KEENE, NH – The Elm City Rotary Club has honored one of their own with the Paul Harris Fellowship Award.

The award is the club’s highest honor, and according to a news release goes to someone who goes above and beyond in serving the community through promoting change and understanding.

At their weekly meeting the club presented the award to Susan Simonds. She’s been with the club since 2017 and has served as a board member, treasurer, and Course Marshal Director for the Clarence DeMar Marathon, their biggest fundraiser, where she’s responsible for finding and coordinating members of the community to assist with race marshal duties along the course.

Professionally, Simonds works as Managing Director for Diluzio, Foley, and Fletcher Funeral Homes. The release says her lifelong contributions to the region as a care professional, service provider, and volunteer is what inspired the club to give her the award.

“I’m touched and humbled,” Simonds said. “To be included with other recipients, who are community- and civic-minded, and for all the right reasons, makes me feel extremely fortunate.”

The Paul Harris Fellowship is named in honor of Rotary’s founder, Paul Harris, a Chicago-based attorney who started Rotary International in 1905 as a humanitarian organization aimed at gathering diverse people and improving relationships in his own city. The fellowship was established in 1957 to express appreciation and recognition for Harris’s contributions to Rotary International, and the ethical principles that serve as the organization’s foundation.

Recent recipients of the honor include Keene State College President Dr. Melinda Treadwell and former Keene Sentinel President Terry Williams.