The Gloucester Resource Council held its 40th anniversary celebration on June 7, at the Gloucester Library in Main Street Center.

The council is a network of agencies, organizations and churches that has grown from about 20 groups and community members attending in the early years to more than 85 affiliates now.

GRC had its first meeting in June 1977. Georgette Hurley, former Gloucester parks and recreation director and later assistant county administrator who has since retired, said she “didn’t know a thing” about the council when she first began representing the county on it. But Hurley told the approximately 100 people in attendance that the late Freedom B. Goode, then the unit director of the Virginia Cooperative Extension office in Gloucester, learned of a community concept then being used in Michigan and “it just grabbed him” how you could have a stronger community with both volunteers and government support.

From the beginning, the Glouce...