EAST BOSTON—You might think he’s crazy, handing out his cell phone number and urging his students to use it. Answering their calls after school is over, and dinner is done, and he’s already started grading papers—sometimes as many as 20 calls in a night.

Brett Pangburn, 37, just says this:

“Well, then don’t be a teacher.” 

Because this is what it takes to help the students at Excel Academy, the charter school where Brett has taught sixth grade English the past four years. Some kids show up the first day unclear about where to put a period. They use capital letters in the wrong places. Their question marks are upside down.

It’s only knowledge, and with time and work and discipline, they can learn it. But often, they’ve failed elsewhere, and the feeling has stuck. Brett is constantly trying to put something better in its place.

Not too long ago, he was tackling a different set of problems, and doing it from a private office in a tall building with two secretaries. Brett was a lawyer for Skadden, Arps back then. The challenge could be thrilling. The money was good. But as he moved from job to job, he wasn’t helping in the way he wanted to help. 

At the age of 32, he decided to become a teacher. His girlfriend at the time, his wife-to-be, was already a teacher in the Brookline public schools. When Brett announced his intentions, excited and a little bit nervous, she had a few words of advice.

Spend some time with kids first. See if you actually like them.

He started tutoring middle school students from the housing projects in Cambridge, and it surprised him, how much they needed the help, and how much they wanted it. As it turned out, talking to them was also a lot of fun.

So he went to Harvard University to get his masters in education, and six years later, Brett shares an office in a bland two-story building tucked between a super-sized pharmacy and a field full of weeds. At 7:50 every morning, when the kids file in dressed in uniform, he’s standing there in his shirt and tie to greet them.

When Keila Hernandez showed up in his class last year, shy with teachers but loud with friends, Brett worried like he always worries. He knew that Keila could do it.

“The question was when,” he says. “And the fear, of course, is that it would be too late.”

The way he sees it, there’s a narrow window in middle school when you can catch these kids. If you grab their attention and keep it, they go strong into high school.  If you don’t, there are real risks; the transition to high school is notoriously tough.

It's a big responsibility, and he feels it. Every day, Brett tries to prove to these kids that he’s worth their attention. Every day, he tries to convince them he’s selling something they really should buy.

One winter afternoon, he stood before his sixth graders, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed man in motion, roaming up and down the aisles, talking about tone. Some students were leaning out of their seats, straining to get their hands higher in the air. But others sat hunched over a Langston Hughes poem, staring blankly at the words.
  
“If you don’t have your hand raised, I’m a little bit worried,” Brett said, walking down the aisle. “You’re not going to take a risk?”

In those early months of sixth grade, Keila refused. She sat silent, not understanding. Brett knew it was shame that kept her quiet. But he couldn’t let her have it. If she stayed that way, she might not make it through high school, let alone college. 

In a series of meetings with her mother and her other teachers, he began to make his argument for why she really should try. 


Plenty of things are missing from Excel Academy. A library is one. A computer lab is another. 

But words of encouragement are all over the place—written on the bright yellow walls of classrooms and hallways, spoken by the staff all the time. The kids could not succeed without them.

That’s part of the Excel philosophy. Another part is this: No excuses. Not for students, and not for teachers. In the words of Brett’s mentor, Becca Moskowitz, a seventh grade teacher: 

“It’s not enough to be good at what you’re doing. You’ve got to be good, and want to be better.”

Excel is not for everyone. Some teachers have been let go; others have left of their own accord. But this year, all core teachers returned. And 100 percent of the eighth graders scored proficient or advanced last year on the state’s standardized English test. 

Excel hopes to open another school in the fall of 2011, now that the state has allowed for more charter schools in districts that are struggling.

Brett started out student-teaching in the public school system, both in Boston and Cambridge, and he loved the kids there. But then he found Excel—a small, independent school with students from across East Boston and Chelsea. Same demographics as the other schools Brett worked in, but in this setting, the kids seemed happier to him, more engaged.

He works about 80 hours a week now for about a quarter of the salary he made as a lawyer. That part of the job is discouraging. But then there’s the other part.

“I absolutely love doing it,” he said.


At the start of the year, Brett lets his students know the following. 1. He will always try his best. 2. He will always challenge them. 3. He’s not going to yell.

He may want them to act differently sometimes, and he’ll explain why. But if they make mistakes, he won’t get angry. He won’t give up. And he won’t walk away.

At a school where nearly 70 percent of kids qualify for a free or reduced lunch, Brett is well aware of his role. For some students, he’s the only man they spend time with on a daily basis. The words he uses, the way he carries himself, the clothes he wears—they notice all of it. 

“I feel like I’m trying to fix a lot of things that are broken,” he said the other day. “While being fun, and while being engaging.”

Brett’s colleagues are full of praise for him, but some of them worry. In any marathon, you have to pace yourself. Brett is trying to slow down. But it goes against his nature. 


He's always crafting new lessons, trying to get them hooked. He'll try techniques from teachers he admires; he'll mix illustrations from The Simpsons into homework; he'll plant students’ names and photographs in written class exercises, just to see their faces light up.

“He puts a thousand percent into everything he does,” said Komal Bhasin, the principal. 

Every September, Brett gives his students a two-page handout on how to leave an effective phone message. They’ll need to know it later in life, and they also need to know it now, as students, on the occasions when they call their teachers. 

Speak slowly. Leave your name. Leave your number. Describe your problem. Brett gives them a sample script to read. Sometimes, when he listens to their messages, he can tell that they’re following it. 


To tell the truth, Brett can’t even remember the words he used to tell Keila she needed to shape up. He has so many conversations in a day; he wonders whether the actual words mean much at all.

But Keila remembers. And so do other students he has pulled aside and urged to work harder, laying out all the reasons why they can and should. They’ve come to him later and told him so.

Sometimes it’s his words that make an impression; other times, it’s the listening. 

“You can tell him anything,” said Keila.

When Keila calls now, it’s for her sister, a student in Brett’s class who also has a learning disability. She’ll dial the number, say hello, then hand over the phone. Brett admires this about her. Keila will tell you her brother and sister get on her “very last nerve,” but he sees how she looks out for them at school.

She’s a good, strong role model. She’s got a great sense of humor. It just took her a little while to realize she was smart. 

Brett sees this all the time at Excel. Students start out slow, then gain speed once they realize they can do it. Just a taste of success, and they don’t mind working for more. 

Halfway through sixth grade, something in Keila clicked, and she started to have fun finding answers. Brett would see her plugging away at something, working through the confusion, then suddenly, it would all make sense, and that’s when the class would hear it:

“Ooohh!!!”

