Lee Valenta grew up in a closely knit, Italian-American neighborhood in the city of Utica, New York. It was, he recalls fondly, the sort of place where everybody knew everybody, everybody knew everybody’s business, and the idea of community could stamp itself indelibly on an impressionable kid.

In 1983, he and a partner co-founded Trillium in his adopted hometown, bringing disabled adult communities together with meaningful work and with lives they could call their own. It was the same spirit he would bring to his decades as general manager of the Auburn Symphony Orchestra, every minute dedicated to bringing the community face to face, ear to ear, with great classical music.