Geoff Lewis · 2017 Honoree

Geoff Lewis has lived on Capitol Hill for over forty years, coming to our city and our neighborhood as so many do, to work in our local industry – government. The son of a foreign service officer, he spent his childhood in this area and then went to boarding school in Massachusetts with summer and vacation visits to his parents in Pakistan, Jordan, France and the Central African Republic. At Hobart College in upstate New York he majored in political science and then returned to D.C. for a Master’s Degree in public administration at American University. In the mid-1960s the newly formed Office of Economic Opportunity was, as he put it, “practically pulling people off the street” to work in the array of new programs that were part of the War on Poverty. Geoff got a job as a budget analyst in the national office of the brand new Head Start program and there met his wife, Terry, a former presidential management intern. They married in 1970 and moved to Capitol Hill. By the time he retired in 1997, Geoff had spent thirty years in the federal government, much of that time at the Environmental Protection Agency promoting clean water and secure hazardous waste disposal. He was proud of his work there but wanted to “get out and do other things.”

Volunteering was always part of living here. As new parents (of daughters Rebecca and Jennifer), Geoff and Terry together served as president of the enormously popular babysitting co-op. Geoff was on the boards of Wee Care (now The Hill Preschool), Capitol Hill Day School and CHAMPS. In retirement he helped serve lunches at the Church of the Brethren Soup Kitchen, and worked on the late Sharon Ambrose’s several campaigns for Ward 6 City Councilperson. And in 2005, when he read an article about an organization in Boston designed to help people stay in their houses and in their neighborhood as they age, Geoff knew right away what his next project would be. He traveled to Boston to see Beacon Hill Village first-hand and then started talking about it to the friends and acquaintances he had built up over decades of involvement in the community here. Everyone agreed that it was and is a good fit for our neighborhood and the Village now has paid staff, a significant endowment fund, an active board, 500 members and more than 200 volunteers who give and receive hundreds of hours of volunteer time, driving Village members to medical appointments and making small home repairs, doing office work, and planning social activities.

Now dividing his time between a condo in the historic Maples property here and an old farmhouse on the Maine coast that his parents bought in 1968, Geoff is still exploring new ways to be a neighbor helping neighbors. He recently completed a training course and now serves in Maine as a hospice volunteer.