A year later, Keila is known school-wide for her work ethic. She’s getting a high B in her English class—from Becca Moskowitz, no less, one of the toughest teachers around. Everyone is rooting for her. Keila’s mother. Keila’s teachers. Keila’s friends. 

There are so many temptations out there; Brett is just hoping she holds her ground. And if she starts to doubt herself, that she’ll remember the words of the people who believe in her, and carry them forward with her, all the way to college.

EAST BOSTON — The kids at the sixth grade assembly were saying her name, like, Oh, Of Course It’s Going to Be Keila. But Keila Hernandez didn’t believe them. This was a big award—the award for perseverance. It had to go to someone else.

Only, it didn't. Mr. Pangburn, her English teacher, made the announcement, and the next minute, Keila was walking down the line of smiling teachers at Excel Academy, shaking everyone’s hand. Her face was all red, and she was trying hard not to cry, but it was only a matter of time.

“When I got to the principal, that’s when it happened,” said Keila,14, several months later. “My glasses fell off and everything.”

There were a lot of things she felt in that moment—excited, nervous, a little embarrassed, to be at the center of so much attention. But the main thing was proud. 

This was not an easy school. So many times, she could have stopped trying. But Keila wanted to go to college.

Learning has never been easy for Keila. Early in elementary school, she could clear the confusion away by asking questions. But as she got older, and switched schools several times, the confusion became overwhelming, and raising her hand in class would not make it better.

In fact, raising her hand made everything worse. She felt like everyone was staring. Sometimes, they snickered. The teacher was nice, but she had other things to do, and Keila kept falling behind—until she mostly gave up.

“I thought I was stupid,” she says now.

Her mother looked into charter schools, and Keila's reaction was: okay, sure, whatever, fine. Then Excel picked Keila’s name in its lottery, and she had to take a placement test. They told her she would have to repeat fifth grade, and she was ashamed all over again. 

It made her want to go to the neighborhood school. That school had already accepted her into sixth grade.

Still, her mother wouldn’t drop the idea of Excel. And Keila trusted her mother; they had always been close. So she thought about it a while, and slowly she began to see Excel as another chance. 


There are more hours in the school day, and more school days in the year, but Keila doesn’t mind. And all the rules they have at Excel—maybe they bother the other kids, but mostly, she likes them. It’s like they’re giving her a road map, and showing her how to succeed.

Keila knows just what to expect, starting with a 7:50 a.m. smile from the principal, Ms. Bhasin, who shakes her hand by the doorway, and gives her a greeting by name. 

Then she files upstairs, in uniform, with the other seventh graders, to see Ms. Moskowitz for homeroom—20 minutes of quiet time to organize their assignments and arrange them neatly in their binders. Classical music plays as Keila works.

“I can just hear your brains,” says Ms. Moskowitz, her English teacher, as the students shuffle papers.
 
Ms. Moskowitz can be silly, like when she did the hokey pokey dance with her students that day. But she is also strict in the way that Keila likes. 

“At my other school, they would yell at you for what you did wrong,” she said. “But they weren’t strict about what you were supposed to do.”

At Excel, there’s a point system that reinforces good student behavior—points given for participating in class, for example, points taken away for leaving a book at home. It can be kind of fun to track your points all week long and try to get enough.

The other day, Keila earned enough to head downstairs to a table full of treats. Behind the table stood Mr. Habetler, the dean of students, one of her favorites. Every Friday, they walk together to basketball practice in a crowd of students and teachers. They talk about all kinds of things on the way.

Keila smiled, and picked a piece of candy.

“Thanks for being awesome,” Mr. Habetler said.


There is this great feeling Keila gets sometimes when she’s trying really hard to solve a problem, and then she goes back and tries some more, and finally she works it out. It makes her happy.

“I know if I read something enough times, I’m probably going to understand it,” she says.

About 15 percent of students at Excel have special needs; for Keila, she struggles to understand some information the first time around, and to string her sentences together just right. But early on, she got the message that she was part of the Excel family, and that they would help her through. 

And they do. Twice a week, when other students have dedicated reading time, Ms. Salander sits in a cramped room with Keila and several other students, coaching them through their homework. And on Keila’s tests, her teachers leave reminders, making sure she has followed all the directions on one question before she moves on to the next. 

Sometimes Keila loses focus, and her left leg gets to jiggling, but her teachers always pull her back in. And she has friends in class now to support her. If she can’t find the words in a sentence, chances are, the other kids will start snapping their fingers, the Excel Academy sign of support.

So here is what Keila is happy to report: An 86 percent on a recent poetry test. An 88 in English last semester. She’s raising her hand more. She’s asking for help.

The principal, Ms. Bhasin, sees a different girl these days. 

“I feel like her lights are just coming on,” she says.


There is always the possibility of a setback. Last year, at the start of sixth grade, Keila couldn’t stop giggling with her friends in class. She didn’t do it to be disrespectful; it just kept happening.

She had Mr. Pangburn for English back then, and at some point, he had had enough. He organized a meeting with her mother and a few other teachers. He told her: you’re going to end up repeating this grade if you don’t start to focus. 

Keila liked Mr. Pangburn. He was a good teacher. She could call him at night and ask him questions about her homework. When she heard his words that day, something clicked.

“I realized that the teachers really cared about what happened in our futures,” Keila said.

And then she remembered all the work she had to do to get to sixth grade in the first place. She couldn’t take it for granted, that she would just move forward. Every student had to work hard, and sometimes she had to work harder.

Now she is focused—after-school study sessions, hours of homework every night, Saturday math academy when she’s falling behind. Sunday mornings, she gets up to study before she sits down to cartoons.

When Keila grows up, she wants to be a dancer. She forgets every stressful thing when she dances. Or maybe she’ll go into the military, because it has a lot of structure and plenty of things to do. Keila likes having things to do. 

But before any of that, she’s going to college. Her mother is always talking about it, and so is her school. She just needs the grades to get there. 

Sometimes her hard work pays off, and sometimes it falls short. So Keila was nervous about those standardized tests at the end of sixth grade. But then she went ahead and surprised herself, getting “proficient” in both Math and English. She missed “advanced” in English by just two points. 

As soon as she found out about it, at the start of seventh grade, Keila went right up to Mr. Pangburn to tell him, and thank him. But Mr. Pangburn said it was her hard work that did it. He called her smart.

Coming soon, the last in the series: Keila's teacher. For Part One, on Keila's mother, click here. 

EAST BOSTON— Drifting is what she calls it. The way one small decision leads to another, then suddenly, the kids are out of school, standing around with friends on the street. Maybe they’re there for a day; maybe they’re there for a decade.

Daisy Polanco passes them on the street, and she worries: what if it happens to hers?

