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Leonard Felson is an award-winning freelance writer. Trained as a general assignment reporter, he hasn't been able to kick the habit. As a result, he specializes in compelling stories across a variety of fields. His stories have appeared in major newspapers and magazines across the country including The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the airline magazines of US Airways and Continental, Family Fun, First for Women, and such regional publications as Northeast Magazine, Connecticut Magazine and Hartford Magazine. |
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2006 ARTICLES: 2005 ARTICLES: 2004 & OLDER ARTICLES: When Disaster Strikes: How Area Nonprofits Mobilize Financing Higher Education Different Seasons, Different Reasons Joe And The Jewish Vote When Disaster Strikes: How Area Nonprofits Mobilize Hartford Magazine January 2006  Though the recent natural disasters put a strain on Greater Hartford nonprofits, it also led to an awareness of the importance of giving. Five months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Mississippi Gulf Coast last summer, many of Greater Hartford’s non-profit service organizations nearly 1,500 miles away are still feeling the effects of that storm and others that followed. On a personal level, employees like Paul Moreau, a 48-year-old Windsor truck driver for Foodshare, Inc., remain almost speechless when they describe the devastation they witnessed firsthand in and around New Orleans. Moreau volunteered to fly south and help run supplies between Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi. Lisa Goepfert, director of social services for the Salvation Army of Greater Hartford, continues to monitor the basic needs of nearly 20 Gulf Coast families who have temporarily moved to central Connecticut as they struggle to put their lives back together. On a broader level, budget directors and fundraising officials are brainstorming on ways to offset the potential for donor fatigue, the term professional fundraisers use for the phenomenon that occurs when donors feel tapped out given the number of natural disaster relief efforts they were asked to respond to in 2005. It began a year ago after the tsunami in Asia and continued following the earthquakes in Pakistan and Kashmir not to mention Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. Faced also with higher gas and heating fuel prices as winter sets in, Hartford area nonprofits are beginning 2006 not only with an added pinch on their operating budgets, but with as great a need as ever for financial donations and volunteer service. So although Hartford nonprofits and the metro Hartford community responded generously to the appeals spawned by the major disasters in New Orleans, the Gulf Coast, Florida and across the globe last year, nonprofit leaders are quick to make another point to residents: your help is also needed right here. “There’s nothing wrong with asking, ‘what can I do?’ when we see every night on the news how people have been devastated by acts of nature. It’s a good instinct,” says Susan Dunn, senior vice president of United Way of the Capital Area, which serves agencies in 40 north-central Connecticut towns. “What we sometimes need to be reminded of is that there’s a thousand people homeless every night in Greater Hartford 365 days a year. Talk about need in our own community. It’s certainly there. It’s just not in front of us everyday and we’re not seeing their faces on the nightly news” Take the work of Foodshare, for example, a regional food bank that serves 300 food pantries, soup kitchens and other organizations in the region and more than 100,000 people a year, or about 10 percent of the Greater Hartford’s population. On Labor Day weekend last summer, nearly all the agency’s 30 employees were on the frontlines of the Hartford Armory, collecting, sorting and packing donated goods, which it sent to sister food banks in Katrina-ravaged areas. The agency also sent a handful of employees, including truck driver Moreau, south to help in the relief effort, a measure that stretched the agency’s resources around Hartford. But you won’t hear Foodshare President Gloria J. McAdam complaining. It’s what you do when the need arises, she says. Yet, like United Way’s Dunn, McAdam too wants to remind local residents of the need at home. “Three things make our work happen,” she says. “One is donations of food. One is volunteers. And the third is financial support that keeps our trucks on the roads and our freezers running in our warehouse.” This winter McAdam says her greatest need is for financial support, precisely because of the rising cost of fuel, stemming in part from the hurricane-damaged oil platforms and refineries in the Gulf. Fuel is critical for an agency like Foodshare because its trucks pick up and deliver so much of it; or the agency hires trucking companies outside Connecticut to deliver donated food. “It used to cost us $1,000 to $3,000 for a tractor-trailer load. Now it’s costing us $3,000 to $5,000,” she says. Consider also the needs of the Salvation Army, which besides serving the nearly 20 transplanted Gulf Coast families, sent 37 local volunteers to the devastated region to serve hot meals from its canteens or mobile kitchens. Today Chris Baker, director of emergency and disaster services, is more preoccupied with how his agency, which serves Connecticut and Rhode Island, will meet the needs of the next house or apartment fire or the next major traffic accident in the region – they were on the scene after the 20-vehicle crash on Avon Mountain last July that killed four people. One effect of the Gulf Coast disaster says Baker, is that more than 350 volunteers from southern New England responded to the Salvation Army’s call for help, but only a small fraction was deployed. Of those, nearly 150 were trained and are ready to step in whenever the next local disaster strikes; about 200 more have yet to be trained, but Baker sees that large pool of new faces as his help in the months ahead. “If we can retain these folks, it can be so helpful because locally is where we’re hurting,” says Baker. A similar refrain comes from the American Red Cross Charter Oak Chapter of Connecticut, which serves five counties spread from Litchfield to New London and about 1.3 million residents. It too responded to the calls from New Orleans and Florida, sending two emergency response vehicles to the Gulf Coast before the storm hit and handling