Our picks for the 25 Most Interesting People in MetroWest and Greater Milford for 2023
For the fifth consecutive year, the Daily News is looking back and recognizing 25 people in the community who aren't always in the news, but made news in some way at some point in 2023.
There's the teen immigrant from Haiti who took up ice hockey; the Framingham man whose Facebook page about all things local dining has accumulated nearly 27,000 members; and the woman who has worked as a Milford Regional Medical Center nurse for 50 years.
The one thing they have in common? They are interesting to read about.
So without any further ado, these 25 individuals, in alphabetical order, were chosen by the Daily News staff as the most interesting people in the region for 2023:
Last year's list: Daily News unveils its 25 Most Interesting People for 2022
Maureen Amyot, Westborough
It's one thing to give to a loved one, but Amyot gave to a stranger — and it was no token gift.
She gave a kidney to a man she had never met. She still hasn't.
"I feel so happy that I got to do it," Amyot told the Daily News last week. "Just knowing those families will be able to celebrate the holidays with the loved ones is the best feeling."
Amyot, who is director of the Westborough Public Library, participated in what's called a "paired transplant." That occurs when one person agrees to donate to another but is later found to not be a match. The donor then agrees to donate to a stranger, making room for another donor to be matched with the original donor's intended recipient.
Both transplants took place — successfully — in October at Tufts Medical Center.
Amyot will meet all three other participants in the paired transplant next March when each has a six-month checkup.
Zac Attaway, Hudson
As a police sergeant, Attaway serves Marlborough. But he bleeds Hudson.
A 2001 Hudson High School graduate, Attaway took over as head football coach at the school this fall for Dan McAnespie, who retired last December after 25 years.
Attaway, who had been a McAnespie assistant for five years, guided the Hawks (9-3) to the Division 6 state semifinals and, perhaps more importantly to many in town, their first Thanksgiving Day victory over Marlborough since 2010.
Next year figures to be even more exciting, as Attaway welcomes back his biggest star — his son, quarterback Jake Attaway.
“To jump on as the head coach and to have my son as a part of the program is very cool,” Zac Attaway told the Daily News at the time he was promoted. “It’s a great opportunity and it’s something I'm going to remember for forever.”
Justin Bonina, Marlborough
Bonina, a Marlborough police officer, has a well earned reputation for saving lives.
When he jumped into Mowry Brook off Phelps Street during the wee hours of the morning on March 19, saving the life of a man who had driven his vehicle into the water, Bonina was already a seasoned pro.
Not once, but twice.
In December 2019, Bonina and Officer Nicholas Evangelous visited a home for a well-being check on a woman who had made suicidal statements to her therapist. They found a woman inside face-down in a bathtub with water and with lacerations to both wrists. They pulled her from the water and applied pressure to her wrists to stop the bleeding.
And in February 2022, Bonino and Officer Paul McCarthy responded to the parking lot at Marlborough Hospital for a report of a suicidal man. Three and a half hours later, they found the man near the Assabet River Rail Trail, cold, wet and suffering from apparent hypothermia. He was taken to the hospital to be treated.
"He's definitely one of our really good newer officers," said Police Chief David Giorgi.
Nicole Bottomley, Ashland
Bottomley, then principal at Holliston High School, was chosen last spring by the Massachusetts School Administrators' Association to receive its Bertram H. Holland Award for High School Principal of the Year.
She was nominated by Holliston High School Assistant Principal Ronald Sudmyer, a longtime colleague.
"She epitomizes what a good leader is," Sudmyer told the Daily News. "Her actions match her words... she's a great listener and a humble person."
After serving as Holliston High's principal for 10 years, Bottomley, who lives in Ashland, took over as principal this fall at King Philip Regional High School in Wrentham. Before becoming an administrator, Bottomley was a mental health counselor and taught history and science at Framingham High School.
Bottomley told the Daily News in an email that she was "truly humbled and honored" to be chosen Principal of the Year.
Rose Boulay, Framingham
She was born in Haiti. She had never even seen ice, let alone skated on it.
