50th Timeline: 2000 – Lead Gift Secured in Honor of Teacher Hanshi

As John Harkins concluded his final days and Drew Smith prepared to take on his new role as Head, there was a major breakthrough in securing the funds needed to build the new academic building.  The names of all those who gave money or who helped spread the word about the campaign are too numerous to mention, but a graduate of the very first high school class, Anu Deshbandhu, with the support of her husband, committed to making the lead gift in honor of Anu’s mother, Teacher Hanshi.  The new building, to great delight, would now be named after the one teacher who remained from the very first days of the School in Mullica Hill.  Parent and Teacher Karen Washington recalls her excitement at the naming of the new Building after Hanshi.  “I think when the Hanshi building was built [that] was very exciting for me because…. Hanshi’s influence on my life is tremendous,” and she noted that “not only were we colleagues together when I was teaching here, but Hanshi was my teacher when I was in 6^th grade in Woodbury Friends. And she’s, you know, probably hands down the biggest reason that I came back to Mullica Hill for my children, because her influence on me was so tremendous…. So, to have this building named for her I can’t imagine it being done any other way.”  Combined with the good news about the lead gift was that the School’s enrollment, no doubt buoyed by the coming new building and all the great outreach done in the campaign around the building, reached 300 students from pre-kindergarten to 8^th grade.  Just as the hard times in the School’s history, however, were never far from some good times, these good times would soon be challenged by problems both from within and from outside of the campus