Potter receives Lifetime Achievement Award for her contributions to arts community

QUINCY — Musician and educator Pam Potter was honored during Sunday’s Quincy Park Band concert with the George M. Irwin Lifetime Achievement Award for her impact on the arts community. Potter’s dedication to music, as an educator and performer, has spanned decades and touched countless lives in Quincy and the surrounding area.

Potter spent 10 years as a band director in Pleasant Plains before dedicating the next 34 years of her career to teaching at Quincy Notre Dame High School. From 1985 to 1993, she served as the associate director of the Quincy Park Band following the band’s founding by Carl Landrum. Her leadership culminated in her role as the band’s lead director, a position she held from 1993 to 2014.

Potter was a founding member and longtime director of the award-winning Mississippi River Brass Band from 1985 to the early 2000s. She has been a performer with the Quincy Concert Band and the Quincy Symphony Orchestra, has played in pit orchestras of Quincy Community Theater productions and regularly provides her talents to the Heidelberg German Band.

“The George M. Irwin Lifetime Achievement Award honors individuals whose contributions to the arts have had a profound and lasting effect on their communities,” Arts Quincy executive director Laura Sievert Hesseltine said in a press release. “Pam Potter’s legacy as both a musician and educator has had a significant and enduring impact on the cultural fabric of Quincy and beyond. Through her leadership, her students and her performances, she has enriched the lives of many and has exemplified the highest standards of excellence in the arts. We are so fortunate to be celebrating Pam this holiday season.”