Photo by Glenn Minshall/Northfield Mount Hermon School.

Diana Atwood Johnson, Class of 1964, of Old Lyme (pictured center, above), received the Community Service Award at her 50th Reunion at Northfield Mount Hermon (NMH) School earlier this month, which recognizes an alumna/us who has been of service to a particular community in either a volunteer or a professional roles, thus acknowledging the value an NMH education places on service to others throughout one’s life.

Atwood Johnson says that she will always remember how compassionate and encouraging the faculty and administration, staff, and housemothers were to a homesick girl at boarding school.  Northfield taught her to add and subtract, wash dishes and make beds.  She attributes her success as an innkeeper and restaurateur to both her education and her senior year dummy working in Dr. and Mrs. Meany’s house.

Recalling that she was not a very good athlete at the school, Atwood Johnson notes, however, that Mrs. Robertson and Ms. Morrow encouraged her to excel—and, in the process, fulfill her sports requirement—as chairman of the Northfield Athletic Association.

Continuing to show her leadership skills, Atwood Johnson helped to found the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts and has served on its board since 1980.  She was its chair from 1996 to 2003.  Her involvement with the academy and the Town of Old Lyme gave her the skills she needed to open the Old Lyme Inn, a focal point in town.

She has served as chair of Old Lyme’s Open Space Commission and the state’s Open Space Matching Grant Program. She also joined the board at the Trust for Public Land in 2010.  She is chair of the Connecticut Natural Heritage, Open Space and Watershed Land Acquisition Review Board, and served for 10 years on the board of the Connecticut chapter of the Nature Conservancy.  She is also a member of the Connecticut Land Conservation Coalition, Old Lyme Conservation Trust, Connecticut Audubon, National Audubon, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

From 1986 to 1992, she served as president of the Connecticut River Museum.  Atwood Johnson also served on the board of the Bank of Southern Connecticut and was a founding director of the Maritime Bank and Trust Company in Essex, Conn., from 1989 to 1999, and later served as its vice chairman.  She served on the Advisory Board of Webster Bank when it acquired Maritime Bank.

Northfield Mount Hermon (NMH) is an independent, coeducational boarding and day school for students in grades 9–12 and postgraduates, with a mission to provide an exceptional, multidimensional education for the “head, heart, and hand.”

Located in the hills of western Massachusetts, NMH balances academic excellence and a challenging college-preparatory curriculum with opportunities in athletics, the arts, international studies, and service work. Students are encouraged to pursue their passions and discover new ones.  They are empowered by expert faculty and staff to act with humanity and purpose and to understand their potential—in the NMH community, in college, and in the world.  The international alumni population numbers more than 30,000.