The Helen Hill papers document her extensive involvement with the Trailblazers and other non-profit organizations providing services and advocacy for people with mental illness. The papers also include select published and unpublished literature on mental illness and contemporary models for psychosocial rehabilitation.
Helen Hill is a writer, editor, and retired professor. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1915, she received her Bachelor of Arts from Wheaton College in Massachusetts in 1936 and a Master of Arts from Brown University in 1937. In 1941, she married Donald L. Hill, with whom she had four children. Hill moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan with her husband in 1948. She worked as an editorial assistant at the University of Michigan on Smithsonian Institution: Ars Orientalis from 1959 until 1963, when she was hired as a Professor of English at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. She taught at Eastern Michigan University until 1984. While working as a professor of English, Hill co-edited multiple anthologies of poetry for children and young adults. Even after retiring from teaching, Hill remained an active writer and researcher. In 1995, she published a book entitled A Proud and Fiery Spirit, a narrative which drew on the letters and journals of her grandfather, a sea captain from Duxbury, Massachusetts named Edward Baker. The book was published by the Duxbury Rural and Historical Society.
While attending a Community Mental Health organization education seminar for parents of children with mental illness in the fall of 1983, Hill, her husband, and other parents attending the seminar took note of the lack of local drop-in centers or agencies providing housing and jobs for people with mental illness. In 1984, Hill and her husband took action, working with friends from the seminar to found the Washtenaw County Chapter of the National Association for the Mentally Ill (NAMI). Hill served as Vice President of the Alliance for the Mentally Ill (AMI) of Washtenaw County for the terms of 1984-1985 and 1986-1987, and Treasurer in 1985-1986. She was an AMI of Washtenaw County Board member from 1989 to 1993. In August 1989, with members of AMI and other friends, Helen and Donald Hill coordinated the founding of Trailblazers, a psychosocial rehabilitation center modeled on Fountain House in New York. Fountain House was the first 'clubhouse' rehabilitation center of its kind, providing the mentally ill with a community support system as well as a work-ordered day to help them regain their sense of self-worth and confidence. The Trailblazers' clubhouse was designed to help the chronically mentally ill find employment and reintegrate into life in the local community.
In 1993, Hill returned to teaching, giving courses in memoir writing at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at the University of Michigan. She retired from OLLI in December 2014.
