This week, we’re continuing with our series highlighting the award winners from our BBRC Annual Awards Dinner held last month. The past three weeks, we’ve highlighted our Large Business of the Year, Darling’s Brunswick Ford; our Small Business of the Year, Midcoast Humane; our President’s Award recipient, Bob Langworthy; our Director’s Award recipient, Charleen Foley; and our Young Professional of the Year, Mandy Reynolds.

If you’d like more information on these winners, you can log on to the chamber’s website to read their full profiles. Each Friday, you can find the videos that were shown on March 10 (produced by Sturdy Production) on our Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber Facebook page and YouTube channel.

This week, we’re highlighting our Citizen of the Year. Before that, though, we did want to thank our three BBRC Annual Awards Night sponsors. When running any event — especially events with food — it’s always appreciated to get some additional support to cover the expenses of the event. A huge thank-you for sponsoring the Awards Night goes to: Wilcox Wellness & Fitness (Allison Hopkins), Clark Insurance (Evan Gleason) and D.A. Cressey Heat Pumps & Electric (David and Lorraine Cressey).

Additionally, we had some other event supporters who helped make the night such a success. Thank you to Cook’s Lobster & Ale House for the outstanding food and service. Thank you to St. John’s Community Center and their staff for always being such great partners. Thank you to Jeff Morris of The Pierce Studio for the event photography. Thank you to David Barber of Forwood Thinking for the gorgeous cutting board awards for our winners. Finally, thank you to John and Samy of Sturdy Production for the seven incredible videos.

With that, our Citizen of the Year:

Citizen of the Year – Sherry Plunkett

Sherry is a transplant, but in the way she treats others and the way she connects community members, you would think her family grew up on these rocky shores for generations. Sherry grew up in Hutchinson, Kansas, and found her way to Maine thanks to a romantic relationship with a man. Not her relationship, thank you very much; her sister had married a Navy man who got stationed in Brunswick, and when he had to ship out for six months, Sherry’s sister asked her to come out to help around the house. Sherry planned on staying for six months, but that turned into a lifetime commitment.

That permanent residence was the result of her own romantic relationship this time, as she met her husband Jon not long after coming to Brunswick, and they got married eight months later. They have raised two boys, Jeremy, now 32, and Ben, 31, and Sherry is so proud of both.

The boys play a key role in the events that shape Sherry’s path. Once the boys turned school age, Sherry went back to work outside the home and helped open the Applebee’s in Brunswick, which led to a few other customer service jobs at local companies. During this time, Sherry became an active volunteer in the schools and met children from varying homes. Sherry noted that some of these children needed help and she thought maybe she could help fill that role.

By this time, professionally, Sherry had made her way to Coldwell Banker in a customer service/office administrator-type role. That’s where she met Sue Spann. Sue worked on a sales team with her son Jeff, and they worked closely with Sherry. When Sue was ready to open an office of her own, one of the pieces of advice she got was from Jeff. As Sue tells it, he said, “Mom, this is a great idea, but you can’t do it without Sherry; you need to take her with you.” And in 2002, RE/MAX Riverside was born.

Real estate became the industry that kept Sherry engaged. After a career of changing jobs every two to three years out of boredom, Sherry hasn’t gotten bored in the last 21 years. She runs the RE/MAX Riverside office with a firm but kind hand, where everyone works together, favoritism is not condoned in the office and everyone understands there is a way to do business if you want to be an agent in that office — and with over 30 agents, it’s clearly working well.

RE/MAX Riverside also allowed Sherry to dive into volunteering more. As a mom, Sherry’s house would be the neighborhood house to gather at, where all the kids would come over to hang out with her boys. As Sherry says, “As my boys grew up and their friends grew up in my house, it became apparent that there were things missing in different kids’ lives. That drew me to Big Brothers Big Sisters of Bath/Brunswick from seeing how different upbringings can lead to different results.”

Sherry began on the Big Brothers Big Sisters board in 2013 and ever since has been part of their fundraising events, helping with appeals, supporting the staff as they connect bigs and littles, etc. Of course, Sherry is also the chairperson of our chamber’s Ambassador Committee, she has worked with the Brunswick Downtown Association on numerous events and sponsorships, and so much more.

In fact, Sherry has been so involved with different nonprofit experiences and fundraisers that when people have an idea for a fundraiser, they often reach out to Sherry for any suggestions she has. And without even intending to, Sherry became an expert on how to connect communities by just wanting to help wherever she could.

Recently, Sherry told me: “We’re touching some lives, and they don’t know who we are, and they don’t need to know who we are. We don’t need them to know who we are … but if we can help in any way, I think we need to. Someone will benefit from your volunteering, and those things tend to circle back in communities.” These are the things that Citizens of the Year are made of.

Congratulations to our 2023 Citizen of the Year, Sherry Plunkett.

Cory King is executive director of the Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber of Commerce.