“I pray every day that they don’t drift to that,” says Daisy, 35, a single mother of three. “That’s my always fear.”

Drifting can happen in any neighborhood, to any child. But because they live in a low-income neighborhood, and because they are Latino, and because two of them have special needs, the statistics suggest this: Daisy’s children are at higher risk for dropping out of school.

Daisy is not interested in the specifics—that in Boston, 30 percent of Latino students dropped out of the class of 2008; that about half graduated on time, the lowest rate of any group of students in the city, according to the most recent state data.

This is the kind of thing that interests local principals and national policy makers; it’s their job to close the gap between kids of different cultures and classes and natural capabilities. It’s their job to figure out how to boost achievement for all children—to get them into college, and to help them graduate.

It’s Daisy’s job, nearly every hour of every day, to figure out how to save her own.

Daisy knew what was coming for Keila, as soon as middle school hit. She heard the stories, about someone else’s daughter getting pregnant, about someone else’s son on drugs.  She watched her oldest girl closely. And sure enough, toward the end of elementary school, Keila started to slip.

Occasionally, Keila would tell her about the snickering and the name-calling and the feeling of stupid, every time she raised her hand. But what Daisy could see for herself was this: Keila, who has learning disabilities, was falling behind. She was pulling away.

Something had to be done.

Daisy started to research charter schools, which are publicly funded and supervised by the state. In theory, she had nothing against the neighborhood middle school. Maybe Keila would have found her way, and done fine.

But that neighborhood school had several hundred students. And “drama” was the way she heard it described. Daisy is always trying to keep her kids away from drama; it’s a 24-hour-a-day kind of thing.

And what she heard of charter schools, she liked: smaller communities, strict but supportive, structured in a way that could help Keila, who has problems with attention and focus.

So in the winter of 2007, she filled out short applications for three different charter schools. In the springtime, word came. Excel Academy, in its annual lottery, had picked Keila’s name.

When Daisy was growing up, there was plenty of love in the family, but not much talk about school. She had her own plan for college, but she got sidetracked sophomore year—fell in with a different group of friends, and dropped out of school.

A change of school brought her back, and right before she graduated, her English teacher told her she had talent; she suggested Daisy apply for a summer writing camp.

“But by then, it was too late,” said Daisy, the other day, from her kitchen table.

She was in the groove of working, and had been for years—mostly supermarket work, to make money of her own. The college dream didn't have enough pull in the end. At the age of 21, she gave birth to Keila, and a year and a half later, the twins, Amanda and David. 


Stability had become the goal. With some training, she found a job at a law firm. She moved into public housing. She worked her way up at another law firm, from the mailroom 10 years ago to front desk reception today.

Some years back, the city bulldozed the old barracks-style buildings, and built a multi-income complex; now Daisy lives in a three-bedroom apartment, with pink and purple curtains for the girls’ room and a television set for her son. No drug dealers around the complex yet.

“So far, so good,” she says.

A nice apartment. A full refrigerator. A close family. These are her blessings. But for her children, Daisy wants more. For her children, she wants college.
 

All of Daisy’s children are students now at Excel—all were sitting in their classrooms last autumn, when Gov. Deval Patrick visited the storefront on Sarasota Street, and declared the East Boston school, with its 210 students, a success.

That day was special. But it is not uncommon at Excel to see educators from across the state, and around the country, take seats at the back of classrooms, trying to get a sense of how this school works.

At Excel, 67 percent of students qualify for free and reduced lunch; 69 percent are Latino; more than 50 percent speak a language other than English at home. And yet, for the past two years, the class of 2009 has ranked first in the state on the standardized test for English. 

Three years in, Daisy is still surprised at the partnership she has with these teachers. They email her all the time, with comments and concerns and answers to her questions. They give her their cell phone numbers. They urge her to call.

As the parent of an Excel student, Daisy signed a contract with the school, a promise to provide, among other things, a quiet place for study, regular homework checks, and help with preparing for quizzes. But she was doing all that already, no piece of paper required.


There is confidence in Keila now. Daisy can see it growing. Some semesters, her grades are better than others; she still struggles with focus and attention, along with a learning disability that makes it difficult to process what she is hearing, without hearing it often.

But Keila came into Excel two grade levels behind, according to school officials. And after repeating the fifth grade, she managed, in sixth grade, to score “proficient” on both of the state's standardized tests, narrowly missing “advanced” in English.

After a rough start, Amanda, who also has a learning disability, boosted her grades this year. David, who has an easier time with academics, still struggles with motivation.

But the way her mother sees it, Keila has come alive at Excel. She’s made friends. She’s joined the basketball team. She’s wrapped herself around that school like it’s a second home.

“I feel like she has a better chance now,” says Daisy. 

These days, Keila has goals—to make the honor roll, to go to a private high school, to graduate from college. She gets giddy, actually, when she talks about it. Daisy loves to listen.


Coming on Tuesday: Keila's story.  

ARLINGTON — She was small at first, standing against a white backdrop, surrounded by soft lights, and upside-down umbrellas, and photographers smiling behind their cameras, encouraging her to pose. Then Shanaya, 17, had an idea:

“What’s that thing they do on the red carpet?”

And everything was easy from there. She turned her back to the cameras, placed her right hand on her hip, cast a pouty look over her shoulder, and suddenly, there was the fun. Whole, long minutes of it, designed especially for her.

“It felt good to take my guard down,” said Shanaya, who lives at Germaine Lawrence, a residential treatment program for at-risk adolescent girls. “I went all out.”

All around the world last weekend, photographers gathered to take portraits of people who are often overlooked—people without homes, or good health, or a steady income, people who might see portraits as something only others can afford.

They had their hair styled. They got their makeup done. And then, smiling like celebrities, they stepped into the spotlight at shelters and schools, churches and community centers.  By the end of the weekend, according to the organizers of Help-Portrait, 36,000 people had professional portraits to give as gifts this holiday season.

The idea for the project came from celebrity photographer Jeremy Cowart, who sparked the movement this summer from his home in Tennessee. It traveled through Twitter, and other social media, until more than 3,000 photographers had signed on, not to mention the hair stylists and makeup artists. 

Days after the event, the web was buzzing with countless videos of Help-Portrait shoots, from the streets of Mexico to a studio in Lithuania. 

The Germaine Lawrence session was a quieter kind of success. Many of the 80 adolescent girls here have suffered trauma. Some have been sexually exploited. There are girls who have repeatedly run away from foster homes, and girls who have tried suicide.

But last Saturday, they sat like ladies of luxury, reading magazines in a makeshift salon on the second floor of the school. Stylists from Empire Beauty School had driven from Warwick, Rhode Island to braid their hair, and curl their hair, and tuck it all into an updo. 

