September 2025

The Tacy Foundation empowers children and teens to share hope and joy with hospital patients, military veterans, senior citizens, and disadvantaged youth through performances, music recording projects, and music mentoring programs.

Director’s Corner:

Welcome to new students in schools everywhere! And welcome, new volunteers for the Tacy Foundation!

As we prepare for the new school year, a shipment of cards, messages and artwork for Texas families is being prepared. Cards for those who have been impacted by the floods will be sent to rescue agencies. Also, one box of cards was sent in late August to rescue workers. While working night and day, these agencies welcome our teens’ messages of encouragement and support for those deeply affected by the Texas floods.

Our community gives such a tremendous outpouring of love.  Thank you all!

Welcome back, Zoë Bell! Zoë began her journey in music as a very young child. She was one of the first Tacy volunteers. As a 6-year-old, she traveled to Hopkins’ Kimmel Cancer Center in Baltimore to donate her recording on 300 CDs for patients leaving the hospital to go home and complete their recovery. Her music wafted in senior homes, hospitals, and on CDs as our mission of hope and healing continued. After Hopkins, she and many others recorded for children’s hospitals, then for Fisher Houses and soldiers who had lost limbs in combat overseas. She created a CD cover design and continued her journey with us until she graduated from high school. Now a professional journalist and graduate of American University, she has volunteered to do the final layout and dissemination of our monthly newsletters. We are so fortunate to see her in action here again!

Lianor Sweda volunteered for the Tacy Foundation for about eight years, serving as a Chief Intern for her last two years. After completing her first year of college, she volunteered yet again. This summer we have been blessed to have Lianor work as Assistant Manager for Ms. Boynton and I. What a gift she has been! She will continue to assist as she is able as she returns to college.

Last month, a librarian wrote to me from the Uvalde library. She is the recipient of a grant from Endowment of the Arts, an Oral History Project about Uvalde, Texas. Dr. Priscilla Martinez will be recording the history of Uvalde, Texas in the days, months, and years after the 2022 shootings at the elementary school, an event that profoundly changed the entire community.

She truly wanted to know about our organization and how we developed ways to comfort and give hope to people in the middle of darkness and despair. She is searching for the commonality among those organizations that reach out when words alone cannot soothe broken spirits.

When I could find my voice, I told her about our children here in the nation’s

capital. They come from all over the world. They have known fear, danger, tragedy, joy, happiness, affluence, poverty, loneliness, and the wide range of life experiences of the human existence. The Foundation has simply supported their gifts of intellect, sensitivity, art, music, and indomitable spirit. 

I told Dr. Martinez about our first experience reaching out to the PTA at Sandy Hook, Connecticut; to Parkland HS; to Fisher Houses, where soldiers without legs are trying to walk again and without hands or arms to write again; and to the Alaskan family that listened to one of our CDs every night for one year in the hospital and then became Tacy volunteers. They sent cards across the miles to go with ours to those who needed encouragement. 

Our kids went to all of these needy places to support those who had been harmed and then went on to help other people in need in other places. The idea of the cards — which Uvalde received in abundance, along with children’s stories read by our kids — came from a teen in Germantown. Amber brought her supply of beautiful cards and persuaded me to start a cards project for hospital patients. And we continue with this anonymous gift each season.

I look forward to the next part of Dr. Martinez’s research project that explores what makes people rally to help others who are in dire need. It is a phenomenon that truly changed the trajectory of my life as a child and teen. We do not walk alone.  

Thank you all, readers, musicians, teachers, scientists, writers, mechanics, builders, fixers, chefs, coaches, farmers, doctors, lawyers, computer wizards, parents, children, teens, young adults, young and not-so-young.  

Such a tremendous outpouring of love this community gives time and time again. Thank you all!

Charlotte Tacy Holliday, Founder & Executive Director

In the May newsletter, Vishagan Aranganathan described his experience volunteering with the Tacy Foundation. On May 18, he received a President’s Volunteer Service Award. More recently, on July 8, WTOP placed a copyrighted story on its website about Vishagan’s project aimed at stopping the spread of wildfires.

Vishagan’s valuable insight was to use artificial intelligence together with the cameras attached to the outside of airplanes as a way to detect wildfires. Photos from planes at the same altitude “would then be sent to an AI-powered processing center and analyzed for indicators of early wildfire activity. If a potential fire is detected, the system would automatically tell emergency response teams to intervene.” The project that he put together over several months “earned him recognition as Maryland’s merit winner for the 3M Young Scientist Challenge.”

