40 Good Neighbors

Lucy Hill

Lucy Hill has made major contributions to the education of the children in Mt. Airy.  Her involvement began when her kids started at the Henry School.  “If we were going to use the public schools, I wanted to be part of helping to make them better,” she says.  But her focus was never on just her own children.  Lucy was a classroom volunteer at the Henry School.  She usually volunteered two full days a week.  “When I first went, I worked in my kids’ classrooms.  But, after they reached a certain age, they didn’t want mom there.  So I got on a middle school committee.  We did fund raising and tried to make the middle school a viable place.”  Lucy was always impressed by how welcoming the Mt. Airy schools were to parent involvement.  “They loved to have parents there doing things.  Henry has a tradition of parents helping. There is a parents committee for everything at Henry.”

Among many important contributions Lucy has made to the Henry School, the most well known is her fund raising efforts on behalf of its music program.  Given the limited city funds available for this purpose, private fund raising is necessary to support the instrumental and choral programs at the school.  Lucy’s efforts focused on running an annual auction and encouraging the donation of instruments.  The funds she raised were vital to sustaining these programs, to underwriting major musical productions, and to providing instruments for students who did not have and could not afford them.

As her children have grown, Lucy has continued her commitment to education by becoming a certified teacher in the Philadelphia School system.  In addition to supporting education, Lucy has also worked hard to create a sense of community on Arbutus Street, where she has lived for 22 years.  And her efforts to support the community have recently borne fruit in another way: her oldest son is about to go into Americorps.