excess phone calls on the national agency’s 24-hour information line. It also trained a few thousand and deployed several hundred to the South. But it’s the local fires, traffic accidents, hazardous material spills and winter storm-related disasters that keep the area’s chapter busy, says spokesman Paul Shipman. Indeed in the first quarter from July 2005 to last September, the chapter responded to one-third more incidents than during the same time a year earlier. That takes all kinds of volunteers, including members of what the Red Cross calls its disaster action teams. Those volunteers agree to be on call 24/7. “If the phone rings in the middle of the night, no matter what the weather, they get out the door and show up and help someone they never met before,” says Shipman. Of course, Hartford area nonprofits are responding to more than the kinds of disasters that make the evening news. VNA Health Care Inc., the visiting nurses agency that runs six offices regionally, in any given day visits about 2,000 houses, serving 800 meals in some 40 towns, says Ellen Rothberg, president and chief executive officer. Many of its services, like the well-known Meals on Wheels program, rely on volunteers – 43,000 volunteer hours donated by 1,300 volunteers to be exact for the year ending June 30, 2005. Put another way, those volunteers saw about 13,000 patients in home care, hospice and independent living situations, delivering meals, visiting the terminally ill, and helping with housekeeping chores. Volunteers also are always needed at the Village for Families & Children Inc., a non-profit social service agency that was first in the nation to provide homes for neglected children nearly 200 years ago. It still does, but like so many organizations its mission had broadened over the years. Today the Village, which serves nearly 5,000 children and families, also provides such services as family resource centers in 10 Hartford schools, where volunteers offer students a range of academic enrichment programs, including tutoring for adults who need help reading and writing. It also provides income-tax filing help to families thanks to accounting students from the University of Connecticut who volunteer their time. For hundreds of volunteers at regional nonprofits across the Hartford metro area the service they provide has become a piece of how they define themselves. Don and Elaine Waudby of Ellington, have given more than 500 hours of volunteer time to Foodshare, for instance. She’s a retired nurse educator and administrator; he’s a retired manager from the former Aetna Life & Casualty Co. Like so many people throughout the region, they used to give turkeys to Foodshare each year around Thanksgiving. After retirement and a few trips they had never got around to before, they turned to volunteering, now putting in time at least once a week inspecting and sorting through cans of goods at the agency’s warehouse. Moreover, it’s an activity they can do together as a couple, says Elaine Waudby, and they can do it around their schedule. Dave Bradley, an 84-year-old West Hartford retiree from the former Southern New England Telephone Co., volunteers as a driver and delivery person for the VNA’s Meals on Wheels program, but it gets more complicated. He’s also a member of the Old Guard Inc., a retired YMCA men’s group, which some 30 years ago committed to taking Meals on Wheels routes for the VNA. When Bradley joined the group he was asked to deliver meals a couple times a month, which he did. Then he was asked to be a coordinator, which he said yes to. Fifteen years ago he became chairman of Old Guard’s Meals on Wheels project. “It’s what you do,” he says when asked why volunteer. “It’s a way of life. It’s part of our culture. There’s just some sort of core sense that life has been good to us and you want to share,” says Bradley. Even agency staff members like Foodshare’s truck driver Moreau says he felt the urge to volunteer to work in ravaged Mississippi because he knew his skills were needed. “I offered to do what I knew. I was able to drive and get supplies out there and they were very appreciative.” And the truth is, say volunteers and nonprofit officials, finding a cause or agency to give time or money to couldn’t be easier. Google any one of them to get contact information, to email or call them. Many have listings of the volunteer programs on their websites. Most agency officials on the receiving end also dismiss an annual index that consistently finds Connecticut among the most tightfisted in the country when it comes to charitable giving. Another study conducted by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University in contrast found that Connecticut residents along with other New Englanders exceed the average U.S. levels, it’s just that they are more likely to give more to secular or non-religious causes than their national counterparts. “Our experience is that people tend to give locally to causes that they care about and that they can see and touch the impact,” says Donna Jolly, a spokeswoman for the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving. “We hope and believe that people here are going to continue to be as responsive to local needs as they have in the past.” Ironically, although Hurricane Katrina stretched the resources of Hartford area nonprofits, agency officials say it also has strengthened their capacity to respond to everyday needs, thanks to all the training that volunteers have received over the past five months. It also may have served as a wake-up call for those who came home and realized the big and small ways they can volunteer their time and skills right here at home. BACK TO TOP Financing Higher Education Hartford Magazine  April 2006 Many working adults are choosing to go back to school to pursue higher degrees, but how do you know when the time is right, and how do you pay for it? For years, Bill Slone, a stockbroker by day, took courses for fun and for his own enrichment. Last fall at the age of 63, he got serious about his continuing education and enrolled in a Master’s program in English at Trinity College, hoping someday he may yet write the great American novel. Besides paying for his own graduate studies, he also picked up the bill for his adult daughter’s graduate degree in counseling and his son’s coursework at a Colorado solar institute. When is the right time to pursue a higher degree? How best to finance it when, like Slone, you may face the prospect of paying for your kids’ college education at the same time and your pending retirement? Add those to the list of mid-life questions facing a growing number of Greater Hartford residents as colleges offer more evening, weekend and online programs, as working adults find the need for advanced degrees to stay competitive, and as aging baby-boomers decide they’re no longer content putting off a lifetime of aspirations. “I was able to do it,” says Slone of financing it all, “but not easily.” Slone, a Cheshire resident, may be one of the more fortunate ones, having worked as a stockbroker for more than 35 years, the past 18 at Buell Securities (which recently relocated to Glastonbury). But whatever the obstacles, Slone and countless other adult students are deciding the jump back into a world of homework, reading assignments and tests or papers is worth it. In Slone’s case, his pursuit of a Master’s with a concentration in creative writing is for his own enjoyment and to further develop his writing skills. (He’s already created his own blog at www.blitheron.blogspot.com.) Others are seeking advanced degrees or even completing bachelor’s degrees they never finished to climb the corporate ladder, betting that their investment now will pay higher dividends in increased earnings a few years from now. They may be right. Median earnings for a bachelor’s degree in Connecticut last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, was $49,889. Add a Master’s to your resume, and earnings climb to $59,508; and median earnings for those with professional degrees in fields like law or medicine, increase to $95,699. Of course, to earn those degrees takes money, but financial planers say several possibilities can help finance new learning adventures, even if you’re already looking at huge college bills for your kids. Start with your employer, advises Robert A. Laraia, a registered financial consultant and president of NorthStar Planning Group LLC in Newington. “A lot of people don’t realize it, but their own employers may provide resources including incentives or tuition subsidies to get the MBA or other degree.” If those aren’t offered, consider other conventional sources such as home equity loans or borrowing from your 401(k), although Laraia warns that tapping money from a 401(k) must be done cautiously. If you can wait a few years, consider taking advantage of so-called 529 college savings plans traditionally used for children’s or grandchildren’s college education, suggests Laraia. “As long as it’s being used for education beyond high school, a 529 college savings plan can be used for someone of any age,” he says. “Instead of putting money away for a new car or a beach house, you have money set aside so when your youngest is graduating college you have the money for yourself, and it grows tax-deferred,” says Laraia. Finally, perhaps the simplest way to pay for working adults’ advanced degrees is to put it on the credit card, suggests certified financial planner Karen Waltemath of New Milford, a former planner with Merrill Lynch. “If you can find an offer with zero percent financing for six to eight months, it’s a great way to pay for college as long as you pay it off. Realistically for someone working and going to school, you’re not taking a full load; it may only cost you $4,000 or $5,000 to pay for one semester class. It could be the equivalent of $1,000 in child care per month,” says Waltemath. But she adds, you need to stay on top of your payments and exert fiscal responsibility. Regardless of how you pay for your higher education, the rewards can be priceless. Ask Michele Carter who took 10 years to get her bachelor’s degree in economics from Trinity’s flexible Individualized Degree Program for Adults. Her employer, The Hartford, reimbursed her for the cost of tuition. Carter was 18 years old when she joined the financial services company, with only a diploma from Buckley High in Hartford and six months of computer training under her belt. Fantasy or not, she kept telling herself she wanted to be a lawyer one day, but the obstacles seemed insurmountable. She was a single mother trying to raise her daughter and pay a mortgage on her two-family Hartford house. One day her sister brought a pamphlet home from Trinity in Hartford, calling Carter on her dream. Carter went to an open house and was sold on the idea. She got her mother and step-father to watch Carter’s daughter and The Hartford even allowed her to attend classes during the day. Graduation came in 1997, but that wasn’t the end. She went on to UConn Law School’s night program graduating in 2001. She’s now 48, and with 30 years at The Hartford this month [April], she plans to start a new career soon practicing law. “Trinity was one of the best schools to go to because it really helped me get through those first 10 years, and family support was really important too,” says Carter reflecting on her delayed college life. Carter’s story is not unique. Debbi Breaux, 52, whose ambition was to be no more than a secretary after high school, also marks 30 years at The Hartford this year. Breaux, now an assistant vice president in technology services, also took advantage of the individualized program at Trinity, earning a bachelor’s degree in English literature in 2002, with the company reimbursing her tuition. “I’d study Saturday afternoons and Sundays. It was a commitment [my husband and I] both had to make, and he was very supportive,” says Breaux of Cromwell. Or consider the case of Sam Rush, who was actually in the business of student loans, but felt he could go further with a Master’s degree. He didn’t want to take 10 years to get another degree. So he enrolled in an accelerated learning program called New Dimensions run by New Haven-based Albertus Magnus College, which has an East Hartford. Going to classes once a week, four hours every Thursday and meeting regularly with a study group every Tuesday evening, Rush earned his Master’s in science and management in 20 months. Despite the tuition reimbursement from his employer, the Connecticut Higher Education Supplemental Loan Authority, Rush says it was still hard work. For starters, Rush, 38, had to commute those nights from East Hartford to his home in Waterbury, often not getting home until close to 11 p.m. (His office is in West Hartford.) His wife had to carry the brunt of the workload at home and keep tabs on their two boys, now 9 and 4. But the investment came with a job promotion, a raise and a far better command of his field and how to