The girls closed their eyes, so the artists could brush blue and purple on their lids. They opened their mouths slightly, for the lip gloss to glide on. Then down the carpeted staircases each girl went, walking through dimly lit hallways, to make her debut in the gym.

“Oh, my God, here she comes!” yelled Nikki Valila, a program director for Germaine Lawrence, and the organizer of the event. “Work it!”

The girls were giddy with the glamour. They flipped their hair. They twirled around. They pulled friends into the frame with them, playing at a Charlie’s Angels pose. 

Fifteen photographers fawning over them for the day. Calling out compliments: Gorgeous! Perfect! Look at you! Huddling with the girls, showing them the shots on the camera screen.

This is why Nikki really wanted to bring Help-Portrait here: the attention. The girls can never get enough.

“I can’t pretend to know what their experience is like,” said Marshall Goff, a photographer who lives in Newton. “We just try to be a positive moment in it.”

Nothing about the girls’ healing is easy. But on this suburban campus, surrounded by supportive staff, many said they had found a family. They measured their progress by new feelings—confidence, independence, a growing interest in school. 

For some, the Saturday session itself was a step forward. 

A couple of the girls came to the gym shaking. One sat hugging her legs, trying hard for a smile. Meg Taintor, an assistant in that shoot, inched in beside her.

“I’m just gonna hang out here, cause it’s kind of scary,” Meg said.

Slowly, the girl unfolded herself. She let one photographer brush the hair from her eyes. She let another ease her out of her winter coat. Then she began to smile.

As part of the Help-Portrait experience, each of the 40 girls photographed will get a series of pictures—two 8”x 10”s, one 5”x 7,” and a bunch of wallet-size images of themselves at their best. On Saturday, some had plans already to send them to a sister or a brother, a father or a grandmother—the people they had left behind, or the people who had left them behind.

Shanaya knew one thing for sure. The biggest picture she got would go to her mother. 

“My mother deserves it,” she said.

Shanaya was in another photo shoot once, years ago, as part of an adoption campaign. Her portrait hung in a furniture store. Potential parents passed her by.

But everything was different now. A few months shy of her 18th birthday, she was growing out of being a girl. Getting stronger all the time. This portrait would be there to remind her: she was on her way.



Note: Several girls were interviewed for this story, but because of privacy concerns, and because they are all under the age of 18, they were not able to use their names, and their photos cannot be shown. Shanaya gave permission to use her full name, but her social worker, who is her guardian, allowed only the use of her first name.

For more photos from the shoot at Germaine Lawrence, go to:
http://www.intheviewfinder.net/HelpPortrait2009/. For more on Help-Portrait, go to: http://www.help-portrait.com

Saturday's event was made possible by stylists from The Empire Beauty School, http://www.empirebeauty.edu, and the following photographers:
Jeff Tamagini http://www.tamaginidesign.com
Rich Beaubien http://www.intheviewfinder.net
Leah Haydock http://www.leahhaydock.com
Jessica McDaniel http://www.boston-baby-photos.com
Julia Snider http://www.juliasniderphotography.com
Brian Matiash http://www.brianmatiash.com
Chris Lazzery http://www.onefiftyeightphotos.com
Meg Taintor http://www.megtaintorphotography.com
Darcy Dubois http://www.wix.com/darcys7/blackwhite
Nathan Tia http://www.simplynate.com
Lisa Seidel http://www.portraitsbylisa.com
Schuyler Ortega http://www.schuylerphoto.com
Marshall Goff http://www.marshallgoff.com
Jason Liu http://www.jliuphotography.smugmug.com
John Tammaro http://www.flickr.com/photos/nu_husky_91/

With prints donated by http://www.iprintfromhome.com

FALL RIVER — For a while there, it looked a little dicey. The ladies were safely tucked away in the makeup room, getting their hair curled and coiffed. But outside, in the hallway, crisis had come to the annual Ms Senior Sweetheart Pageant. Word was spreading fast.

And Lenny Kaplan was spreading it. An hour before the show was to begin, his tuxedo still on its hanger, a sandwich in one hand, a cell phone in the other, the 79-year-old unofficial mayor of Fall River was holding court in the hallway, informing all members of his crew who did not know. 

“Somewheres,” he said with a solemn face, “a gown is missing.”

Not to worry. These things happen. In 31 years of running this show, Lenny has seen plenty of nice plans fall to pieces. Didn’t one of his right-hand men call in early this morning with some kind of sickness? He did indeed. But Lenny made do. 

There are so many moving pieces to this pageant for women aged 58 to 84. Every year, they arrive in Fall River and stay for 11 days—touring the city, performing at nursing homes, answering the judges’ questions. 

Then comes the big day, this day, when they show off their talents to several hundred in the local high school auditorium under a blitzkrieg of lights. 

“They’re absolutely gorgeous in their evening gowns,” Lenny says. “They shine, they bubble, they walk across the stage.”

So of course Lenny is calling around, and looking for that gown, and telling the hotel receptionist he loves her, when the gown is finally found. 

Lenny has a life outside the pageant—a patient wife, two understanding children, a couple of thriving businesses, more friends than he can possibly count. But anyone in Fall River will tell you, this is the kind of thing he lives for: The sight of a 74-year-old woman from St. Louis gliding across the stage in her red sequined gown, smiling pretty, smiling proud.

Mr. Fall River

It may come as a surprise to some in this city, but Lenny Kaplan started out shy. Born in Providence, the son of a car mechanic, he was always a hard-working boy, but it took six years in the Army to shake the shyness out. 

Then, when an Army/Navy supply franchise opened up in Fall River, he took his savings and made the leap.  

Lenny’s big gimmick as a businessman was the kazoo. Catch him walking down the street without it, and you’d get a gift certificate to the store. Everyone in Fall River was in on the game.

“Bars would open their windows, buses would open their doors,” he said. “Cars would actually stop on the street: hey, Len, you got the kazoo?”

Over the years, he must have given away or sold 100,000 of those things. 

Then there were the radio ads. He took a nickname—Low Price Lenny—and sang his way through the standards of the day, substituting his own lyrics about Fall River.  

His voice was worn and raspy—“stupid-sounding,” in Lenny’s own opinion. But it worked. That first ad was so awful, and everyone knew it, and they came in to tell him so, and then they bought things. 

A couple hundred ads later, he put out an LP: “The Best of Low Price Lenny.” He continued to live in Rhode Island. But Fall River felt like home.

“If he ran for Mayor, he’d win,” said Marion Gagnon, 74, a former Ms. Senior Sweetheart contestant, and his assistant in the pageant.