But Boulay wanted to play a winter sport when she arrived at Framingham High School in 2021. She chose girls' ice hockey, at least partly due to the program's no-cut policy.
Last winter, as a senior, Boulay played on the Flyers' junior varsity team.
“It shows me I can be strong and I can adapt to any situation,” she told the Daily News in January. “I was stressing, ‘Am I going to be an outsider? Are they going to laugh at me and think what is she doing here?’ But they’re so welcoming."
It soon got to the point where she was no longer merely happy to be there.
"I have to work on my shooting," she said.
Ed Burman, Wayland
You might say Burman is a patient man.
Earlier this month, the Framingham native was named Wayland's next police chief. This, after 21 months serving as acting chief when then-Chief Sean Gibbons was placed on administrative leave due to sexual harassment allegations.
Burman, 60, had been a member of the Wayland Police Department for only about two weeks when he was appointed acting chief, and Wayland was without a permanent town administrator until earlier this year when Mike McCall was named the town's first town manager.
Burman, who has previously served as a police officer in Framingham and Ashland, is active outside his primary profession. He's chair of the Keefe Tech School Committee and works one day a week as a nurse at MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham. He is also on the board of directors for the MetroWest Regional Transit Authority and the Metropolitan Boston EMS Council.
He credits former Framingham Police Chief Steve Carl and former Ashland Police Chief Craig Davis with mentoring him.
"I really hope I will be able to mentor some of the people in this department the way I was mentored," Burman said.
Kiat Cormier, Framingham
With nearly 27,000 members, Cormier runs one of the largest Facebook groups in MetroWest. What brings all of these people together? Food, and a love for sharing local restaurant experiences.
A Wellesley native, Cormier is a professional chef by trade — he works at Dave & Buster's catering unit in Natick. But he also manages the Facebook page "ChewOnThis," which discusses everything and anything about local dining. It started as a minor hobby — Cormier photographing food — but took off during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The page has become a must-visit for MetroWest residents looking for the latest news on openings and closings, advice on where to eat, and opinions on where the best food is throughout MetroWest.
He aims to keep it positive.
"I think, having worked in restaurants, if you had a bad experience, I don't want you to use social media to bash them," Cormier told the Daily News. "Call the restaurant and talk to management, let them know what went wrong."
Natalie Cort, Milford
Cort, an associate professor of psychology at William James College in Newton for the past 10 years, was recently named 2023 Teacher of the Year by the Massachusetts Psychological Association. Her specialty is examining racial and ethnic disparities in diagnostic practice and health.
"One of the things I highlight to my students is that disparities exist, in large part, because many of us who have opportunities to actually reduce them don’t know that they exist," she told the Daily News.
Cort grew up in Guyana, a small (pop. 805,000) South American country that borders Venezuela to the east. She thinks she would be a psychologist even if it wasn't a profession.
"Psychology is about being interested and curious about humanity and why people behave the way they do and why we talk and think the way we do," she said.
Mark and Karen Curtis, Framingham
For 35 years, the Curtises have done their part — plus some — in ensuring that as many people as possible can enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner.
The so-called "Curtis Family Feed," which has grown from a small gathering to a community tradition feeding hundreds, took place this year at the United Way of Tri-County on Park Street in Framingham.
Mark Curtis cooked up 120 turkeys to be distributed to those who were able to stop by and pick up a meal between noon and 2 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. Those who could not visit the United Way were able to arrange for deliveries from an all-volunteer team.
On Dec. 20, Mayor Charlie Sisitsky honored the Curtises by issuing a proclamation and declaring the day "Karen & Mark Curtis Day" in Framingham.
Lily Kahrl, Wellesley
She didn't begin walking until she was 3 1/2 — even though a doctor had said it wouldn't happen at all.
Fifteen years later, Kahrl, who has a rare (fewer than 1,000 cases worldwide) genetic disorder called STXBP1 encephalopathy, competed last winter as a senior on the Wellesley High girls’ swim team.