manage. (Indeed, recently Rush was honored as Male Professional of the Year by the Waterbury chapter of the National Association of Negro Business & Professional Women’s Club, Inc.) One reason more working adults are returning for advanced degrees, say experts, is the variety of ways degrees can be obtained. The New Dimensions program that Rush enrolled in allows students to take one course at a time typically for five to six weeks at a time. “It’s designed for working adults,” says Carolyn Shiffman, vice president of New Dimensions. “Individuals (whose average age is the mid-30s) are able to focus on one subject at a time. So it’s challenging, but manageable.” On the other extreme stands Trinity’s individualized degree program, which allows students up to 10 years to complete a degree. “We want to make sure we give them ample time because of all the different things that hit the lives of adults,” says Denise Best, Trinity’s director of graduate studies and special academic programs. Tuition costs also are discounted by one-third, making a return to school even more feasible, says Best. Many students in the IDP program, notes Best, also are juggling with ways to pay their home mortgages, daycare and the other expense that go with adulthood. Also competing for returning students is the University of Hartford’s five-year-old Bachelor of University Studies program, advertised widely on billboards and in the media as a degree completion program, offering other flexible ways to earn degrees. A vast array of scholarships also are offered, and a new program called Saturday Term was inaugurated two years ago giving students four 10-week sessions on Saturday mornings and afternoons to complete degrees, according to R.J. McGivney, assistant dean of university programs. Finally, the oldest college program in the region specifically geared to working adults remains at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Hartford. It was founded in 1955 as a joint venture between the Troy, N.Y.-based college and United Aircraft Corp., the precursor to Hartford-based United Technologies Corp., as the need for better trained engineers was increasing. Although Rensselaer has broadened its scope beyond engineering, it hasn’t strayed too far from its original mission, continuing to focus on a limited number of programs including management and engineering and information technology. Classes are offered evenings and weekends. But brick-and-mortar schools aren’t the only way to get an advanced degree. Also growing are the number of students taking so-called distance learning or online courses, says Diane Goldsmith, dean of planning, research and assessment with the Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium, which caters to older students. Enrollment in such college courses – 655 are offered by Connecticut colleges – has climbed from 655 students in 1998 to almost 25,000 students last fall. “For adults, it means that on their lunch hour they can go to school. It means they can put their kids to bed and go to school without having to pay for a babysitter,” says Goldsmith. For companies who reimburse their employees’ tuition costs, it amounts to a win-win proposition, corporate human resource officials say. One of the premier such programs, many industry experts agree, is UTC’s Employee Scholar Program, which CEO George David started just 10 years ago. It lets UTC employees anywhere in the world chose whatever course of study they want, regardless of whether it has anything to do with their job. (Ninety-five percent of the company’s employees do focus on fields related to their work or other fields within the corporation.) Besides providing employees with full tuition as well as covering the cost of books, UTC gives $10,000 worth of UTC stock to employees upon graduation. Not surprisingly given UTC’s core businesses, many of the 18,500 employees who have graduated in either four- or two-year programs pursue degrees in either engineering fields or, if they already have engineering degrees, they often focus on management, pursing MBAs. UTC has spent an estimated half billion dollars on the program to date, says Bill Bucknall, senior vice president of human resources and organization. Why spend such resources on employees? “It helps in recruiting and retention and it makes individuals more promotable within the company. You wind up with people who are truly appreciative of the support the company has provided them,” says Bucknall. With Greater Hartford focusing on generating more sophisticated jobs in an information economy, expect more working adults to return for higher degrees, says Judith Greiman, president of the Connecticut Conference of Independent Colleges. “The bachelor’s degree is the new high school diploma,” says Greiman, echoing what business and opinion leaders statewide are telling her. Which is why most colleges and universities will continue to create weekend and evening programs, helping working adults move to that next level. BACK TO TOP Different Seasons, Different Reasons  Hartford Magazine May 2006 Downtown living has growing appeal for young professionals, empty nesters and retirees seeking fun, convenience and culture. Bill Quirk, 62, is about to start a new day, living and working out of his two-bedroom loft apartment at ArtSpace. ArtSpace opened in a former car dealership building more than 10 years ago, less than a block from Union Station. Daylight pours through his 16-foot-tall windows in his corner apartment. At night, the lights of the Capitol and Hartford’s skyline shine bright. Quirk thinks he has the best of both worlds. He can walk to the train station and be in Manhattan in about two hours. And yet, if he were living in New York, he says, surveying his apartment, “this would be worth about $3 million in SoHo.” His apartment, he says, “feels more like New York” than Hartford—but at rents far more affordable. Quirk once co-owned O’Neal & Prelle, an advertising and public relations agency that was housed in an Elm Street brownstone facing Bushnell Park. As creative director, Quirk says his most memorable work may have been his commercials for the Connecticut Tourism Department, which featured former Gov. John Rowland and his wife, Patricia, promoting the state as a tourist destination. That was before Quirk sold his share of the agency and moved to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., 10 years ago. He worked sparingly, hung out on the beach, hit a lot of golf balls. In February, Quirk