The Spencerport Area Chamber of Commerce recently presented Ellen Carr with a Lifetime Achievement Award for her professional and civic accomplishments. She is a long-time resident of Spencerport and graduated from Spencerport High School.
Ellen’s legacy of contributing to the Spencerport area goes back many years. In the early 1970s, Ellen volunteered her time at Town Line School (now Terry Taylor Elementary School), taught religion classes at Spencerport’s St. John the Evangelist Church, and sponsored a 4-H club. She worked through the ‘70s and into the ‘80s with Ogden Recreation, creating children’s recreation programs. Ellen, and the late Glenn Boetcher, created and implemented rec programs that are likely still informing recreation programming today. She was instrumental in rehabilitating and programming Ogden Recreation’s Little Red School House in Adams Basin. This historic schoolhouse, which closed its doors in 1956, was brought back to life and reopened in 1982 under Ellen’s leadership. She and her husband even made the Little Red Schoolhouse sign that adorned the building for many years.
Ellen leveraged this experience and took her early childhood education expertise to the next level by opening her own daycare center at Parma Corners in the 1980s. She was so successful that she opened a second location at the former Trowbridge School in Ogden. Ellen employed dozens of people from the Spencerport area and provided needed child care to the Spencerport community.
She eventually sold the daycare centers and later, as a general contractor, managed the construction of a commercial building on a subdivided parcel of her old family homestead on West Ridge Road. Today, she rents out space in this building to two businesses that contribute to the success of the Spencerport area.
Ellen also worked for BOCES for many years, up until the pandemic, serving children with challenges throughout the region.
Circling back to her civic contributions, Ellen contributed many years of service to Spencerport Canal Days. The annual festival provides the community with a fun and unifying experience while promoting Spencerport area businesses. Ellen volunteered for many years as the Canal Days coordinator of the children’s programming. She arranged the Children’s Tent activities, the canoe races, and other Canal Days activities.
It doesn’t stop there. Ellen’s current civic contributions include: serving as an officer in the local chapter of Home Bureau, an organization that sponsors student scholarships and participates in charitable activities in Monroe County; volunteering as a seamstress for the Fairy Godmothers of Greater Rochester, a program that provides prom dresses for financially challenged high school girls; volunteering every week for the Disabled American Veterans; and working every election as a poll worker.
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