STXBP1 encephalopathy is a neurodevelopmental condition that can include epilepsy, varying degrees of cognitive impairment, movement disorders and autism, according to stxbp1disorders.org.
Wellesley High swim coach Doug Curtin not only welcomed Kahrl on the team, he allowed her to compete — she did the 50-meter event.
"Being inclusive doesn’t take a monumental approach in the way you approach things,” Curtin said.
“It’s hard to be negative on the pool deck,” Isabael McKay, then a senior, told the Daily News, “when you watch someone as positive as Lily walk in and be happy every single day to show up and do this work.”
Bill Kessler, Mendon
After 35 years of chasing fires, Kessler, 62, will soon be chasing storms. He retired this month as fire chief in both Mendon and Blackstone, but he’s not going fishing or playing golf.
Instead, Kessler is pursuing a career in chasing storms.
“I went on my first trip in 2005 and now I’m a driver guide for a company that does storm chasing,” he told the Daily News earlier this year.
Kessler has since spent several vacations as a storm chasing guide in the Plains region, taking people all over to try to get a view of a tornado. Next year, he will be doing even more of it.
He’s a man who keeps his promises. When he joined an embattled Mendon Fire Department in 2018, he promised them five years. Mission accomplished.
Norman Khumalo, Hopkinton
Khumalo lives in Uxbridge, but has served as Hopkinton's town manager since 2009; he recently announced that he would leave his position in early 2024 to take a position in the private sector.
Khumalo got his inspiration for public service while growing up in the African nation of Zimbabwe; he was a teenager when the country gained its independence from British colonial rule in 1980.
Khumalo's list of accomplishments in Hopkinton is long. He consolidated land use, planning and permitting into a single Land Use Department. Similarly, he consolidated the legacy treasurer, accounting and assessing offices into the Hopkinton Finance Department.
The town has seen its bond rating rise from AA to AAA, and has become a certified Green City.
“It has been the honor of a lifetime to serve such a vibrant, growing town," Khumalo said in a statement.
Matt King, Medway
King, a trained chef who is president and chief operating officer at Legal Sea Foods, is one of the keys to the chain's recent decision to construct a full-service commissary on Fortune Boulevard in Milford. That's because he's had a 12-year friendship with the Clarke family, which owns and operates Clarke Distribution, a luxury appliance retailer and distributor that has operated an appliance showroom at the site for more than a decade.
"It's where we'll make the chowders, stocks, sauces and soups," King told the Daily News in October. "We dry-age our beef for Smith & Wollensky on-site and cut steaks for Legal Sea Foods and Strega."
King, who grew up in Shrewsbury, has been working in restaurant kitchens since he was 13. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, he has worked as an executive chef and corporate chef.
He described the still-to-be-built Milford facility as a "center of excellence" that will employ about 30 people.
"The job opportunities should be nice for the town," he said.
The Rev. J. Anthony Lloyd, Framingham
Lloyd is pastor at the Greater Framingham Community Church, an interdenominational Christian church founded in 1972 that was organized to "meet the needs of suburbanites who desired a Black religious experience."
Since Lloyd arrived in April 1992, the church has gone from serving 35 families to more than 400.
But his work goes well beyond his church community.
Last year, he recognized that the number of families dealing with food insecurity was reaching crisis proportions. Many food banks often close on Friday and don't reopen until the following Tuesday. So his church teamed with Framingham Public Schools and DoorDash to help fill that gap with a local Project DASH program, which delivers meals to families in need.
In another instance, Senior Rabbi Danny Burkeman credited Lloyd with attending a support ceremony at Temple Shir Tikva in Wayland on Oct. 8, the day after the Hamas attacks on Israeli citizens.
"That meant a lot," Burkeman said, adding that there hasn't been enough outcry about the attacks from the general public.
Haley MacLeod, Medway
In late June 2022, MacLeod, then 17, was cooking eggrolls in the kitchen of her Medway home when the fire alarm went off. Moments later, as she frantically tried to bring the pot of burning oil and food outside to cool down, the pan combusted in her hand.