decided the time had come to return to Hartford, partly because he sensed “no business energy” where he was in South Florida, and also to capitalize on his many business contacts back in New England. Quirk sits in his large living room decorated in a funky motif, including a giant tube of artist’s paste, which stands in one corner; soft jazz comes out of a portable CD player. Much of the furniture has been handed down to him from friends. He remembers the town in the 1980s when, “in terms of an urban experience, Hartford really sucked.” Now, that is changing. “The energy is almost palpable,” he says, which is why he is cautiously optimistic about downtown. “With more people moving in, living in the high-rises and condos, presumably there will be more cafés, more galleries, more cool people—it will be more urban in the best sense.” Driving north through New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, Linda Silver and her friend of 20 years, Eileen Hoffman, are heading to Hartford from their homes in Cherry Hill, N.J., for one purpose: Linda has promised her father that she will check in on her sister, Mary Dunn, who has a new living arrangement. Dad is concerned about Mary’s safety. Mary is no young co-ed, though. She’s 55. She’s been married and raised two children in the suburbs—in Avon, to be precise. Now she’s going through a divorce, and in February, Mary moved into her own apartment, which is what has her father—and for that matter, her sister and her sister’s friend—in a tizzy. Mary has moved to downtown Hartford. After the two women arrive at Mary’s apartment, a one-bedroom, sixth-floor unit in a new building called Trumbull on the Park (because it faces Bushnell Park on Trumbull Street), they take pictures to show Dad when they return to New Jersey. “In a million years, I never would have dreamed of living here,” Mary admits that evening in her living room. She has a glass of white wine in hand, and is sitting in an upholstered chair in what could be a scene out of Friends fast-forwarded: Linda and Eileen are on the couch, also drinking white wine. Mary’s 29-year-old daughter, Lindsay, a third-year law student at the University of Connecticut, is sitting on the carpeted floor along with Eileen’s 22-year-old daughter, Dana, a senior at the University of Hartford. From Mary’s living room window, you can see the St. Paul Travelers tower, Bushnell Park and the Capitol. When they’re not catching up on family gossip, they’re talking about Hartford. Linda is still amazed that her older sister has made this bold move, joining a wave of urban pioneers who are filling some 1,000 new apartments and condominiums, either completed or about to be. This in a city where, until recently, there was so little city life after 5 o’clock, that downtown living was almost an oxymoron. But tonight, Mary is hammering home one theme: downtown is safe. She thinks nothing of walking home at night alone from her job at Stackpole Moore Tryon Co., a venerable clothing store three blocks from her apartment. The other night, after dinner with her sister-in-law at Pastis, a French bistro, Mary walked home without a problem. She walks to church too, and she loves the fact that, this evening, the five of them will leave her apartment at about 7:28 and be at Vito’s by the Park in time for their 7:30 reservation. She also loves the fact that her old friends from Avon are coming downtown to meet her for dinner or drinks regularly because, as Mary puts it, “it’s becoming cool to come downtown.” But there’s a feel, an energy, that Mary recognizes too. Maybe it’s that she got married early and worked with her husband in retail for years, and she now loves her independence. Or maybe it’s just living, well, downtown. That’s something she never could have imagined all those years when she and her husband, like so many suburbanites, would come downtown for an event or a night out, and then drive back to the suburbs. Now, there are days like one recently, when she stayed home in her apartment to work. It was the first time she had spent an entire day in her apartment, and she found herself getting up and just looking out the window, amazed at how ecstatic she felt. A few blocks away at the Linden, Kathy and Bob Tummillo are ensconced in their condominium at the historic building off Main Street. As new downtown residents go, the Tummillos were ahead of the curve. With no children, they’ve always been attracted to the feel of city life. Seven years ago, they decided to try livinig in the city, renting in the Linden after selling their cape in Manchester. They loved the character of the building, they loved the ease with which they could get around town, and they loved the diversity of their neighbors: people from the arts and media, bankers, lawyers. Eighteen months later, they bought a unit there and haven’t looked back. “It’s been the best move possible,” says Kathy, 57, a nurse and coordinator of special services at Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford. Her husband, Bob, 63, co-owns Bill’s Automotive with his brother, Bill. The service station – at the corner of Buckingham and Hudson streets, within walking distance of Bob and Kathy’s downtown home – has the feel of a small-town establishment. There, everyone seems to know Bob and Bill Tummillo, and the two of them know everything going on in town. “We’ve made such wonderful, phenomenal friends,” says Kathy. “So many people belive in the city. They love it and they participate in it. You can always find someone to go somewhere, whether it’s to an art opening, a show at The Bushnell or a fund raiser.” No stranger to urban living, Kathy once lived in New York for a couple years. As big as Manhattan is, she discovered it’s really no more than a lot of neighborhoods. To her, downtown Hartford is like one of those large neighborhoods. “You have the park, all of the arts, museums and all of your neighbors all within one small area,” she says. “To me, Hartford has all the beauty of Boston and New York right there in one small, intimate environment.” It’s an unseasonably warm Saturday in March when Hartford holds its traditional St. Patrick’s Day parade. Fifty-thousand people have turned out on this sun-drenched day, and many blocks are clogged with revelers. After the parade, in front of Vaughan’s Public House, an Irish pub on Pratt Street, a block party is in full swing, and among those celebrating their Irish heritage is Patrick McCann, 32, a physical education teacher and