Meet Barbara Miller

The importance of volunteerism is a lesson Hockessin native Barbara Miller learned at a young age and a message she continues to share with the community.

Miller said growing up in such a close-knit community showed her the importance of helping friends and neighbors.

At her elementary school, a one-room schoolhouse on Old Wilmington Road, manners and respect were lessons taught the same as math and reading, she said.

And those values were evident in the community, Miller said.

For example, her family did not have a television set when she was young because they could not afford one, so the Gormley family let her and other kids in the community crowd into their living room to watch TV.

And shopping at the Gormley’s store, a person was not just a number – they were a neighbor, she said. Shoppers were given charge slips for their purchases and were allowed to pay for their items when they received their pay checks, she said.

“Early on, I had a good idea about volunteerism,” she said.

Miller’s first experience as a volunteer was as a counselor at the Girl Scouts country lodge on Sharpless Road – today home to the state-of-the-art Science and Technology Lodge.

It felt good to give back, she said, and it was a lot of fun to spend evenings roasting marshmallows and sleeping in a bedroll.

Working in the community remained a priority for Miller, so after retiring from a career as a dental hygienist, she decided to get involved in local volunteer organizations.

“As I looked around Hockessin, I saw a lot of worthwhile things being accomplished,” she said.

She joined the Hockessin Community Club in 1996 and shortly thereafter joined the Friends of the Hockessin Library and Lamborn Library Association.

But volunteerism isn’t about the kudos, she said, it’s about making Hockessin a better place for everyone.

The most rewarding volunteer project she works on is the Hockessin Community Club’s Hoby Scholarship program, she said, a $350 award given to a local high school sophomore to attend a leadership seminar.

“We need to tap into youth at the right time to get them to think about volunteerism,” she said.

And Miller hopes the Community Club will be able to do more for youth in the community.

She’s spent years crusading for a skate park in Hockessin – a necessity she says will give youth a positive athletic outlet and keep them from skateboarding on private property or on the town’s busy streets.

“I think we are overzealous in furnishing areas for soccer and other sports and we overlook how many young people enjoy skateboarding,” she said.

While funding is the biggest obstacle standing in the skate park’s way, Miller said it’s a project that fits right in with the Hockessin Community Club’s mission.

The 21-member group is charged with being active in community service in Hockessin and has achieved a lot of past success, she said, from sidewalk and streetlight projects, to a well-baby clinic, to the foundation of the Hockessin Community News.

The club serves as proof that volunteerism can have a positive impact on the community, Miller said.