It seemed only natural that Low Price should step up one year when someone needed a last-minute emcee for a teenage beauty pageant. He was nervous at first, but then he just started talking to the audience like they were his friends.

“Man, when I touched that microphone, I knew where I belonged,” he said. 


Pageant Pride

It started out small, a local Lions Club fundraiser, an idea Lenny came up with on the fly one year, after the club hired some outsider to organize a community talent contest. What if, Lenny said, we threw a pageant for “little old ladies”?

He was already famous around the region for emceeing the teenage contests, and the wrestling matches, and boxing matches. Lenny knew he could do it. 

That first year, there were 21 contestants. And what a hometown crowd—1400 people showed up, and watched Anita Raposa, a former factory worker and union leader, take the title of Queen.

“It was the most wonderful thing the city’s ever seen,” said Lenny.

Historians may beg to differ. Fall River was the pride of New England once, the home of more than 100 cotton mills, employing tens of thousands of immigrants. It had several decades in the sun before industry moved down south, and left it struggling.

Still, the pageant is a major point of pride. A group of volunteers plans all year long for the big day—Lenny, Marion and the rest of the “whack pack.” 

By the time the pageant comes around, they’ve got high school students and hospital nurses and former chiefs of police involved—for 11 days in November, all hands are on deck. 


The Contestants 

They come from across the country, and around the world: England, The Virgin Islands, Michigan. Singers and stilt-walkers, belly dancers and trumpet players—Fall River has seen it all. 

Once recent Sunday, there they were again, sitting backstage, at the 31st annual Ms. Senior Sweetheart pageant, black pants, white shirt, red sash, sprayed hair. Oohing and aahing over a former contestant who had stopped by to visit.

“Well, she’s lightened her hair, and it’s so becoming,” said Phyllis Chickett, 83, of St. Paul, Minn. 

In the room that day, there were newcomers, women like Connie Gabriel, 67, a part-time pharmacist from Rogers, Minn. Minutes before going on stage, she was still trying to process the experience.

“This is so totally out of my realm,” she said. “It’s like trying an extreme sport at an ancient age.”

Then there were past queens, like Vivian Kerns, 81, of Las Vegas, there to briefly perform, then settle into their places of privilege, in the front row of the auditorium.

And finally, the die-hard contestants, like Phyllis. Her doctor had advised her not to come, what with the two heart attacks this past summer. But who listens to him. 

For some of the women, this is a highlight of their year. They are driven around in a trolley. Restaurants donate meals. And then there’s Lenny.

“Anything we want, he makes it available to us,” said Ida White, 74, a regular from St. Thomas.

For the most part, the women get along famously. Only once has Lenny had to send someone home, and that was for whining too much. There was an incident one year, when two contestants had to be separated after drinking too much at dinner. But in 31 years, Lenny can count the less-than-terrific on one and a half hands.

The Big Day

After all these years, the show is a well-oiled machine. There is a first half, with two production numbers, praise for the judges, and the talent presentation. And then a second half, with praise for corporate sponsors, the gown presentation, and the anointing of the Queen and her court.

This year’s pageant opened as it always opens, with Wayne Miranda, a building contractor, singing “Pretty Lady,” a song he penned 31 years ago for the pageant. 

Then the curtain rose, and the women went forth, graceful as they could be with a dance they learned in a matter of days. The show’s director called out cues from the base of the stage.

Next up: the introductions. Each contestant walked up to the microphone, and stated her age. More than one woman stood with a hand on a hip, head held high.

Lenny watched it all from the sidelines. He was wearing his first tuxedo of the night, the white one with the red vest. For the first time that evening, but not the last, he began to tear up. 

These ladies have accomplished so much—raised children, created careers, started foundations, survived cancer. The older he gets, the more he admires them.

Phyllis made her way to the spotlight for her talent presentation, walking with the help of an escort. Head cocked to the side, eyebrows raised, she then flirted her way through “You Made Me Love You.”

“If I die out there,” she said before the performance, “at least I’m having fun.”

All through the show, Lenny explained things to his audience—how difficult it can be to change clothes in two minutes, between numbers, particularly at this age. How one woman came down with laryngitis at the last minute, and another broke two of her toes.

It’s the trying that counts, he told them. Lenny himself has had plenty of missteps. One year, he and Wayne did a singing skit dressed as cowboys, and he stepped on one of the many Christmas lights lining his pants, and the whole thing shorted out.

“He’s standing there in a cloud of smoke,” said Wayne. “And that was the end of the Foggy Mountain Flashers.”

So of course Lenny was sympathetic when 82-year-old Hilda Conner, an accomplished guitar player, started “Walk Through This World With Me,” only to have her guitar strap snap off. Twice.

“I was kind of upset with that guitar strap,” said her grandson, Ryan Conner, 21, of New Bedford, during the intermission.  “But she overcame it.”

See, Lenny told the audience, this is what older women do. They stick it out. Not like the young ones, he can tell you from experience. Not like the young ones at all. 

“They would have been crying, shaking, their families would have been upset,” he declared. “But our contestants are used to these problems.”

The Final Bow

After each woman had walked across the stage in her gown, and after Lenny had twirled every one of them on stage, and after he had led the audience in an arm-linking, body-swaying rendition of an American anthem, the pageant got down to prizes.

The Flaming Glow first. This is Lenny’s favorite award. It goes to the woman who has brought the most cheer to others during her time in Fall River. 

Then, any woman over the age of 80 was handed a trophy. Just because.

“That’s a hell of an age to reach,” Lenny said.

Finally, there was the crowning of the Queen. This year, the title went to Cheri Ann Schear, a former soloist from St. Louis, who gasped, gave a speech, then wandered the stage with a tiara on her head, posing for pictures with Lenny and the other ladies.

“It’s like Cinderella,” she said.

And then it was done. Lenny sat with a water bottle, sweating, deflated, staring blankly at someone’s camera, surrounded by smiling contestants. It is always a lot of work. 

This summer, he spent five days in the ICU with a blood problem. Marion, his assistant, has taken over much of the pageant work now. A few years down the line, he may retire, just show up for the big day.

But not yet. Lenny’s thinking is, the thing could blow up big at any time. A “giant documentary” about the pageant is scheduled for release next year, and it could be the turning point, like the Donahue appearance was in ‘93. Boy, did they get a lot of mileage out of that.

Lenny’s big dream: Nationally televised pageants, once a week, in every state. Then the winners would go to Hawaii, for the final.

If it happens, the TV people might want to change the whole thing. That might be okay. But they’ll have to keep one thing the same. They’ll have to let him sing his own special version of “My Way” to the ladies, from the seat of a stool on stage. 

Other people could sing it better—sweeter, maybe, with fewer cracks and less of the rasp. But he is Low Price Lenny, and this is his song.

