George Bitzas holds his HCC student ID card from 1977 during a tour of his recent photography show at the Agawam Public Library.
In George They Trust
A Springfield newspaper once described George Bitzas ’77 as the “Agawam city councilor who won’t take ‘No’ for an answer.” He does not dispute the characterization. “Yes, yes, yes,” he said recently. “It’s true. Because I go and accomplish a lot. I tell it like it is, and I make my decisions based on what is better for the town.” The people of Agawam seem to agree. Bitzas, 79, has been a city councilor there for 36 years, making him the longest serving councilor in Agawam history. “I never lost an election,” said Bitzas, a native of Greece who emigrated to the United States at 24 after serving as a second lieutenant in the Hellenic Army. “It was difficult at the beginning because I could speak no English,” he said. At HCC, he studied English and art, graduating with honors before moving on to Westfield State College for a teaching degree. “I got a good education from Holyoke Community College,” he said. “We have a lot of fun there.” Bitzas taught art in West Springfield before embarking on a career as an interior designer. Now retired, he enjoys photography and had a two-month show last fall at the Agawam Public Library titled, “This is Greece,” a collection of photos and artifacts from his home country, including a photo of the house in Dolo where he was born. “In the room right there,” he said, pointing to a first-floor window. “No doctors at the time. They just have a lady that comes in.”
Donna DeFant ’77 dons her director’s hat during rehearsals for the 2024 Leslie Phillips 24-Hour Theater Festival on Sept. 28.
Direct to Stage
Each September, Donna DeFant ’77 makes a pilgrimage north from her Florida home to western Massachusetts, where she participates in the college’s annual Leslie Phillips 24-Hour Theater Festival. Now retired from a more than 30-year career as a certified financial planner, DeFant devotes her time to theater arts and is president of Theater Odyssey, a nonprofit theater company in Sarasota. While she majored in business at HCC, DeFant took part in many HCC plays and musicals under the tutelage of legendary theater professor Leslie Phillips. “I was a nontraditional student, a single parent juggling a child and going to college at the same time,” she recalled during her most recent campus visit. “This was probably the best place I could have been. I think I got the best education and the best start.” After HCC, DeFant earned a bachelor’s degree from Western New England College. During her working life, she wrote a monthly financial column for the Western Massachusetts Business Journal, reported financial news for WWLP-22News and hosted a weekly talk show about financial investments on WHYN radio. Last fall, the day before the Saturday night festival, DeFant delivered an on-campus and Zoom-cast presentation on planned giving sponsored by the HCC division of Institutional Advancement. The next day, she directed “Souvenir,” one of the festival’s six short plays. “I feel very attached to this school,” she said.
David Picchi
100 Percent Jazz
As the program director of Jazz in July — an intensive two-week student program run each summer out of the UMass Fine Arts Center — David Picchi ’04 gets to share his love of jazz with aspiring musicians, many of whom are HCC students. Picchi first learned about Jazz in July when he was a student in Bob Ferrier’s jazz improvisation classes at HCC. He loved the program and, after graduating from HCC, transferred to UMass to study music. After UMass, Picchi hit the road, spending three years touring nationally with the Leah Randazzo Group while working part-time, under-the-table jobs to pad his income. Today he serves on the adjunct music faculty at Amherst College and Mount Holyoke College, in addition to serving as program director of Jazz in July and performing professionally. “If you’re going for a degree in jazz music performance, a lot of what you study is rooted in Western European music from the 1500s to 1890s,” he said. “But Jazz in July is 100 percent jazz. It’s focused on improvisation and current music.” Over the years Picchi, who plays electric and double bass, has been a regular volunteer, instructor, and performer at the HCC Jazz Festival. He continues to act as a liaison with the HCC Foundation, which provides annual scholarships to HCC students enrolled in Jazz in July.
Supporting Early Childhood Education
Janis Santos ’74, center, during a recent visit to HCC with her granddaughters Victoria Santos ’19, left, and Amanda Santos ’13.
Janis Santos ’74 chose Holyoke Community College for its acclaimed early childhood education program. That decision led to a 48-year career with Head Start, the federally funded early childhood education program for children from low-income families. Since retiring in 2021 as CEO of Holyoke Chicopee Springfield Head Start, Santos has stayed connected to the organization by establishing the Janis Santos Scholarship. The scholarship is available to HCS Head Start staff, alumni, and parents interested in pursuing a degree in early childhood education. The first scholarship was awarded in 2023 and the second in 2024. “The problem that we have is recruiting teachers, so I worked with our new CEO and we developed a scholarship committee, got some sponsors, and we were able to give out the first scholarship for $2,000,” Santos said. Although there are many local institutions where scholarship recipients can enroll, Santos always encourages them to go to HCC, remembering how encouraged she felt when she started there as a young adult. “I had a wonderful experience at HCC,” she said. “From the director down to the secretary and the instructors, everybody supported you.” Santos’ unwavering belief in her alma mater has not only inspired those around her but also taken root within her own family. Her son, Jeffrey Santos, works at HCC as an accountant. Her daughter, Kim Santos ’77, and granddaughters, Amanda Santos ’13 and Victoria Santos ’19, are also alumni.
TV journalist Melissa Torres ’19 reports on a story about HCC’s holiday Giving Tree campaign in November 2023.
Moving On
Over more than three years, TV journalist Melissa Torres ’19 made frequent trips to HCC to report on news and events for WWLP-22News in Springfield, Mass. Originally from Puerto Rico, Torres paid special attention to stories about the Latinx community in western Massachusetts — and at HCC. In early October, during Hispanic Heritage Month, for one of her final stories at the station, she covered the college’s annual Latinx Fiesta. On Oct. 9, she was on campus again for an astronomy presentation about the famous Lowell Observatory in Arizona. The next day, she announced she was leaving WWLP for a new job at KRQE-News13 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “It’s truly been such a dream to tell the stories of the incredible and vibrant communities here in western Massachusetts,” she said in her parting statement. “Representation matters, and I’m grateful to have been a role model for others who look like me, come from a similar background as me, or speak the same language as me.” Torres studied communication at HCC and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2021. “Thank you for welcoming me into your homes every morning, every afternoon, and every night,” she said. “It has been a journey filled with learning, growth, and unforgettable memories.”
Lucien Dalton ’16 holds a dodecahedron he made using a folding technique he learned in an Origami Math class at Western New England University.
The Shape of Things
For those who don’t remember geometry — or perhaps never learned — a Platonic solid is a polyhedron (3-D shape) where every face is a regular polygon (2-D, equal sided). Think of a cube (six-sided, all squares) or a pyramid (tetrahedron, four sides of equilateral triangles). There are only three more: octahedron (eight faces), dodecahedron (10), and the icosahedron (20). As a graduate student in mathematics at Western New England University, Lucien Dalton ’16 learned a special folding technique to make such shapes out of paper without the use of tape or glue. For Dalton, the activity has become much more than a learning tool. “We were shown at a basic level,” said Dalton. “I went much further with it.” Dalton, an HCC math tutor and engineering pathways coordinator, brought his origami math skills back to campus in October for a couple of STEM Week workshops. He taught visiting middle school students how to fold tetrahedrons, while exhibiting some of his more sophisticated paper creations, including a dodecahedron. “Plato and his Platonic Solids are famous, sacred geometry,” Dalton said. “This is just another way to learn about this area of math while also doing it. It’s very kinesthetic, and it’s a lot of fun.”