assistant communications director at Watkinson School, a private school in Hartford. Two years ago, he moved into 55 on the Park, a former Southern New England Telephone building, which was renovated into 130 apartments, marking the start of this new wave of apartment development downtown, the first such development in decades. McCann is wearing a green-and-white soccer jersey and drinking a plastic cup of Harp beer, along with friends who also are standing in front of the pub. He looks up at the new 36-story high-rise called Hartford 21, adjacent to the Hartford Civic Center, and can only imagine what the impact on downtown will be when people start moving into the tower’s 262 apartments later this year. He turns his head and wonders the same thing about the Sage-Allen building at the opposite end of Pratt Street. The former department store is being renovated into a new apartment development for 136 University of Hartford students, most of them seniors and graduate students. “It’s the right time to move downtown,” says McCann in his native Australian accent. Even in the two years since he moved into his apartment, McCann is seeing changes. One small, telling detail sticks out: more people are jogging—not just during the lunch hour, but at different times of the day. Even more telling, to his mind, is the sight of people walking their dogs, which he sees as another sign that residential life is returning to downtown. Of course, one draw for twenty- and thirty-somethings like McCann is other twenty- and thirty-somethings, who are moving into the new apartments. Dana Yazmer, 24, grew up in Farmington and graduated from the University of Connecticut. She works for ROGO Distributors, promoting its line of beers to downtown bars. “Everything feels like a neighborhood bar,” she says of downtown and the young men and women she runs into, all of whom seem to know each other. Like Yazmer and McCann, Dan Kennedy, 28, also lives at 55 on the Park. He’s a lawyer at Heneghan, Kennedy & Doyle, a Rocky Hill firm, which means he does a reverse commute every morning. But he’s single and he’s lived in Washington, D.C., New York and San Francisco. “I had no interest in living in the suburbs,” says Kennedy. Neither did Amy Chase, 31, who moved downtown in January, after commuting an hour a day from her family’s home in Suffield. Now Chase, a University of Hartford graduate, is minutes from her job in building management at State House Square. Sitting at his kitchen table in front of a laptop, he spends one morning working with a new client on a corporate identity and brochure copy. He works on a radio spot for another client. He makes phone calls, setting up appointments. Like most other new urban pioneers here, he’s all too clear that downtown still has a way to go, noting some of the amenities this new urban neighborhood still lacks. A good grocery store, for example. A bookstore. A breakfast place. A corner deli or green grocer. A video store. To buy his 18-year-old grandson’s birthday present—a book—he needs to get in his car and drive to Borders on the West Hartford-Farmington line. He needs a lampshade too, which requires a trip out of downtown. But he doesn’t regret his decision to move downtown for a minute. While residents still get in their cars and do their grocery shopping at suburban supermarkets, Quirk and other new residents like Mary Dunn expect those stores will arrive eventually. After all the talk of the transformation downtown, says Dunn, “it’s starting to happen. It really is.” BACK TO TOP Joe And The Jewish Vote  NE Magazine, The Hartford Courant October 1, 2006 View this complete story in PDF Format If You're Jewish, Should You Feel Guilty If You Don't Vote For Lieberman? Roz Rachlin stands at the podium making announcements and introductions to about 115 other members of Beth El Temple in West Hartford. The crowd, mostly retirees, are lunching on noodle kugel, salad and chilled poached salmon topped with dill sauce, all catered by the Crown Supermarket, the gastronomical heart of Connecticut's largest Jewish community. They're all here for the monthly lunch program of the Chai Society, which in this case is Hebrew for "living," as opposed to the spiced tea steeped in milk served down Albany Avenue at Starbucks. Today's guest is Mark Silk, a Trinity College professor who speaks to them about religion and public life, and it couldn't be more relevant given that Silk has walked deep into Joe Lieberman country. Chai Society members talk about "Joe," Connecticut's incumbent U.S. senator, as if he's family. They still kvell about the moment six years ago when Al Gore picked Lieberman as his vice presidential running mate, making him the first Jew on a major party ticket. Though Lieberman lost the Democratic primary last August to political newcomer and anti-war candidate Ned Lamont, forcing the senator to run as a petitioning independent candidate, most in the room here are standing by him come Nov. 7. You might think Lieberman would have a lock on the Jewish vote in his home state. Indeed Beth El's Rabbi James S. Rosen, who was in Israel during the primary, said Israelis were shocked at the results. They couldn't believe that Lieberman, an observant Jew known for not campaigning or working on the Sabbath, hadn't received at least 98 percent of the Jewish vote, instead of the 61 percent a New York Times/CBS exit poll said he captured. This obviously means that more than one-third of Connecticut's Jewish voters in the primary rejected Lieberman. Even 18 years ago, the last time Lieberman ran in a competitive race, when he upset then-incumbent Sen. Lowell P. Weicker, 45 percent of the Jewish vote went for Weicker, according to a CBS News exit poll. The split in the state's Jewish community of 125,00 actually should come as no surprise. Interviews with Jewish political strategists, academics, party insiders, voters, rabbis and Jewish community leaders suggest that the so-called Jewish vote no longer stands as monolithic as it might have been 50 years ago, if it ever was. "We Jewish people tend to disagree all the time. Every page of Talmud has disagreements," says Rabbi David Avigdor, leader of Bikur Cholim Sheveth Achim, an Orthodox synagogue in New Haven, and a personal friend of Lieberman's. Certainly such social factors as the higher rate of intermarriage, dwindling religious observance and greater acceptance into America's melting pot, have eroded the degree of ethno-religious identity that Jews feel compared to even