayland, Pat lives in West Natick with his wife, Jane (of 44 years), also a gifted teacher who retired in 2011 from the Framingham Schools. Raised in the San Diego area and blessed with an incredibly loving family (Father, a flight test engineer; mother, a principal’s secretary, two brothers and two sisters), he came east to attend Harvard (Class of ’67) and married Jane Carney (1968).  Simply put, he had the good fortune to marry into the Carney Family: a gallant, warm, and stabilizing force throughout his life here on the east coast.  After raising their family in the Walnut Hill neighborhood for thirty-two years, they now live in an apartment attached to a larger house in which his daughter, Miriam (a Wayland teacher of seventeen years), and son-in-law, Aaron (an attorney), live with their three children (Matthew 10, Genevieve 8, and Bowen 6).  His oldest son, Brett, (Sargent –Natick Police Dept. for nine years, and a Lt. Colonel in the Massachusetts National Guard, plus two tours in Iraq, and Commander of a Military Police Battalion) and his wife, Rhonda, (a Certified Life Coach) also live in Natick with their two boys, Richie a senior, and Patrick a sophomore at Natick HS.  His younger son, Carlton, lives in Newton where he has worked as a Coordinator of Residential Living at the Perkins School for the Blind for the past seven years.  He is extremely proud of his wife, children, and grandkids.  A rock of joy and strength, they represent his main source of inspiration and hope for the future.

       During the summer Pat directed camps in Natick: (Woodtrail Center (three) and Camp Arrowhead (eighteen seasons).  There he further developed service and outdoor camping experiences for a wide range of children and young adults.  After forty years of teaching (the last twenty-five years at the Wayland Middle School), he retired in 2008 and formed a small non-profit designed to extend several of the initiatives he created as a teacher.  That effort (Big Heart Little Feet - helping others and leaving small footprints on the earth) has merged w/ the Lake Cochituate Watershed Council <lcwcs.org>; together they are trying to “fire people up” at the grassroots level to take better care of the local environment, including all our common spaces, waterways, woodlands, parks, trails and roadways.  Along with coordinating over fifty clean-ups of local ponds, streams, rivers, and parks, he’s developed unique outdoor recycling programs which compliment Natick's leading edge recycling initiatives.  Throughout Natick, Wayland, Cochituate State Park, and Framingham, Pat has hand-built, established, emptied, and maintained more than 100 "recycle buddy bins" that are placed near municipal and/ or BHLF outdoor trash barrels.  The message is simple: give people an opportunity to put their trash, plastic, glass, and aluminum containers in an appropriate receptacle.  Then they learn how to recycle and leave small footprint on the earth. 

       With LCWC he’s coordinated The Spring Sypmosium on the Lake Cochituate Watershed for the past three years.  This conference has featured some of the leading thinkers on watershed reform: improving stormwater strategies, fighting pollution, developing unique programs to battle invasive aquatic weeds, healthy lawns and landscapes, and mobilizing volunteers to heal our waterways and woodlands.  Moreover, LCWC has introduced creative programs for abutters to use DASH, handpulling, and benthic matting techniques for weed suppression.

       While maintaining a fierce passion for the outdoors and the natural world, he takes a special interest in challenging young people in the wilderness because he views it as a critical process to education and enlightenment.  Thus he continues to take students on outdoor hiking, backpacking, river, and winter survival trips which he initiated in the Wayland schools.    

       He also initiated the Big Heart Little Feet (BHLF) - Natick Trails Buddy Program which convenes every Monday and Wednesday morning and clears, cleans, and maintains the wonderful Natick Trail system. He refreshed the Natick Trailhead Kiosks and served on the Natick Open Space Advisory Committee for two years before joining the Natick Trails Maintence Committee in 2012.  For the past three Octobers he’s mobilized the Natick Trail Buddies, NHS Earth Club, and Town Trail Committees to host a Natick Trails Day to heal, introduce, and celebrate the Natick Trails.  Among his strongest initiatives, have been the Coolidge Hill Summit Clean-ups (five in the past three years) transforming a Natick treasure (sadly littered with decades of broken glass, bottles, cans, fireworks, and trash) into an inspiring public space that everyone can use and enjoy.  

       In 2011 – 2012 he implemented recycling and clean-ups at the Natick Public Housing units at Cedar Gardens and West Hill Park recruiting multigenerational volunteers.  With the collaboration of the Natick HS Earth Club, he’s launched four clean-ups of Dug Pond.  The NHS Earth Club is now poised to become an ongoing Steward of Dug Pond.

       With a hard working group of volunteers he formed the Natick Earth Day Planning Committee.  In April 2012 the Natick Earth Day Festival was revived after a 15 year hiatus.  It was quite successful despite some showers.  Over 50 grassroots organizations, town committees, businesses, artists and performers participated.  They’re in the midst of planning Natick’s 2013 Earth Day Festival, which will be bigger and better than ever.  Pat also works with Earth Day Planning Groups in Wayland and Framingham.

       In his last eight years at the Wayland MS Pat built a community garden and composting project with teachers, parents, and students.  After retirement, he joined the Wayland Green Team and, under the direction of Molly Faulkner, helped build a new and extraordinary composting system (now well established at Claypit Hill and the Wayland MS) which handles all the organic cafeteria waste in the school lunch programs (w/ exception of meat and dairy).

       Over the past two years he has worked with interested citizens and the recently formed “Natick Grows” Committee.  They are collaborating with teachers, administrators, students and parents to build school and community gardening programs throughout the Natick.  This is an ambitious project which aims to grow nutritious and locally grown food to supplement the school lunches, and build participation through the Natick (after school) ASAP programs.  Over the next few years they hope to build a growing community gardening initiative which will engage the Natick Conservation Commission, local faith-based communities (like the Hartford Street Presbyterian Church, and food pantries (including A Place to Turn).   

       Pat believes that the local environment is "MIA" (misunderstood, ignored, and abused).  "Relationships have been misunderstood and disrupted.  We're all connected to each other, the earth, and all living things.  We just have to learn how to live together and protect each other…somehow finding that balance and learning how to appreciate all living creatures and plants (our non human “buddies”) and the complex ecosystems that support them.  Everyone can help; simplify and serve.  Ask yourself, your friends and neighbors: what have you done today for your community?  Simple as that." 

       The 2010 Natick Town Report was dedicated to Conaway for his volunteer efforts to build community and protect the earth.  In June 22, 2012 he was awarded the Wayland River Steward Award by the SuAsCo River Stewardship Council and the League of Women Voters.  In April 2013 he will be awarded one of six Harriet Goldin Foundation Awards for excellent contributions to education and the local community.