MacLeod suffered serious burns on nearly a quarter of her body.
She endured three separate grafting surgeries — where skin is transferred from one part of the body to the other — and two laser operations. She had 646 staples removed from her body and had to re-learn how to walk.
But by the start of last winter, MacLeod served as a captain for the Medway/Ashland girls' hockey team. She says that returning to ice was a major source of motivation.
“I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen to me,” she told the Daily News in January. “But I think I always knew I was going to get back to hockey. I wasn't going to let anything stop that.”
Alfonso Manzueta, Framingham
For two years, a task force comprised of investigators from two states and multiple police departments took part in a large-scale drug probe that led to 13 arrests in April.
Among those task force members was a Manzueta, a new Framingham police officer, who was brought on for his bilingual skills. He monitored tapped phone lines and translated conversations he overheard.
For that work, Manzueta was honored in October as Officer of the Year by the Massachusetts Latino Police Officers Association.
"I was excited, blindsided," he told the Daily News in an interview. "I didn't even know I was up for the award. I didn't know I was nominated until I got the email."
Born and raised in Dorchester,Manzueta was not interested in becoming a police officer as a boy.
That changed about 10 years ago. After working for several years in customer service, he moved to Framingham and his father-in-law, a Boston police officer, convinced him to give corrections a chance.
Ivette Mesmar, Marlborough
Mesmar has a long history of charitable efforts in Marlborough and beyond. She has been involved with the Lions Club International for more than 40 years, and was recently elected as district governor for the organization's District 33K.
In May she was presented with the City of Marlborough’s 2023 Humanitarian of the Year Award by Mayor Arthur Vigeant, in recognition of her charitable efforts in the city.
A native of Panama, Mesmar began her professional career as a microbiologist. She eventually transitioned to the banking industry where her background in research helps her develop solutions for her banking customers.
She is currently assistant vice president and manager of Brookline Bank’s Wellesley Hills office.
Marilyn Nydam, Milford
A half a century of caring for others.
Nydam, a 72-year-old registered nurse working in maternity, marked her 50th anniversary working for Milford Regional Medical Center earlier this year.
Her secret? The friends she's made on the job are among her favorite memories at the hospital.
"Staffing and caring for patients — and caring for each other — is so important to everybody on our unit," she told the Daily News in July.
After working for awhile in a factory as a young woman, Nydam got started in health care when her father got her a job at a nursing home in Whitinsville.
"I loved it," she recalled.
Nydam said she's not ready to retire. At the time of her Daily News interview in July, she had worked a 12-hour shift the previous night, during which she mentored two young nurses for four hours.
"They just feel validated," she said.
Ann Odabashian, Bellingham
Odabashian had already served Bellingham for 34 years, including stints on the School Committee (nine years), Finance Committee (two years) and Select Board (12 years), before an 11-year run (2008-19) as town clerk.
So why come back for another round on the Select Board?
Well, earlier this year both Police Chief Gerard Daigle and Fire Chief Steve Gentile retired. Then Denis Fraine, town administrator since 1987, stepped down.
"A lot of people in key positions left," Odabashian told the Daily News. "Bellingham is at a crossroads."
On Aug. 29, Odabashian defeated School Committee member Jennifer Almonte, 741-648, to win a seat on the five-member Select Board that was vacated in May by Cynthia McNulty's resignation.
Odabashian will serve until June, when the term expires, then decide whether to start a new election winning streak.
Nick Paganella, Framingham
Paganella is past president and past commander of the Korean War Veterans of Massachusetts. He has organized many events to honor veterans and mark military history, including this past summer’s commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Korean War at Cushing Memorial Chapel.
A 1951 Marlborough High School graduate, Paganella served more than 25 years in the military, earning the Korean Defense Medal, the Good Conduct Medal, the Overseas Military Reserve Medal and the National Defense Medal. He has served on the Framingham Veterans Council since its inception a decade ago.
In civic life, he opened a beauty salon in Marlborough in 1962, and later taught cosmetology classes at Keefe Tech. More recently, he has taken to dressing up as Santa Claus, playing the role at a neighbor's house just a few days before Christmas.
