Receives Norfolk Community Service Award

By Colleen Gundlach
Elizabeth (Libby) Borden loves Norfolk. It is apparent in her face when she talks about the town and the townspeople, and it is even more evident in her tireless devotion to making Norfolk all it can be. It’s that devotion, coupled with a drive to make the town a “vibrant” place, which has earned her this year’s Norfolk Community Service Award.

A quiet moment is a busy schedule: Libby Borden in her home office with tools of technology close at hand.

Lovely and gracious are words that have been used to describe Borden, along with a bubbling enthusiasm for databases and meetings. “I would much rather meet people by going to meetings than to cocktail parties,” she says.
Meetings she has, indeed. Currently the chairman of the Economic Development Commission (EDC), Borden was instrumental in forming a subcommittee that produces an e-newsletter each month, titled “What’s Happening in Norfolk, Connecticut.”
“Norfolk has so much to offer, much of which people don’t know about,” she says. “The newsletter also helps organizations to coordinate events so that they don’t double-book.” She modestly credits town Web master Mary Fanette and the EDC subcommittee for bringing this idea to fruition.
Borden doesn’t stop there, however. She is also co-president and treasurer of the Norfolk Land Trust, president of the Norfolk/Colebrook Garden Club, treasurer and secretary of the Norfolk Farmers Market Committee, and treasurer of the Coalition for Sound Growth. She is a member of the Board of Assessment Appeals, which logged countless hours mediating appeals following revaluation this past year. “It was a labor of love,” she says.
Her service on the Norfolk Library Board of Trustees, the Conservation Commission and the board of both the Open Space Institute and the Glimmerglass Opera, round out her most recent volunteer activities.
A former resident of New York City, Borden and her late husband, Gavin, owned and operated Garland Publishing, a company that produced scientific textbooks. She first became acquainted with Norfolk in 1979 when town resident Janet Klauer told her that there was a house here that she should buy. Borden purchased the Mary Case house on North Street four weeks later. “I have been in love with it ever since,” she says, but it wasn’t until 2001 that she sold her New York apartment and moved to Norfolk full time. The city’s loss was Norfolk’s gain.
Borden graduated from the Yale School of Forestry in 2004 with a Master of Environmental Management degree. Two major projects in Norfolk over the past few years have reaped the benefits of her expertise. The largest was the complete remaking of the town’s land use maps that was initiated by the Norfolk Land Trust. Borden worked for many months with Michele Sloane, Norfolk Tax Assessor, comparing parcels in Land Trust records with those in the Town Hall. “Sometimes information we had was correct and sometimes the tax assessor records were correct,” she reports. “Now we can really identify all lands in easement, all 490 lands, and lands owned by organizations.” The maps now reside in Town Hall, but a computerized version allows the user to place a cursor over a particular piece of property and see the name of the owner and how many acres are included in the parcel of land.
Borden also participated in the Natural Resource Inventory project finished last year by the Norfolk Conservation Commission. “Libby was an invaluable member of the team,” says Conservation Commission Chairman Sue Frisch, “especially when it came to the maps. And now, as we move on, she is helping us keep focused on our long-range goals while we work on shorter term projects.”
The Norfolk Community Service Award, which is informally named Volunteer of the Year, is presented each year to an outstanding resident who exemplifies the true meaning of voluntarism, by the Norfolk Republican Town Committee. Nominations are made by local residents who deposit names in boxes throughout town, and also use a form in Norfolk Now.
Libby Borden will receive her award at a dinner in her honor at 6 p.m. on May 15 at Botelle School. Tickets are $8 for children and seniors and $12 for adults, and may be purchased at the door or reserved by calling 860-542-6054.

Photo By Bruce Frisch