When Jill came to the United States from England as a young woman, she planned to work for a year and then return home. However, a young Christian High alumnus named Dick Schuhmacher ’60 captured her heart and dramatically changed the course of her life. Their marriage became an enduring gift to the Academy as well. Both Dick and Jill volunteered countless hours at the school; both worked at the school—Dick for nine years in the business office, Jill for much longer, even after his death in 2019. Dick tirelessly communicated with others in the class of 1960, keeping them connected to the school as well as to each other. Theirs was often the class with the highest percentage of attendees at homecoming.
Dick and Jill intended to send their four children to LCA, but once tuition climbed over $1000 a year, that seemed like pie-in-the-sky. Hoping that God’s ways were higher than their ways, they allowed their oldest, Lisa, to apply. Step by step God provided the funds to make it possible for Lisa to come in 1980. That provision continued, allowing three of the four to graduate, far beyond Dick and Jill’s original hopes.
Immediately the Schuhmachers began volunteering for the parent community group, and they chaired it for several years. Jill came every Monday to prepare “The Link,” a hand-written, mimeographed sheet with information for parents which was sent home via student backpacks. They enjoyed working behind the scenes to make good things happen for the school community.
Jill became an employee in 1987, and filled a variety of roles until her official retirement in 2020. What began as a 3-week stint filling in for Headmaster Art Hill’s assistant morphed into assisting in college guidance and admissions, where she stayed for 21 years, about half of that time as Director of Admissions. In 2005 (’06?), Head of School Mark Davis asked her to shift to being his assistant. Jill kept that role until she retired, a generous source of school history and wisdom in addition to her editing and organizational skills, to Mark, Tim Russell, and Christine Metzger.
Despite ridiculously long hours (once a new security system locked her in the building just before midnight), Jill claimed that working in admissions was the best job at LCA. “I always enjoyed getting to know the families as they came in. Seeing kids who came here to interview as fifth graders go through the school and grow, go through all the things that teenagers go through between elementary school and high school graduation, and come back [to visit] as functioning young adults – what joy! It’s hard to describe how fulfilling that is. I also had a wonderful team of people to work with.”
Jill offered her calligraphy skills for special invitations and for diplomas. Few graduates probably realized that the woman who nurtured them through the admissions process saluted their departure as well. At some point in the 1990s she wrote the name tags on faculty and staff mailboxes, brightening a mundane chore with a touch of style and class. Math teacher Dick Watts kept his long after most had been replaced: “I still have the Jill Schuhmacher-calligraphied name tag for my faculty mailbox. I fished it out of the trash once. Mine is the only one! I think mailbox labels are like ties: you only need one and it should last your whole career.”
After her official retirement, Jill helped in the Development Office doing exactly what?, and in 2021 joined the group of former staff working to publicize the school’s history. She’s back to volunteering, and doing it with the gracious humility, skill, and willingness that she has brought to all her roles at LCA.