Story suggested by: Frank Wing of Fall River. For more information on the Ms. Senior Sweetheart Pageant, including how to become a contestant, go to:http://www.msseniorsweetheart.com

BOSTON — Early in the evening, he can understand it. People are tired from the day. They amble in, they settle down, they sip a pint, they talk amongst themselves. Fair enough.

But by 10 p.m., Mel Stiller has been sitting behind the piano, pounding away, for two hours. So sue him if he’d like to hear a little singing.

Is it really that hard to thumb through the pages of his songbook; call out the numbers of songs you want to hear; tilt your head back, open your mouth, and give him something that resembles music?

“Pathetic!”  Mel yelled at a table full of talkers the other night.

This is not the Mel his family sees at home — the thoughtful husband, the doting dad, the beaming grandfather of four. It’s not even the Mel his staff sees every day, on the seventh floor of some downtown building, where he is president of the nonprofit Consumer Credit Counseling Service.

But this is the Mel who has showed up, nearly every Friday night, at Jacob Wirth restaurant, for the past 20 years — the loud, cranky entertainer, working the crowd in one of Boston’s oldest restaurants.

If you ask Chris Dempsey, a 26-year-old regular, the man bears a striking resemblance to someone else he knows. Works all day in a sterile office. Breaks out occasionally for the greater good.

“He’s a little bit like Superman,” says Chris.

The Way to Jacob Wirth

Mel never expected to play in public. Music was just this love of his, something he shared with his kids, taking them to shows, playing their favorite records after he read them a bedtime story.
 
He picked up piano as a boy, listening to songs on the radio, then tapping the melody out on the keys. But he never did learn to read music; it was always just for fun.
 
Then he became a father, and there was college tuition to consider, and the salary at a nonprofit would not suffice. He had played the odd birthday party before. So a friend connected him with a pub in Fitchburg, then later with Jacob Wirth, and a side career was born.

Today the sing-along is something of a production. No more wandering into the bar, happening upon Mel playing piano, and joining the fray. The event moved into the restaurant area a few years ago; tables for more than a hundred people are booked days in advance. 

But Beth Parsons, 30, still remembers the staccato sounds coming from her father's office all those years ago, as he started typing that songbook—the starts and stops of the music, as he pressed play, rewind, and pause on the tape recorder, trying to get the lyrics down right.

“I can’t believe he stuck with it,” she said.

The “Sing-Along With Mel” songbook is now 269 pages thick and 500 songs long. In it, you can find the lyrics to everything from “Apeman” by The Kinks to “Take me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver to “Runaround Sue” by Dion. 

More than two decades worth of work—bound, laminated and listed alphabetically in an index at the back, just waiting for someone to pick it up, and sing.


Singing by his Side

Those early hours of the evening are tough. Scattered singing, pockets of passion, but not much more. Then around 10:30, the tide turns, and Mel is in some slice of heaven, singing with his eyes closed, his left leg stretched out, his fingers flying all over the keys.

Dozens of people are out of their seats, and surrounding his piano. Fifty-something women are dancing to “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor. Thirty-something men are throwing their heads back to “Can't Live if Living is Without You," famously covered by Air Supply. 

Young and old, drunk and sober, corporate and unemployed—all crowded around him, losing the workweek in the good, strong swell of a song.

“It’s a great feeling, to look around and see everyone so happy,” Mel says.

Any of the Friday night faithful will tell you: There’s just something about singing. It sends you straight back to childhood—back to a more liberating time of life, when letting loose was what mattered, not how you good you looked, when you did.

“There’s nothing as cathartic as singing,” said Nick Madden, 34, a commercial real estate lawyer. “I mean—really.”

And it’s a safe space to sing, right by Mel’s side. He makes friends of his fans. Keeps an email list to let them know when he has to miss a Friday night. Meets them for lunch on occasion, doles out relationship advice, discusses problems at work. 

By his piano, people tend to relax. Occasionally, among the regulars, friendships form, turn into flirtations, and end up in long-term relationships. And then there is Grant Callender, a Boston police officer, who proposed to his girlfriend at the sing-along, the scene of their first date.

He hired a violinist and accordionist, and with Mel’s blessing, sat down at the piano and serenaded his future wife with “Lady” by Kenny Rogers. 

Mel was at the wedding, of course. He drove all the way to Scranton, PA the day before, to play for the rehearsal dinner. 


Rules of the Road

For all his sweetness and light, Mel has a few rules. Unfortunately for newcomers, they are unwritten. The other night, the sing-a-long nearly ended without “Sweet Caroline,” the famous Fenway favorite. And why?

“They asked for it around 8:30,” Mel said. “It was a little inappropriate.”

Rule no. 1: All crowd pleasers should be played after 10 p.m., when people are in the mood to get up, gather around the piano, and throw themselves into the song.

Also, everyone should know, there are certain songs Mel does not want to play at all. At any time of night. And not because he thinks they are bad songs, but because, trust him, they won’t work. 

Take "Fat Bottomed Girls" by Queen, for example. Everyone knows the chorus, and absolutely no one knows the rest.


The Tribute

There are those who write to Mel, telling him how much these sing-alongs mean to them. People from other parts of the country, or other parts of the world; every time they visit Boston, they make a point of stopping by.

And then there are the locals, like Nick, who prefer to pay tribute in person. 

The other night, he stood with a friend, yelling Mel’s name near midnight in a rousing rendition of “The Piano Man.” Serenading him a cappella, with a special version of the AC/DC song, “Highway to Mel.”

These days, he comes once a month. But before girlfriends came on the scene, Nick and his friend Chris showed up every Friday. They started as Mel’s fans, then became friends. 

A couple of years ago, as a special request, Mel taught himself one of Chris’ favorite songs from childhood. And so it was that a 24-year-old project developer for MassDOT got the chance to sing the Policeman’s Song from Sesame Street on his birthday.

After 20 years of doing this, there’s no denying Mel is tired. It’s not easy to leave the office on a Friday, then launch into a four-hour marathon of music. He is, after all, 61. 

But then the night ramps up, and he is surrounded—a fan-turned-friend from Switzerland is singing alongside his sister, and a middle-aged newcomer is saying she hasn’t done this in years, and Nick and Chris are back with half a dozen of their friends, standing by the piano, arms raised, faces contorted, performing one of the ultimate yellers, “Aquarius.”

And there is no feeling like it. He smiles as he sings.

BOSTON—All around him, the museum is in motion, with people walking up to sculptures, and stepping back from them, and absorbing them from different angles. David Kingsbury, 53, holds his ground. He is standing in a hallway at the Museum of Fine Arts, facing a piece of stone he cannot see, waiting for the woman beside him to send some words his way.

