Community and Volunteering
1986—1996: Hillel Board of Directors
May 1996: Hillel Board
certificate of appreciation
May 1995: Hillel Board Members
During her years of attending services and other programs at Hillel, she had gotten to know many people there, and Rabbi Diamond became a good friend. She was approached several times asking her to join the Hillel Board, but she declined while Rachel (1978-1982) and David (1982-1986) were college students at Washington U. and active in different ways at Hillel. But after David graduated, she did indeed join the Board, and served there for a decade (1986-1996).
1999-2014 University City Public Library
Jessica's appointment to
U.City Library Board
St. Louis County is marked by great independence of different municipalities within the county. The most obvious example of this is the large number of school districts (not the monolithic county-wide systems seen in other parts of the country).
Across the County, there is an overarching St. Louis County Library system with many branches. However, University City (the suburb next to Washington University and also adjoining the City of St. Louis) has long maintained its own separate, independent library. The general consensus over decades was that this library was better than any single branch of the county-wide system.
As avid readers, Jessica and Michael were frequently in and out of the library, both for their children and for themselves.
In August 1999, Jessica was invited to join the U. City Library Board, where she then served (across multiple three-year terms) until at least October 2014.
May 2000: U. City Library "signing"
Context of this image unknown
(This is pretty early for a digital image!)
(Photographer unknown.)
This photo of the Library is from a very faithful renovation done by Beck Architects, featured in Sept 2024 Retrofit Magazine. They updated the exterior glass and more, but kept the look-and-feel from the library from the 1970s.
2000-2010: Missouri Historical Society
Missouri History Museum front facade
Photo Credit: Sophie Grus, MostlyMuseums.org
In January 2010, about six months after her retirement from her career as a nursery school director, she became a docent for the Missouri History Museum (the flagship location of the Missouri Historical Society). She volunteered there until the spring of 2010.
Specifically, she worked with school groups that came to visit the museum. These represented public schools, private or parochial schools, even summer camps from across the St. Louis area, some as far away as Union, MO (47 miles from the museum). Usually, she was presenting to elementary school-age children. Due to her decades of teaching experience, she was able to make exhibits come alive for the children or to adapt to groups that had little background in the exhibit material.
- For the Journey West exhibit, she would encourage students to "find three things your 'family' would take out west" to get them to think about the artifacts in the exhibit.
- In another case (for the Historic St. Louis exhibit?), she had a group of antsy 6-9 year olds, so she (as she wrote in an email to a docent colleague) "told stories about some of the artifacts and had the children act out other concepts (for example: making a line for a pretend bucket brigade)."
The Museum was already well-known for its collection about the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. In 2004, the Museum created a special exhibit called 1904 World's Fair: Looking Back at Looking Forward for the Fair's centennial. Like all the major exhibits there, the docents received special training about the exhibit.
Another major exhibit was St. Louis in Black and White "which examine[d] the racial history of the region, including the abolitionist and civil rights movements, and urban expansion." Jessica applied and was accepted into a special program called "Reading Bias/ Writing Tolerance: Using History's Powerful Stories" which involved a three-year quarter million dollar grant awarded to the Museum from the Institute for Museum and Library Studies (IMLS) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The program required special training for the docents, but in Jessica's case also capitalized on her lifetime love of reading history.
A decade later, in 2014, this project was profiled as a case study in a master's thesis by a Seton Hall University grad student, titled United We Stand: The Possibilities of Museums, Schools, and Anti-Bullying.
Jessica found this project and exhibit particularly rewarding, as she was able to make civil rights issues come alive for the students through artifacts, songs, and (re-en)acting historical issues (such as lunch counter sit-in protests.)
In June 2002, the "Volunteer News" newsletter specifically singled her out for praise for her innovations in student presentations. (See adjacent PDF.)
2010-2016 Missouri Botanical Garden
Jessica's Missouri Botanical Garden fleece
Jessica and Michael had loved the Missouri Botanical Garden for decades (as described on this site here). In 2010, she became a docent there, too, in a program called the "School Programs Educators". She volunteered there until June 2016, when she resigned due to Michael's health decline.
She wrote a description of her activities there (in a February 2013 email to a friend from college):
You asked me what I do at the Botanical Garden. I volunteer in the Education Dept. so that I teach small groups of children from schools in a wide geographical area. This always consists of time indoors and then more time outdoors, looking at particular plants or agricultural settings to emphasize what we are trying to get across. In addition, I am a "garden guide," leading a group and informally teaching whatever the [children's own regular classroom] teacher has said that she wants to stress. It is always interesting, for I still like being with children and helping them learn.