a generation ago, say experts who study the American Jewish community. And on issues, growing divisions continue within the Jewish community not only over the war in Iraq (although a majority oppose it), but on certain hot-button domestic issues where many progressive Jews believe Lieberman's votes were just plain wrong. Even on Israel, though it may seem counterintuitive, many Jews who support Lamont say they believe the war in Iraq has left Israel less secure, not more so. As evidence they point to the ease with which Iran shipped missiles to Hezbollah, in part, so the argument goes, because Iran bet that the U.S., distracted in Iraq, would not or could not react. "The question is this: Is Israel in a better situation today than it was five years ago and is the general state of unrest in the region to Israel's advantage?" asks David Pudlin, a Lamont strategist, former state House Majority Leader and active member of Temple Sinai in Newington. The question of the connection between Israeli security and the Iraq war echoes the debate begun last week after a classified report from U.S. spy agencies said the war is spreading radicalism throughout the Middle East and increasing the overall threat of terrorism. The Bush administration has disagreed with that assessment. It's unclear how the Jewish vote will divide in the general election. Political insiders are predicting everything from "a tight race" to a "75-25 split" for Lieberman. Nevertheless, despite the small size of the community - Jews make up 3 percent of Connecticut's population and 4 percent of the electorate because they have such a high registration rate - some political analysts say, like the election itself, the results of the Jewish vote could also become a national bellwether for the 2008 presidential race. Meanwhile, with little more than five weeks before Election Day, the campaigning continues across the state and within its Jewish community. Bob Tendler, a 72-year-old consulting pharmacist, is active at Temple B'nai Israel in Southbury. He's on the board of the local branch of the Jewish Federation, an agency that supports a vast array of Jewish services in western Connecticut. He and his wife, a nurse, returned last month from a medical mission to Israel, for which he feels a deep connection. And he's actively supporting Lamont. Until the primary, Tendler, who is also chairman of the Southbury Democratic Town Committee, always voted for Lieberman. After the senator ran for vice president in 2000 and re-election for his Senate seat at the same time, Tendler's support began to wane, as the Southbury Democrat questioned whether Lieberman was paying enough attention to his Connecticut constituents. The turning point came three years ago last spring, when Tendler's son, Jeremy, then a sergeant in the U.S. Army's Third Infantry Division in Iraq, managed to call his father, with a complaint and plea for help. His troops, many in tanks, were getting only one 16-ounce bottle of water per solider a day, as they endured temperatures of 125 degrees. Tendler called the senator's office. But Lieberman's staff dismissed the complaint, according to Tendler. "They said, `I'm sorry, you must have bad information. That's not happening,'" Tendler recalled. A spokeswoman for Lieberman's Senate office, Casey Aden-Wansbury, said his staff has no "specific record or recollection of speaking to" Tendler about the matter. She said Lieberman receives many calls and letters from active-duty military and their families. "He takes each one seriously, and he does everything he can to answer their questions and help them...Fortunately there are many success stories among them," she said. Tendler is among the 67 percent of Jewish voters polled in the primary who want the U.S. to begin removing troops from Iraq soon. But like others opposing Lieberman, he ticks off several other issues that convinced him it was time for a change. He mentions Lieberman's refusal to back a filibuster against President Bush's Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito; his support for emergency legislation in an attempt to save Terri Schiavo's life; and his comment that Connecticut's Catholic hospitals that refuse to give contraceptives to rape victims shouldn't be forced to do so. Other liberal Jews echo that criticism, and ironically, they believe that Lieberman's hawkish foreign policy stands actually are not in Israel's best interest. One of them is Judith Resnik, a professor at Yale Law School and active at New Haven's Congregation Beth El-Keser Israel, a Conservative synagogue. A frequent visitor to Israel, she has taught courses at Israeli universities and has many close family members living there. "Israel is far more vulnerable now, as we saw in the conflict with Hezbollah, than it was before the terrible mistake of the Iraq war. To the extent that voters of whatever political or religious persuasion are seeking stability in the Middle East and protection of lives...the policy of George Bush, supported largely by Joseph Lieberman, has done a disservice, not a service." Her rabbi, Jon-Jay Tilsen, known for his far-to-the-left politics, also supports Lamont. Still, like some, he admits to feeling "a lot of ambivalence." After all, he says, Lieberman is "a known quantity," but ultimately the rabbi says he believes Lamont, an Episcopalian, "would be better for the interests of all of us, including the Jewish community." Of course, many Jews disagree. One of them is Tilsen's colleague, Rabbi Avigdor of the Orthodox Bikur Cholim Sheveth Achim. "I've always been a Democrat and I've always voted for the Democratic Party, but I'm very disappointed that the fringe of the party voted for Lamont," he says. "I feel terrible grief when I see a solider, especially from Connecticut, come back from Iraq in a body bag. I regret that terribly. I understand that Lamont and his supporters want to be done with the war. But life is not that simple. Life is very complicated, and I don't think the American public is aware how serious this battle is," he adds, referring to what he sees as a general war on terrorism. The war notwithstanding, the rabbi says, Lieberman, who has prayed at his synagogue, should be re-elected. "He's an honest man, a very decent man. He does what he says. It's mind-boggling. A politician who actually says he doesn't believe we should pull out of Iraq and [was] losing in the polls [in the primary], and still sticks to his guns. Anyone else would have flip-flopped just to save his