This is the rhythm of their relationship:  She starts the story of what she sees, and he chimes in with any questions. And so she begins, shaping the piece of stone into a portrait, and placing a young boy inside. She chisels the child’s fine features, then moves over to his long flow of curls. 

“And there’s this little tuft of hair,” says Robin Ty, 30, a volunteer guide with the MFA. “Almost like a rooster’s, right at the top of his forehead.”

David considers this. 

“Reminds me of my first son,” he says.

This Saturday marks something of a milestone for David. He’s back where he began, with the work of Italian Renaissance sculptors, the first art he experienced in the MFA’s program for people who are blind or visually impaired. He was beginning a new life then. Nothing felt right.

It took time and practice to get here, as things do for David these days. But more than two years later, he is standing in a space he once thought was lost—one visitor among many, facing the work of an artist, feeling something stir in him again. 

Before and After

All the years he lived in Italy, David could see the beauty in art for himself. He savored it wherever he went—in the churches of small villages, in the vaulted rooms of the Vatican Museum. 

He lived there for nearly 10 years, an agricultural economist at the United Nations, traveling often to Africa, taking care of his three teenaged kids. Then, in 2004, came the accident he just doesn't talk about.

David could do a few things after it happened: Find his way around the apartment. Use the restroom. Use a cell phone. But nearly everything else, he had to relearn.

His power as a parent; his proficiency as a professional; all the knowledge he had gathered through the years, about how the world worked for him, and how he worked in the world— gone overnight, along with his sight.

“It was about as traumatic as something can be, when your life suddenly stops,” he said. 
 
A few months later, David went back to work, but he was too limited then, and might always be. In 2006, he moved back home to Massachusetts with his children, settling in Stoughton, near his brother. 

That year, David rarely left the house. What if he tripped, and fell, or bumped into something hard? It was not the physical pain he minded; it was the fumbling around in public.

‘The fear of the embarrassment,” he said.

But at some point, he had to push back; in 2007, he enrolled at the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton. He learned how to use the white cane to get around, and how to manage his household without the help of others. He made a few friends. 

Then one day, six weeks in, David boarded the bus for the MFA.
 

Reaching Out

For three decades, the MFA has run a comprehensive program for people who are blind or visually impaired. Thirty-two trained guides. More than 370 visitors one recent year. It’s part of the museum’s larger mission to make art accessible to anyone with a disability, from deafness to Alzheimer’s disease.

For David, there is an ever-expanding supply of audio guides and tactile samples to choose from. But the “Feeling for Form” program is what resonates most—a personalized tour, one-on-one or in a group, led by one of the MFA’s trained guides. 

That's where he began, on that first group trip to the MFA. Looking back, it was probably too early to try. Someone gave him gloves, and guided him toward a sculpted form, and what David felt was pieces. Toes. Legs. Breasts. 

None of it made sense to a man who saw art for nearly 50 years, and now suddenly could not. 

“Almost like an insult,” he said.

For the next few months, David stayed away from the museum. But he moved himself forward in other ways. He learned to sail with friends from the Carroll Center. He taught computer at the Greater Boston Guild for the Blind. After three years of severe depression, he seemed to find some small peace.

So that sometime in early summer, when he heard the MFA was hosting an exhibit of Edward Hopper, one of his favorite painters, David was not just tempted to try again. He was ready.


Telling the Story of Art

David doesn’t know how they do it. It’s hard enough to give a tour to the average visitor—but to someone who’s blind?

“These people have got guts,” he says. 

The MFA gives its guides a format to follow, an ordered way to tell the story of art: 

Set the stage with basic facts, like the size of the frame. Fill in the frame with characters and colors and movement. Then end with interpretation—what experts have said about the piece, and its place in art history.


In the beginning, David let the guides' words wash over him. But it became clear to him soon enough. If he wanted a full picture, he had to participate. If he has questions, and he always does, he takes his guide where he wants her to go.

“Sorry,” he says to Robin this day, interrupting her description of a scene. “Is he staring at us, or…where’s he staring?”

“Are his legs at all bent, or are they ramrod straight?” 

“When you say straightforward, you mean that-a-way, right?” 

When it comes right down to it, David considers himself lucky. He came to blindness late. He knows what the world looks like; he can pull those memories up at any time. 

When Robin describes a glazed piece of pottery as blue and white, he knows enough about colors to ask:

“Milky white and sky blue?” 

“Well,” she says. “It’s more of a bright sky blue.”

“Must be a striking contrast to see,” he says. 


Coming into Community

At this point, there is no better or worse. Just different. Art was a solitary thing for David before the blindness. Now he is animated with the urge to discuss.

Why did Donatello make the angels’ faces look so old? Who do you think commissioned that portrait of the boy?  One day, he spent three hours discussing a painting with his friend Deanne, and their guide—back and forth on why the painter did what the guide said he did.

“Whether we’re right or wrong, it doesn’t really matter,” he says.

Art has now become an interactive activity. Standing with Deanne in a big hushed room, acting out a complicated "Christ with a cross" scene, trying to get a better sense of what's happening in the painting. Laughing, as the guide moves their arms in all kinds of contorted ways.

“We must have looked ridiculous to the sighted people,” David said, smiling.

But he no longer cares. 

He’s out of the house, and into the community, putting the larger “puzzle” of his new life together. He visits the MFA twice a month now. He’s started volunteering, helping staff with audio scripts, talking to groups of guides about what it’s like to see art through the eyes of others.

“It ain’t great being blind,” David says. “But I’ve met some fantastic people.”

As the Saturday session winds down, he stands with Robin facing a delicate Donatello relief. David listens, his head tilted, his hands settled at the top of his cane. Her storytelling voice is smooth, rising and falling as she stretches out the words. 

She is saying how the Christ child is cradled in a throne of his mother’s thighs. She is saying how fine and fragile the lines of his carvings look.

David frames a final question. 

“If you could guess,” he begins. “The deepest relief would be what fraction of an inch?”

Robin leans forward to look.

Less than a quarter, she tells him. David marvels at the answer he just got for himself. He will never make a complete replica in his mind. But he can still see beauty if he tries.

CAMBRIDGE—It was such a lovely photograph, with the trees down by the Charles River, and the pink blossoms filling the frame. Well composed. Brilliant colors.

But not the winner of the city’s annual resident parking permit photo contest. Not that.

“It’s an absolutely stunning picture,” said Lenore Lawrence, the city’s parking coordinator. “But it wouldn’t make a sticker.”