In a different 2013 email, Michael described to a friend:
Jessica is a volunteer at the Missouri Botanical Garden -- she loves taking groups of children around, explaining, pointing out new ways of seeing familiar plants.
Example programs
Some of the programs Jessica led (but did not develop) included "Tops & Bottoms" (see adjacent PDF description) and the "Scavenger Seed Hunts" described by Garden staff:
The Garden PNC Grow Up Great program supports Grace Hill Settlement House in preparing children enrolled in the Head Start Program for success in school and beyond, with special emphasis in the development of children's language and literacy skills and offering tools for inquiry learning.
The Grow Up Great groups will participate in an hour long guided tour (no class) from 10-11am which will consist of a scavenger hunt, as well as a seed hunt. The scavenger hunt cues consist of a single sheet of 3 to 5 pictures that the teachers, parents and children can work together to identify during the tour.
Collect one bag of different types of seeds as you walk (per group) in various locations of the garden and introduce how they travel. This tour is mainly based on introducing families to our institution in hopes that they will visit time and time again.
Her presentations at the Garden generated kudos from teachers who had brought classroom groups there. As an example, here is an email from a teacher at Kirk Day School from April 2014 after Jessica presented a Tops & Bottoms program:
We were all commenting what a wonderful field trip we enjoyed yesterday. The children especially enjoyed your story and the way you acted it out! They were captivated by you! We know the Lord works in ways we don't always understand but always for our good.... [T]he tour of the garden was great yesterday.... We are definitely planning on returning for the same program next year and we certainly hope you will be leading us!Have a blessed day,
<name of teacher>
Zelda Epstein Day Care Center
Jessica's business card for ZEDCC
Jessica was an advisor to the founder of this day care center, then spent about ten years on the Board of Directors, and did two stints (within 14 months) as interim executive director.
Please see the Teaching page for more information.
Helping Immigrants Learn Language and Culture
Jessica and Michael had a long history (going back to at least the 1970s) of welcoming new immigrants to their home and to St. Louis. Later on, she was part of somewhat more formally organized efforts to do the same. In so many cases, these people became dear friends of many decades standing, through the end of her life.
While distinctly not an immigrant situation, Jessica was also part of Shalom St. Louis, sponsored by the Jewish Federation. This program was meant to welcome Jewish newcomers to the St. Louis area, and help them make connections and feel at home in their new city. The St. Louis Jewish Light wrote a small story about the program, featuring Jessica, in their December 23, 1987 issue.
At another point, Jessica was involved with the Washington University "Speak English With Us" program, for which a foreign student was matched up with a volunteer. The purpose was simply for the student to have a chance to chat in a relaxed atmosphere, practice their English more, and learn about American customs, holidays, and so forth.
Jessica stayed in touch with this person for at least a dozen years, as evidenced by emails from 2015 when they had moved to another state with a spouse and now with children.
Jessica was also for many years part of the Volunteer Resettlement Network, which worked especially closely with people who had left the Soviet Union. The St. Louis Jewish Light had two news stories (1990 and 1992) which featured Maya and Semyon Volshteyn with Jessica (and Michael).
Flynn Park School
Jessica did two different stints of volunteering at Flynn Park School, the family's neighborhood elementary school in the School District of University City: in the years around 1970 and from roughly 2000 to 2004.
1974-75: Flynn Park School
Merit Award for
Service to the Schools
From about 1967 to 1974 (when Rachel and then David were students there), she volunteered at the school doing all kinds of activities: library work, minicourses, music demonstrations, and (in 1969-1970), kindergarten music, as she noted in an October 1983 document.
Decades later, after she retired, she returned to Flynn Park and served as a tutor for reading for early elementary school students. She also did some science lessons with first graders and others, on topics such as the Space Shuttle Endeavor and Sunspots.
The Gatesworth
Jessica's Gatesworth Resident
Ambassador business card
Jessica moved from her long-time (since 1964) Alta Dena home to The Gatesworth (a continuing care retirement community (CCRC))in December 2022, living in an independent living apartment. She quickly found that she really enjoyed living there, with the range of amenities such as regular concerts, lectures, movies, and walking the beautiful grounds that she took advantage of, plus friends new and old there. Just 18 months after arriving, she became a Gatesworth Resident Ambassador. The role of the Ambassadors was primarily to welcome new residents, help them acclimate, and be a friend and a source of information. She loved this role, and often baked cookies to welcome newcomers!
She had found the Ambassadors helpful to her when she moved in, and was thus happy to give back by joining the group.
She also volunteered at the on-site Library of the Gatesworth, spending several hours every Saturday afternoon shelving books and helping people.