Source: “Montgomery Co. student named 3M merit winner for project aimed at stopping spread of wildfires,” Scott Gelman, WTOP.com, July 8, 2025.

Letters of Appreciation

Life Stories: Saul Popick

Shaun Wang

Prepared by a Tacy student volunteer, below is the first of hopefully many life stories of the senior residents of facilities served by the Foundation. For information on Life Stories, visit the Tacy Foundation website (Programs/Life Stories).Stories will be shared in the newsletter as well as on the website.

Atnearly 100 years old, Saul Popick reflects on a life shaped by war, hardship, and quiet perseverance. Born and raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Saul grew up in a poor family as the youngest of six children. He didn’t focus much on high school—his eyes were already on the war. “I was waiting to get into the military,” he said.

At 18, Saul joined the Navy during World War II. After four weeks of training, he was unexpectedly assigned to the Bethesda Medical Hospital. “I took a lot of kidding about that,” he said, referring to the teasing from peers who were sent to the front lines. In their eyes, he had gotten lucky and received an easy job. His next station brought him to Treasure Island, California. “That was nice out there. I wasn’t far from Alcatraz. Every time I woke up in the morning, all I saw was Alcatraz.” Though not in combat during WWII, the work was intense. “Lots of casualties were happening,” he recalls. His workload increased due to the manpower shortage.

After his discharge in 1946, returning to civilian life was difficult. There were many more like him: “A lot of us got discharged from the service,” he explained, “You couldn’t get a job doing anything.” He took on temporary jobs, but nothing stuck. After some time, a friend persuaded him to join the Navy Reserve. “That was my downfall, but I didn’t know it at the time,” Saul remarks, looking back on his decision. And so it was — less than a year later, he was recalled for the Korean War.

This time, he served as a medic in a combat zone. “It wasn’t easy. There were many times I was in bed, they woke me up, I had to help them carry dead sailors, soldiers, anything. ... You had to put up with it.”

After leaving the Reserve, he met his future wife, but they couldn’t marry right away. “I didn’t have a job.” Eventually, he found work as a medical technician at a federal penitentiary in Indiana—a job he accepted just to gain experience. “Hard being married without a job. We lived in a log cabin.” Over time, things began to improve. In his job he found joy from speaking with the inmates. One inmate, he discovered, even had experience as a medic, and so Saul occasionally sought his help.

Still, job security was elusive. “Back in the early ’50s, the job situation was really bad, especially for young personnel. I just had to put up with it.” Saul decided he needed a more stable future: “I gotta get a job that doesn’t involve the government.” Someone advised him to stay in the medical field until things improved, and then return to federal work if the opportunity arose.

Saul also shared difficult memories of growing up in an environment where he faced discrimination for his religion. “Being Jewish wasn’t easy. I was picked on. ... Oh, I could tell you some stories.” As a child, he often had to physically defend himself. “If they called me names, I fought.... I would get it out of my system.” He remembered coming home in tears, unable to understand why he was targeted. “Why? I never got an answer why.”

Even as an adult, some relationships proved painful. “I had one fellow, he was always nice to me. I found out later that he’d tear me apart as far as religion goes. It’s a shame that I found out like I did.” Finding true friends wasn’t easy. “No, it isn’t,” he said.

When asked if he had any interesting adventures or stories in his youth, he reflects, “Long ago I had stories, but they disappeared. It’s too far gone for me. In another year I’m going to be 100 years old.”

As for how he stayed healthy through it all, Saul was candid: “Mentally? I was worried a lot of times. Really. I had some rough duties.” But in the end, he attributes his survival to something simple and powerful: “How did I survive? I was lucky.”

Thanks to volunteer editor Holly Lam, who assisted with this story.

The Tacy Foundation

Educational mission: Foster youth development through music, story and mentoring

Philanthropic mission: Empower youth to discover and use their gifts in service to others

Social mission: Build community partnerships and create intergenerational connections

Whom We Serve

Seniors

Children

Teens

Service members

Veterans

Injured/sick

Economically disadvantaged

Individuals who want to serve

How We Serve (Programs)

Live music concerts

Reading Express®

Piano Pals®

Guitar Pals®

Composers’ Circle

Music USBs

Musical equipment

COVID projects through video, email, cards, puzzles for outreach to the community

Charlotte Holliday, Founder and Executive Director

Michael Tacy and Zoe Bell, Graphic Editors

Michael Favin, Chief Editor

Donations are appreciated. All adult and teen staff are volunteers. No salaries or benefits. Every dollar you donate goes to supplies for all projects offered to the community. 

Thank you!