This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
12/22/2021 07:30 AMHer first name is obvious if you see her license plate: it reads Sybil J, for Sybil Joyce, but there’s a lot more than a license plate to say about Sybil Higgins.
Since 1995, Sybil has been director of Christian education at the Deep River Congregational Church.
During the pandemic lockdown, there were Sunday school classes on Zoom, with individual classes and teachers breaking off into the chat rooms that Zoom makes possible.
“We wanted them to continue their faith journey,” Sybil says.
More recently during good weather, classes were held outside with special activities to involve students. If memories of Sunday school bring back scenes of sitting quietly in a class on Sunday, take another look.
“We change with the times and offer more hands-on Sunday School programs and community outreach versus the traditional sit in classrooms for an hour; we get them up and moving,” Sybil explains.
There was beach Sunday, a time for wearing flip flops and sunglasses; a sculpture event with marshmallows and toothpicks; and a rock concert, but no Bruce Springsteen. These were rocks painted by the youngster to put in the church garden.
Sybil has particular memories of an event at the close of the Sunday school year, when the students and their families released butterflies, which she had ordered. The butterflies had to be kept refrigerated in a dormant state, then taken out of the cooler to reanimate before release.
Sybil got an urgent text to hurry things along. The butterflies were waking up more quickly than expected.
Under her leadership the church expanded its Sunday school programs to include a regular teen issues discussions, with topics chosen by participants from local to national and international questions.
Every year, the students make both hygiene and school kits for distribution through World Church Service. Over her 26 years, Sybil estimates she has made some 3,000 of kits.
Today, in Sunday school, she is seeing the children of the students that she first knew when she started out over two decades ago.
In addition to directing the school, Sybil, who has been a member of the Deep River Congregational Church for 30 years, has been involved in many other church programs, among them the annual Christmas Pageant, which she directs, as well as the Church Faire, the Faith Adventure program in the summer, and the Green Team, which has worked to advance environmental projects and awareness.
She is also deeply involved in Boy Scouting with Troop 13 of Deep River and Chester, working with scouts on their eagle projects. Since she started in 2000, she has mentored 67 young men who have become eagle scouts and is currently working with two who are nearly ready for advancement.
Sybil’s community participation has stretched over three decades and also includes work with the Parent Teacher Organization at Deep River Elementary School and Valley Regional High School.
Sybil was involved in starting the boys and girls lacrosse teams at Valley Regional. Her son Cy came home after a lacrosse practice with a team based in Lyme-Old Lyme, and asked her where he would be playing next year. At the time, the tri-town area had no lacrosse team.
“So that got me going to start a boy’s lacrosse team, while my daughter Amanda and her friend spearheaded starting a girl’s team with help from parents and community members,” Sybil recalls.
Cy and Amanda are both now adults. Amanda is a pharmacist; Cy is working as a brewer. Sybil reports favorably on his work.
“It’s very good,” she says.
Sybil, then Sybil Root, grew up in Madison. When she was eight years old, she joined the Westbrook Junior Ancients Fife & Drum Corps.
“My mother just saw an ad in the paper,” she recalls.
Sybil played with the corps for 10 years until at 18, she aged out of the group. The fife and drum corps, nonetheless, left her not only with pleasant memories but something far more tangible. She met her husband Richard there.
At Fisher College in Boston, Sybil thought her interest was merchandising. In fact, she is now an office administrator at Nathan L. Jacobson & Associates, a civil and environmental engineering firm in Chester. She has been there 25 years.
When she thinks of that along with her tenure of more than 20 years at the church, she makes the obvious conclusion: ‘I think I am a long-term person.”
Sybil doesn’t like to fly, yet she loves France so much that despite her worries about airplanes, she has been there five times. She sang lullabies to her daughter in French and says her son’s first word (ironically, given her fear) was airplane, but in French: avion.
She admits that after more than two decades of overseeing religious school, there is sometimes a temptation to sleep a bit late on Sunday.
“I love to sleep but I don’t,” she says. “I get up at 6 a.m. and I’m there by 7:45.”
For more information about the Deep River Congregational Church, visit Deeprivercc.org.