The men of Galloway pose in Mrs. Stock’s Park while volunteering during Homecoming Week.
Courtesy | Benjamin Roche

During the homecoming season, you may find groups of Hillsdale students all over town accumulating service hours. This year, a horde of 40 Galloway residents honored the history of Hillsdale by cleaning up Mrs. Stock’s Park.

“It was almost 150 yards of trench that we cleaned out,” said sophomore Benjamin Roche, a Galloway resident assistant who oversaw the project. “The trench was 20 feet wide, so it ended up being a lot larger of a project than we were expecting it to be.”

Galloway discovered the opportunity through Nathan More, a freshman who does part-time maintenance at the park.

“Even if I took a couple summers, I wouldn’t have been able to do half the job we’re able to do in a day,” More said.

The students also picked up trash, trimmed back foliage around the park fences, and completed various other small jobs, More said.

“All the Galloway guys loved the projects,” More said. “They kind of adopted the park, and they’re like, ‘Hey, we want to come back here. If we’ve got more service hours, we’ll come back here and make the park look nicer.’ They all loved Mrs. Miller, and we all wanted to help.”

Dianne Miller, master gardener for the park and member of the Hillsdale Garden Club, said the family who originally cultivated Stock’s Park also operated Stock’s Mill, located just across the street.

Before Wilhelmina Stock transformed the park, it was little more than a swampland, according to the Hillsdale Historical Society.

“Mrs. Stock got busy and hired gardeners and cleaned it up,” Miller said. “The plantings and the trees and such were sent over from England. Now there’s just one pond, but I think originally there were five.”

As time went on, however, the mill transferred ownership, and the park once again fell into a state of neglect.

The Mill Race, a long trench that used to be filled with water in case of fire in the mill, gradually became overgrown.

The town used to sponsor boat races through the Mill Race, More said.

“That was a big town thing, After that all died off, it just got overgrown,” More said. “The Mill Race became a trash pile for anybody who lived on Broad Street.”

Miller said she remembers the park as being open to the public but very neglected when she and her husband came to Hillsdale in the early 1970s.

“You couldn’t stand here at the front entrance and see the back of the park,” Miller said. “It was overgrown with shrubs.”

In 2003, the Hillsdale City Council approved the formation of a committee to restore the park, according to the Hillsdale Historical Society.

“I got interested because I like gardening and wanted to see some plantings done,” Miller said.

Miller said she became interested in gardening because of her father.

“We had a garden when I was a kid, and I was my dad’s shadow. I was always with my father, following him around. After working all day, he would tend to a garden,” Miller said.

At the time of Stock’s Park’s restoration, Miller said she recruited the local Garden Club to help her.

“The Garden Club was just a social club of people that were interested in gardening,” Miller said. “They got together and drank tea and ate cookies, and I said, ‘I got a project for you.’”

Today, the Garden Club still meets in the park for several hours every sunny Thursday morning, weeding, planting, and trying to maintain the park’s beauty, Miller said.

Miller said the city pays for mowing, but much of the rest of the park — such as the stones lining the flowerbeds, the spacious gazebo in which free concerts take place during the summer, or many of the trees and flowers — was funded through private donations and organized by people such as Miller and the Garden Club.

Unfortunately, More said, Miller and a few other dedicated women without many resources for manual labor mainly care for the park.

“Mrs. Miller was giving me a tour of the grounds, and she was like, ‘Yeah, here’s this little pile of bark dust that needs to be moved, or here’s this other thing. And then I was looking at the Mill Race, and the park is very beautiful, but it looks maintained and also not maintained at the same time,” More said. “The Mill Race itself was infested with all kinds of stuff and a lot of invasive plants.”

Roche said it was special to see how many people appreciated the work he and his fellow students were doing.

“There were a couple of elderly people in the community that obviously spent time in the park and were bothered that the Mill Race was overgrown,” Roche said. “They had probably been around long enough to where they had seen it clean, maybe not working, but at least clean.”

More said his most memorable interaction was when he asked Miller to come check in on their progress.

“Looking at her face and seeing the feeling of relief and surprise at what could be done when she has to work so hard each week with the small crew and the tools she has to do a little bit each day — it’s a very consistent, thankless task,” More said. “For us to be able to come in and do something for them and also for the community was a really amazing experience.”

More said he believed volunteer work, Christian service, or just being a good neighbor is crucial to reviving the slogan written on almost every sign coming into town: “Welcome to Hillsdale: It’s the people.”

“I think the backbone of Hillsdale isn’t that we can just put more money into things and make them better. I think it’s the people here,” More said. “If you have a little thing like this, it just brings everybody a little closer. It gives them a little more hope. It reminds you that it’s not the College on the hill and the community over here. We’re living together. The students don’t come here to just stay on campus. They come here to be in the community.”