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Personality Profile: Jean Cahill, executive director

After more than a half-century of service, Cahill continues to give to the community

By Kyler Post

Jeanne Cahill’s husband, Al Cahill, has a saying. “If you cast your bread upon the water, it will return to you with honey.” There is perhaps no proverb more emblematic of his wife’s life of selflessness and service.

Born Norma Jeanne Taylor in Alma, Ga. in 1932, Jeanne Cahill spent most of her childhood during the Great Depression working on a dairy farm. Cahill said her parents first introduced her to the idea of volunteer work.

"My mother and father always told me to leave the world a better place than when I found it,” Cahill said. “And that’s something I’ve always tried to live by.”

After graduating from Bacon High School in Alma, Cahill began her college career at Berry College, where she attended until 1951. She left Berry before completing her undergraduate work in order to start a family.

“The rhetoric of that time was for women to care for their families,” Cahill said. “And so I felt I should leave academia and start my own.”

After marrying in 1959, she worked several different jobs, including a stint as the industrial news editor for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution from 1962 to 1965.

Political career

In 1972, Cahill became president of her own land development and real estate company and was appointed to the Georgia Commission on the Status of Women. She was the first paid executive director in the Commission’s history.

Cahill later worked for the gubernatorial and presidential campaigns of President Jimmy Carter, also serving as a delegate at the 1974 and 1978 Democratic National Conventions.

After an unsuccessful campaign of her own, for the Georgia House of Representatives in 1976, Cahill continued her work as an entrepreneur, founding a fitness equipment company and becoming president of the Buckhead Business Association, where she served until 1994.

In 2004, Cahill and her husband retired to Rome, where she resumed her education at Berry after a more than 50-year hiatus, graduating in 2007 as valedictorian with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. Berry honored Cahill by tapping her to speak at commencement that year.

“When Al and I moved to Rome after my retirement, I felt as though it was only fate bringing me back to Berry,” Cahill said. “So I felt it was the perfect opportunity to finish my collegiate career back where I started.”

Joining the ARC

Only a month after completing her undergraduate education at Berry, Cahill was approached by the AIDS Resource Council to become the organization’s executive director. Since then, she has been a blur of activity at the ARC.

Cahill initially was offered a paid position with the ARC, but after two months on the job, she decided she could afford to work on a volunteer basis.

“I felt that as long as I could get by, I could volunteer and, hopefully, more people would come along to help me along the way,” she said.

Current treasurer and former president of the ARC board, John Rivest, said Cahill has a unique ability to transfer her passion for service to others, which makes her an excellent fit for the ARC.

“I’ve seen Jeanne influence more people to come work for us and volunteer their time than I can count,” Rivest said. “There’s just something about her that makes people want to get involved with whatever she’s doing.”

Fellow board member Frank Tant said he is proud to work alongside Cahill at the ARC.

“Jeanne has worked harder than you could imagine to help us all out,” Tant said. “You can tell she really wants to help the community here in any way possible.”

Cahill said she started working for the ARC because she hoped to raise funds for research and educate the public about the AIDS virus.

“I feel not enough has been done to fund the science of finding a cure and a vaccine,” Cahill said. “And there is certainly a need to improve community awareness of the disease.”

Cahill also said she holds a special affection for those with HIV because she knew many who were infected and some who even died from the disease. “I went to many funeral services for friends and acquaintances of mine who died from the disease in the 1980s when not much was being done to treat the disease as it is now,” Cahill said. “And that is one of the strongest connections I share to the disease and organizations like this one.”

Making an impact

In Cahill’s time with the ARC, the number of HIV tests administered has increased, volunteer support has improved and the Council has begun issuing a newsletter to the community informing them about the importance of testing for the HIV virus.

Cahill said one of her goals for the ARC is to fight the negative perception that is associated with AIDS.

“It’s important that we work to reduce the stigma that is attached to AIDS and [to] those who have it,” Cahill said. “And we’ve done a good job so far of working to accomplish that.”

Cahill said one of the earliest examples of their work to reduce stigma was placing a large sign in front of the ARC main office, at that time located on Broad Street in Rome.

“When I came, there was no way to identify us at the office,” Cahill said. “So I had to fight a battle to get a sign out front, because we had to let people know that we weren’t ashamed of the work we do, and they shouldn’t be ashamed of the disease, either.”

Cahill also said she hopes to increase funding for AIDS research during her tenure through public donations and government legislation.

“I hope the new [Obama] administration works to shift funds from abstinence-only programs to comprehensive education of sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS,” she said.

While Cahill said she will continue to serve the ARC in as many ways possible, she said she would have to cut down slightly on the time she spends working in order to care for her husband, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease at 96 years of age. Now in her seventies, Cahill credits her own good health to good exercise, a healthy diet and a constant search for more knowledge.

“Every day I cook three meals from scratch, try to work out in my garden and finish the day by reading something that I can learn something from,” Cahill said. “I try to stimulate my mind, body and soul.”

After more than half a century of “casting her bread upon the water,” Cahill said her “honey” is the satisfaction she receives from building relationships with members of the community who come to the ARC for help.

“There are several of our clients who have started volunteering here at the office, and I’ve even hired two of them to stay with my husband while I am away at work,” Cahill said. “Those types of things are what makes the work well worth it.”