Hoover Belles honor 36 graduating seniors for community service

The Hoover Belles service organization for girls recently held a mother-daughter luncheon for its graduating seniors at the Hyatt Regency Birmingham — The Wynfrey Hotel and honored several for outstanding service.

The senior Belles who just graduated together volunteered 1,691 community service hours over the past two years — the second highest total in the Belles’ history, according to the Hoover Belle Committee, a group of women who help organize the Belles’ activities. The record was 2,071 hours by the seniors of 2021.

Many new service opportunities arose because of the pandemic, including a virtual learning program offered by Riverchase United Methodist Church for children in kindergarten through fifth grade whose parents both worked. The Belles helped with this program for six months, volunteering nearly 500 hours.

Last summer, the Belles served nearly 400 hours at children’s summer camps offered by Aldridge Gardens, and this summer, the Belles have committed to spend more than 720 hours helping with those camps.

The Hoover Belle with the most community service hours was Aanya Noorani, who volunteered 187 hours with the Belles and worked 57% of the Belles’ service events over the past two years.

In addition to Hoover Belles events, Noorani participated in a great number of other service projects, such as heading up the Spain Park High School blood drive for two years and, as a Girl Scout, developing a mental health site for teens that won multiple national awards. In all, Noorani contributed 337 hours of services during her junior and senior years of high school. The Hoover Belle Committee honored her with a scholarship for her hard work.

The committee also gave Carys Gonzalez its Kim Milling Memorial Scholarship of Excellence for being the most exemplary all-around graduating Hoover Belle.

Gonzalez had 143 community service hours with the Hoover Belles, plus additional hours outside of the Belles. Other factors taken into consideration for her scholarship were her ACT score, GPA and an essay she wrote about community service.

“When I entered the Hoover Belles, I knew little about serving my community,” Gonzalez wrote in her essay. “Other than some volunteering here and there, I did not feel connected to those around me. One of my main takeaways from my many volunteer hours with the Belles is that I have an importance to those around me, and … my community is also integral to my well-being. From summer camps to food distribution, I have helped so many, and they, in turn, have taught me about myself, about the world around me, about empathy.”

The Hoover Belle Committee also gave out two Spirit of Hoover Belles awards to girls who showed especially exemplary qualities and character traits the past two years. Those awards went to Lydia Plaia and Ella King.

Plaia was almost always the first to volunteer for events, many that were in casual attire and involved more work than the events where the girls wear their antebellum dresses, according to the Hoover Belle Committee.

Plaia was outstanding in the Riverchase United Methodist Church’s virtual learning program for children, serving an instrumental role in helping with computer applications and questions the students had, the committee said. She loved working with children who were struggling academically, and she made them feel they could do more than they thought they could, the committee said.

King showed perseverance in every aspect of her community service and worked beyond the minimum number of hours required, the committee said. She contributed greatly in many events that were less fun, including writing numerous thank you notes for the Hoover Helps organization, the committee said.

In all, 36 graduating Hoover Belles were honored in the April 30 luncheon. The girls are headed to numerous colleges and universities to study a variety of fields:

Auburn University: Ava Burke (elementary education); Maddie Cain (interior architecture); Jamison Erwin (fashion marketing); Elizabeth Etheridge (pre-pharmacy); Ella Fuller (chemical engineering); Bella Huynh (hospitality management); Ella Jordan (psychology); Kiley Marett (accounting); Eva Marston (pre-pharmacy); Phedra Peter (chemical engineering); Hannah Ray (nursing); Ava Rector (secondary education or speech language pathology); Emilee Turner (global studies); Maggie Williams (nursing); Julia Wright (music education).

Birmingham Southern College: Katie Hart (pre-nursing).

Loyola University: Rosalie Sullivan (psychology).

Mississippi College: Ella King (history and cybersecurity).

Mississippi State University: Mary Cooper Bearden (educational psychology); Claire Dillard (interior design); Mallie Eron (business).

Rice University: Aanya Noorani (biochemistry and molecular biology).

Samford University: Ellie Everett (journalism).

Southeastern University-Highlands College: Olivia Sasser (Christian Ministries).

University of Alabama: Georgia Anderson (communications); Jillian Gray (public health); Mary Kyle Kilgore (marketing); Abby Pate (finance/marketing); Riley Sandford (psychology); Claire Stansell (nursing).

University of Alabama at Birmingham: Emily Cuthbert (public health); Carys Gonzalez (chemistry); Emily Hofmann (nursing). 

University of Mississippi: Lydia Plaia (nursing).

University of North Alabama: Mary Batchelor (nursing); Catherine Stark (marketing).