By his own admission, he has the "gift of gab."
"When I walked down the hallways at Keefe Tech, students would duck out of the way saying, 'Here comes Mr. Paganella. He's going to chew my ear off,'" he told the Daily News.
The city declared Nov. 27 — his 90th birthday — Nick Paganella Day. A Framingham cemetery trustee, he is the city’s oldest currently serving elected leader.
Mitch Ruscitti, Hopedale
It understates the case that Ruscitti has challenges as Hopedale's new town administrator.
He landed the job just after voters approved a $1.35 million override in the town's budget. That enabled the town to avoid closing the Bancroft Memorial Library and Hopedale Senior Center, but raised property taxes on residents and businesses.
Ruscitti has a plan, though.
"What I would like to do is bring the town up to compliance with best practices for financial management but also we have some projects that will allow for larger pools of free cash," he told the Daily News in October.
Ruscitti has plenty of credentials. He has worked in the City Manager's Office in Worcester, and for the governor in Kentucky. He also recently helped the Milford Parks Department secure a $1.3 million grant to support renovations at Milford Town Park.
"I treat this job very differently, I think, than I would if I was town administrator somewhere else," Ruscitti said.
Reyad Shah, Framingham
Shah, who grew up off Framingham's Waverly Street, has made an immediate impact in his first year as executive director of Downtown Framingham Inc., a nonprofit that serves and supports residents and local businesses in downtown Framingham.
Last month, he was honored by the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce with its Emerging Leader of the Year Award. The award recognizes someone who makes an impact both professionally and personally in MetroWest, with great potential for leadership and community service.
“I’m trying to create this ecosystem of commerce where the money keeps being exchanged locally, which allows the community to thrive,” Shah told the Daily News earlier this year. “If you create these strong lasting bonds of professionals that stay in the area, it is only going to continue to thrive and build upward.”
Tania Vitvitsky, Sudbury
While she wasn't born in Ukraine, Vitvitsky considers it to be "home." Her family was displaced from Western Ukraine (then controlled by Poland) during World War II; Vitvitsky was born in Austria.
Other family members were not as fortunate, particularly her maternal grandfather and a great aunt, who were shot and killed by invading Russian forces.
Vitvitsky, who serves as chair of the Sudbury Democratic Town Committee and is a member of the Sudbury Housing Authority, has returned to Ukraine each year since 1991. For many years, she worked for a nonprofit that delivered English language books there, but also to places like Rwanda and Vietnam.
But when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Vitvitsky shifted her advocacy to charities that were aiding the Ukrainian war effort. This fall, she spent two months in Ukraine, helping nonprofits get donations from the United States, and helping families that were displaced by violence and assisting women who were victimized by the war, including sexual assault survivors.
"Unfortunately, the same tragic history that my family went through is happening again," she said.
Leslie White Harvey, Framingham
Ask White Harvey where she gets her enthusiasm for community service and the answer is simple.
"Everything I do comes from my mother," she told the Daily News in October. "Both me and my twin sister are very active in helping out."
Since moving to Framingham 14 years ago, White Harvey has taken on numerous roles. She has sat on the board of directors for Downtown Framingham Inc., the Framingham History Center and is currently is vice chair of the Board of Library Trustees.
On Nov. 7, White Harvey was elected to the Framingham City Council, upsetting incumbent District 8 Councilor John Stefanini. She'll join the panel in January.
"I'm very thankful to my district for listening to my message and I'm appreciative of all my constituents," she said on the night of her election.
A native of Dominica, a small Caribbean island nation, White Harvey said her priorities include helping immigrants feel more welcome and getting them involved in city affairs.
Contributors include Daily News multimedia journalists Tom Benoit, Jesse Collings, Tim Dumas, Art Illman and Norman Miller; and former Daily News multimedia journalist Tommy Cassell.
This article originally appeared on MetroWest Daily News: Metrowest/Milford's most interesting people in 2023: who we picked