seat." Michael Kassen, a 53-year-old Westport investor, whose wife, Shelly, is a town selectman, first met Lieberman in 1993. He's contributed to Lieberman's campaign since then, and he wonders why anyone, Jews included, would not support the senator. A member of the national board of the American Israel Public Relations Committee, or AIPCAC, a pro-Israel lobbying group, as well as a board member of major New York Jewish agencies, Kassen agrees with Avigdor. "Forget Israel for a second," says Kassen, who considers Lieberman one of the Senate's leading voices for the Jewish nation's defense. "I just believe he understands that we live in a very dangerous world that unfortunately is becoming more dangerous and that we have to have what I would call an engaged and vigorous and muscular foreign policy." Other Jewish supporters of Lieberman voice concern about whom Lamont, as a political newcomer, would consult, were he to win. One of those worried is Daniel I. Papermaster, a Hartford lawyer, who serves as counsel to the Lieberman campaign. He, like many more moderate Jews, were taken aback when they saw Lamont on the podium the night of the Aug. 8 primary, flanked by the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, as well as U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, all seen as representing the far-left wing of the party, and which moderate Jews say can't always be counted on to support Israel. Some Jews also can't forget Jackson's anti-Semitic remark in 1984 when he once called New York "Hymietown," for which he apologized, or Sharpton's role in inciting anti-Jewish violence in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn in the 1990s. Ironically, Lieberman had kind words for Jackson six years ago when the civil rights leader stumped for him and Gore, and for Sharpton in 2003 when both of them were part of a presidential primary debate sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus and Fox News. In the end, however, the Jewish vote is unlikely to be the deciding factor in the Senate race, although if it's close, and recent polls suggest it could be, those votes could make a difference. L. Sandy Maisel, director of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs at Colby College in Maine, says he wouldn't be surprised to see Lieberman win 75 percent of the Jewish vote, given that those who voted for him in the primary will almost certainly be joined by many Republican and moderate, independent Jews. Still despite the divisions within the Jewish community, which largely underscores a historic split between progressive and centrist Jews, the real question is what will it all mean the day after the election. Jonathan D. Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University and a leading analyst of contemporary American-Jewish trends, says: "What we're seeing in Connecticut is emblematic of the tensions within the Jewish community." If Lieberman were to lose, centrist Jewish Democrats - the old Scoop Jackson Democrats strong on foreign policy and defense issues - might begin supporting moderate Republicans. These Jewish voters could sense that the Democrats are no longer a big-tent party, but one more interested in embracing their extreme left wing. And that softening of support for the Democrats could have major implications for 2008. That's an argument also being trumpeted by the Republican Jewish Coalition. The group has run full-page ads recently in the weekly Connecticut Jewish Ledger, claiming that the radical left "with its antipathy toward Israel, its indifference to anti-Semitism, and its desire to appease terrorists instead of fighting them is now gaining control of the Democrat Party. It's time to ask yourself: Does the Democratic Party still represent you?" Under Sarna's scenario, if a John McCain, for example, were to become the GOP nominee in 2008, running against a far-left-leaning Democrat, the kind supported by MoveOn.org, the national progressive coalition instrumental in helping Lamont win the primary, many moderate Jewish Democrats might well feel they're no longer wanted in the Democratic Party. "If they do, the question is whether the Republican Party invites them in and tries to recapture that center in hopes of broadening a coalition that brought George Bush to power...That's why this is such an important election," says Sarna. The political calculus gets even more interesting: Although the Jewish vote nationally is small - about 4 percent of the electorate - it remains significant in battleground states such as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, which could well determine the next president, Sarna says. Others say such an analysis is unlikely. It's true, says Maisel, director of Colby's Goldfarb Center, that nationally prominent Jewish leaders and donors have moved toward the Republican Party, but that's not the case as much among average Jewish voters. Indeed, the percentage of Jews who support Democratic candidates remains extremely high, says Maisel, who notes that John Kerry got 81 percent of the Jewish vote, "and I think Jews will continue to support the Democratic candidate." Granted there could be a pairing of a liberal anti-Israel Democrat against a moderate pro-Israel Republican, in which the Jewish support for the Democratic candidate drops significantly. But Maisel says, "I don't see that happening. The Republicans won't nominate a moderate and I don't think the Democrats will desert Israel." As evidence, Maisel notes that Republican Senate nominee, Alan Schlesinger, also a Jew, is struggling in the polls with virtually no support from the Jewish community or his party, which has all but endorsed Lieberman. So what can we learn about the upcoming election between Lieberman and Lamont? Until the results come in, it's only speculation. What's all but certain, strategists agree, is that Jewish voters from places like West Hartford's Chai Society are likely to strongly support their "Joe." Unknown is how their baby-boom-generation sons and daughters and even their voting-age grandchildren, likely to be sipping chai, the tea, will vote. If Lieberman loses, says Maisel, "it doesn't say anything about Israel or the Jewish vote (in part because Lamont too has come out in support of Israel). But it does say a great deal about the war in Iraq." The question remains to what degree. BACK TO TOP |
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©2006 Leonard Felson |
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