The Westside Civic League is set to begin honoring people in the Boston and Williamstown areas on Monday, starting with an 82-year-old woman who has lived there nearly her entire life.

“This is the first time we’ve done it, but it’s long overdue,” said Emanuel Myrick Jr. of the civic league.

The honoree at Monday’s ceremony will be Catherine Thorne.

“We’re honoring her because of her civic duty, her community activism and also her desire to keep the neighborhood beautified,” Myrick said. “She’s been very generous.”

Myrick said Thorne kept up a community garden on a corner lot near her home until her health began to fail. She has also picked up trash, sponsored community cookouts and mentored neighborhood youth.

Thorne was raised in the neighborhood but then moved away for a few years. She moved back home in the early 1960s and was disheartened by the state in which she found the neighborhood.

“The place was so congested,” she said. “There was trash and lots that were dirty and overgrown. I said, ‘I’m going to try, if God gives me strength, to improve this.’ I decided to do what I could do.”

Thorne began picking up trash on the street, in her neighbors’ yards and on the railroad tracks nearby. She paid her son and other young men in the neighborhood to help.

“People have thrown everything you can think of down the railroad track, and it looked so bad I was almost ashamed to come home,” said Thorne, who worked at Planters for 40 years. “When I would come home, I worked a little each day and got it cleaned up. People began to feel proud of the neighborhood.”

She also cleaned up the overgrown corner lot and planted a garden. Sometimes she grew vegetables, and other times she raised flowering plants, shrubs and small trees.

“I really did want to improve a little out here,” she said.

But perhaps more important than the trash pickups or the garden were the young people she mentored.

“She was the type of person who had a house where young people could come by, and she would talk with them,” Myrick said.

Thorne said she would teach the youth how to respect their elders and not talk out of turn. She also encouraged them to memorized Bible verses.

The event honoring Thorne will be held Monday at 6:30 p.m. at Bethlehem Christian Church, 312 Bute St.