AMC Outdoors, April 2003

By Katharine Wroth

As Dick Hillman prepared for his first trip to the White Mountains 16 years ago, he looked over his to-do list: Buy hiking boots. Take some warm-up hikes near his Maryland home. Oh yes, and "join something called AMC."

Hillman, who would make the trek north with friends from his running club, became a member to get a discount on his stay at Zealand Falls and Galehead Huts. Today, he is a frequent leader for the Washington, D.C., Chapter and a regular information volunteer at Mizpah Spring Hut.

Last year, he successfully organized the chapter-sponsored Fall Gathering in Virginia, and is looking toward the next, in 2008: "We can reserve the same facility, but not until 2005."

Hillman shares his love of the outdoors with his wife, Lisa, and son Jake, 14 — the trio is a regular presence at AMC gatherings. (Daughter Heidi, 29, is also "a White Mountains devotee," reports Hillman, but gets there less often from her home in San Diego.)

The Annapolis native has long dedicated his energies to his hometown, serving as mayor for four years in the early 1980s and helping the city out of a fiscal and spiritual crisis. Politics is in his blood, notes Hillman, 60, who lives in his childhood home; one of his earliest memories is of a church-supper campaign stop with his father, who ran for state senator.

Today, Hillman works for the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development. He also has chaired the city's planning commission, charter revision commission, and a foundation that recognizes excellence in local environmental education. The former marathoner — he completed 17 — officiates at track meets at the U.S. Naval Academy and works with a group that presents cultural programs for midshipmen at the academy.

In his few spare moments, he tends his family's garden and exercises his two adopted greyhounds, Larry and Roman. And once a month, he leads an AMC hike. Asked his preferred routes and terrain, he says simply, "I never like to go to the same place twice."

—Katharine Wroth is Senior Editor of AMC Outdoors.