Photo by Karim Shamsi-Basha.
The participating students in Leadership Mountain Brook.
They had a gleam in their eyes — the look of young people who have just been told yes, and who haven’t yet learned to pretend it doesn’t matter.
Juniors and seniors, filing into the Mountain Brook Board of Education building on a weekday afternoon, having just found out they made the cut. Waiting for them were the mayor, city officials, chamber staff and the teachers who run the program. Nobody handed out a syllabus. What the students got instead was a welcome, and a fairly direct piece of instruction: pay attention, because you are about to see how this city actually works.
That afternoon was the opening of Leadership Mountain Brook, and it is also, in a roundabout way, the reason there will be a very long table down the middle of Hoyt Lane this fall.
Photo courtesy of the Mountain Brook Chamber of Commerce.
Last year’s Harvest on Hoyt was a celebration of community.
The third annual Harvest on Hoyt brings neighbors, business owners and city officials together for a community supper outdoors in the heart of Crestline Village. The event is a fundraiser for to the projects those students will spend the year building.
“Harvest on Hoyt was created with a simple idea: bring the Mountain Brook community together around one table,” said Lizzie Maymon, executive director of the Mountain Brook Chamber of Commerce. “The Chamber has always believed its role extends beyond supporting local businesses. It serves as a connector for people to meet, build relationships and strengthen the sense of community that makes Mountain Brook unique.”
Chamber staff working out of the office on Hoyt Lane realized the space outside had the potential to become something more than a street. It could become a gathering place.
“We thought we could close it off, put a table down the middle of it and gather the community around it,” Maymon said.
Last year's Harvest on Hoyt was a celebration of community.
Then the chamber pushed the idea further. A dinner is pleasant. A dinner that funds something is a purpose. Leadership Mountain Brook already asked its students to identify and complete a project that improves the city, and the chamber saw a way to tie the two together: an evening that would not only bring people together but invest in the next generation of community leaders.
“Leadership Mountain Brook is a program designed to introduce local high school students to civic leadership, community engagement and the organizations that help shape Mountain Brook,” Maymon said. “Throughout the program, students learn about local government, businesses, nonprofits, public safety, education and other aspects of the community while developing leadership skills and completing a class project that benefits Mountain Brook.”
The supper pays for the projects, and the students who dreamed them up help serve the meal.
Last year’s Harvest on Hoyt funded the Leadership Mountain Brook Class of 2026, and the list of what they built is worth reading.
They updated the Tot Lot. They created a children’s coloring book for the Mountain Brook Library. They designed a Bee Trail Scavenger Hunt, coming soon. They redesigned the visitor pamphlet for the Alabama Veterans Memorial Park.
None of it is a ribbon cutting. All of it is the kind of small, specific improvement that a resident notices for years without ever knowing where it came from, which may be the most useful lesson a seventeen-year-old can learn about civic work.
Photos by Karim Shamsi-Basha.
Mountain Brook High School students chat with Mountain Brook Mayor Graham Smith.
Mayor Graham Smith spoke to the new class at the Board of Education, and her remarks were less ceremony than assignment.
She congratulated them, said she was proud of them and then told them what they were actually there to do: learn how the city operates.
“I visit other cities and come back home humbled by how well our city of Mountain Brook runs,” Mayor Smith said. “And you are about to find out the why and the how.”
Then came the part that landed. She asked the students to raise their hands.
They did.
“When something in this community needs doing, someone must do it,” Smith said. “Someone must raise a hand. Somebody must be the person who says that needs to happen, and then makes it happen. That’s you.”
She also told them she wanted to hear what their project would be. Not a report at the end of the year. The idea, as it forms.
Getting into Leadership Mountain Brook is not easy. The program is a partnership between the chamber, the City of Mountain Brook and Mountain Brook City Schools, is open to juniors and seniors at Mountain Brook High School, and the application process is competitive.
Over the course of the year, participants go behind the scenes of local government, public safety, schools, businesses and nonprofits — the departments and organizations most residents deal with only when something has gone wrong.
Caitlyn Caley, Curran Quinn and Makenzie Summers are among this year’s class.
“This is an amazing opportunity for us,” Caitlyn Caley said. “The selection process is very competitive, and I am thrilled to get to go behind the scenes and know how my city works.”
Margaret Ann Denton, who teaches digital marketing at the high school and works with Leadership Mountain Brook, has watched several classes come through.
“I love this program,” Margaret Ann Denton said. “The students will get to collaborate with the chamber of commerce and with the city to produce projects and improve life for the residents of Mountain Brook.”
Caleb Johnston, a senior at Mountain Brook High School, sees the year ahead as preparation for the work he already wants to do.
“I want to become a lawyer and work with municipalities, and this program will give me expertise in how a city works,” Caleb Johnston said.
Photos by Karim Shamsi-Basha.
Nathanael Dauphin from Finch Fine Wines, right, and Dyron Powell, from Dyron’s Low Country, will provide the Harvest on Hoyt supper this year.
For this year’s Harvest on Hoyt, Dyron’s Lowcountry will prepare the supper and Finch Fine Wines returns as presenting sponsor. Seating is limited, sponsorships remain available and the chamber recommends reserving early.
But ask anyone who has been, and the detail they come back to isn’t the menu.
“One of the most meaningful moments each year is looking down the long community table and seeing neighbors talking with neighbors, business owners meeting residents, and people from across Mountain Brook sharing a meal together,” Maymon said. “That simple image captures exactly the purpose of Harvest on Hoyt.”
Everything else — the wine, the supper, the closed street, the students in aprons moving between the chairs — is in service of that purpose.
And when the students fill your glass at this year’s Harvest on Hoyt, look into their eyes. You’ll see the gleam still there.
