Part IV: The Day Prospect Hill Scholarship - Supporting Excellence, Preserving a Legacy

The year 2010 was a special one for Hopkins. The School was marking three-and-one-half centuries as an institution of learning, and celebrations were ongoing both within and outside its walls: Hopkins School banners flew on lampposts around the New Haven Green, the New Haven Museum hosted an exhibit chronicling Hopkins’ history, and the School had been awarded the Seal of the City.

As with any milestone, 2010 was also an inflection point—a time to reflect on who we were as a School and how we got there. It goes without saying that one of the most consequential moments in Hopkins’ history occurred in September 1972, when the all-boys Hopkins Grammar School merged with the all-girls Day Prospect Hill. Despite a rocky start, the union preserved the legacies of both schools.

“In taking the measure of today’s Hopkins School,” wrote Faculty Emeritae Heidi Dawidoff, Elizabeth Bradley Benedict ’40 DAY, and Marillyn Mulholland in The Girls’ Schools of New Haven, “every alumna can discern that the ruling principles of progressive attitudes that adolescent students need for sound moral and emotional growth, combined with the intellectual rigor that growing minds require, flourish at Hopkins—a gift from Day Prospect Hill that breathes life into Hopkins, as Hopkins keeps those girls schools alive.”

What better time to acknowledge that gift than the momentous occasion of Hopkins’ 350th year? In 2010, a lead gift from Day School alumna Prudence Fairbrother Meehan ’58 helped establish the Day Prospect Hill Scholarship Fund to “provide scholarship assistance for bright, highly motivated female students and to perpetuate the names and values of Hopkins’ precursor girls schools, Day, Prospect Hill, and Day Prospect Hill School.”

“I felt that the women’s schools sort of got lost in the shuffle,” said Meehan during a recent interview about the HGS-DPH merger. “The scholarship helped put emphasis on the women’s schools, and I was grateful to my husband (Peter Meehan ’58 HGS), who made it possible for me to give a lead gift that helped to establish the scholarship.”

Countless other alumni from Day, Prospect Hill, Day Prospect Hill, Hopkins Grammar, and Hopkins School have generously supported the DPH scholarship since 2010, and the fund has so far provided support to five highly motivated Hopkins students, each of whom embodies the values of excellence, leadership, and service that defined the women’s schools. 

“The students that have been selected have been outstanding,” said Connie Frontis ’67 DPH, who has steadfastly supported the scholarship since it was established. “It is a wonderful way to memorialize the Day Prospect Hill School and preserve its legacy.”



This article was originally printed in the 2023 Issue 1 edition of Views from the Hill. 
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      Best Day School
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Hopkins is a private middle school and high school for grades 7-12. Located on a campus overlooking New Haven, CT, the School takes pride in its intellectually curious students as well as its dedicated faculty and staff.