Every spring, in a frenzy of civic pride, dozens of residents submit the best images they’ve taken of Cambridge, hoping for the coveted spot on the city’s resident parking sticker. They try it all: The first snowfall on Cambridge Common, a dragon boat on the Charles River, turtles making tracks through the grass.

Who knows what will appeal to the judges in the Traffic, Parking and Transportation department? It’s so subjective. The only thing the entrants know for sure is that it has to be an iconic image, and it has to maintain its luster in the cramped space of a 3 ½ by 2 ½ inch frame.

Unfortunately, the trees-in-bloom scene did not maintain its luster.

So this year, the sticker goes to Jim Landfried, 67, for his shot of the Longfellow House: Perfectly centered, framed by leaves, a classic yellow colonial lit up in the sunshine.

Frankly, Jim felt there were stronger photographs in his contest folder. This one was a little traditional for his taste. But reached last week on vacation, he was very pleased. His wife had already told everyone they know. 

He won't get any prize money for winning. Just sudden, citywide fame: Come January, Jim's image of the Longfellow House, along with his name, will be affixed to the front windows of roughly 43,000 cars.

The Rush of The Win

In the not too distant past, the department used stock photography for its sticker. But this is the People’s Republic of Cambridge, with its Poet Populist and its Peace Commission. It was only a matter of time before the parking sticker became a participatory event. 

The first year, 2004, a couple of dozen photographs trickled in. Then momentum began to build, and a few summers later, Lenore and her colleagues had more than 150 images to choose from.

Some years, the submissions make perfect sense. When the MIT Stata Center opened, residents fawned all over Frank Gehry’s design, photographing it from all different angles. Then this year, for no discernable reason, they started snapping away at birds.

Anyone can enter the contest. But not surprisingly, it draws mostly people who live in the city, and love the city, and want to flatter it with their photographs. People like Peter Payack, who measures the rain in Cambridge, and submits his findings to a local television station.

For years, Peter’s strategy has been to enter his photographs in bulk. In 2008, he finally hit the jackpot with his image of Memorial Hall.

“Listen,” Peter said. “I was absolutely thrilled.”

He was nearing 60 at the time. And looking back on his life, the last time he felt that kind of rush was when he was 26, and The Paris Review had accepted his first poem.

In some ways, this was even better, he said. Tell someone about The Paris Review, and they have to go out and find it. Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t. 

But there’s no avoiding the sticker. It’s everywhere—in parking lots and packed traffic, for as long as cars in Cambridge roam the road.


Missing the Sticker, Making the Brochure 

For those who don’t make the sticker, there is always the hope of landing a spot in the annual resident information brochure. It’s a far more forgiving format. 

Nature scenes do well here. Animal pictures also have a natural home. 
Last year, it was a basset hound between two snow banks. This year, four bird portraits were chosen for the back.

Chris Canfield was pretty excited when he found out a few years ago his streetscape would be featured. He envisioned thousands of people, all around the city, admiring his work. Then the brochure arrived on his doorstep, and the rush was gone.

“It was me, in my pajamas, at the base of the stairwell of a cold apartment complex,” he said.

That aside, it was still a positive experience. Chris had just moved to Cambridge, and this got him out and about, exploring the city through his favorite photographic theme: urban decay.

It is probably safe to say that urban decay is not what the judges had in mind when they put out the sticker call that spring. But they did choose his image for the brochure—then edited out the dirty piece of plywood leaning on the wheelbarrow. 


The Thrill of the Chase

For those who are serious about the sticker, buildings may be the best bet. The Registry of Deeds, City Hall—all past winners. They fit very nicely in the frame.

For some reason, Lenore says, nature scenes do not do well.

This is sad news for Janet DiBenedetto, 47, a former administrative assistant whose longtime muse is Mount Auburn cemetery. The red glow of the leaves in autumn, the cherry blossoms in spring.

“It’s like a little oasis we have here in the city,” Janet says, of the 170-acre preserve. “I call it my Mount Auburn.”

She once went on a date with a man who called the cemetery creepy. She never saw that man again. 

Given her subject matter, Janet may never make the sticker. But every spring, with much enthusiasm, she picks the best of her best, and sends them off to the city. A couple of times, she’s made the brochure. 

That’s way more exposure than she ever got before the contest. For someone who likes to share her hobby, this whole thing is a thrill.
 
“Everyday people taking snapshots of their neighborhood,” she said. “I think it’s really nice.”

Peter agrees. As the city’s elected Poet Populist, and the co-founder of the Cambridge Girls Softball League, and a volunteer photographer for the local paper, of course he agrees: This contest is a wonderful show of civic pride. 

Still, he has always been out to win. The first time he spotted that special angle on Memorial Hall, he was tempted to take the picture. But he needed clouds to make it a winner, so he waited days for them to show up.

They finally did, and he raced over to Memorial Hall to take up his position in the middle of the road. Trucks were honking. Cars were swerving. None of that mattered to Peter. 

He tilted his iPhone up. He pressed the button. And the rest is city history.

CAMBRIDGE—Alice Galvin knew: maybe, probably, definitely, this day would come. Someone would finally say no, you can’t sleep on my couch tonight.

Still, when she showed up at that first shelter, at the age of 44, worn down from stress and grief; when she stood before a woman from the old neighborhood whose children she once babysat; when she had to ask that woman for the charity of a shelter bed—it did not feel real.

“I was numb,” Alice says, from the living room of her new apartment in Everett. 

Those were disorienting, demoralizing days.  But other homeless women helped Alice through, pointing her toward clean shelters and friendly staff, warning her where to steer clear. Now, three years later, she’s contributed her own insights to a guidebook for homeless women, published with support mostly from the Cambridge Health Alliance, and distributed this spring in shelters and clinics around the area. 

The idea for the project came from Pat Maher, a nurse with Health Care for the Homeless. She's always been inspired by her patients, women like Alice, who so easily give support. For years, she's listened to them dispense advice outside her door.

“It would choke me up sometimes, the kindness and the generosity, from one woman to another,” said Maher, 56. “These were women in a hard place.”

The 45-page pamphlet offers an exhaustive list of resources, from shelters to job training to rape counseling. But the goal was also to capture the words of the women themselves. On nearly every page, there is advice and reflection from homeless and formerly homeless women, who participated in discussion groups for the project. The bright colors of their artwork line the pages.

Most of the women chose to remain anonymous. But their voices come across strong and clear, guiding the reader through three distinct stages of homelessness: the shock of the early days, the difficulty of navigating services, and the challenge of moving into a home.

At some point in the sessions, the question came up: how on earth do you get through?

One woman’s simple answer became the title of the guide:

“You Find Your Strength,” she said.

Here is how it happened for Alice.

The Early Days

No one thing nudged Alice into homelessness. It started with the low-wage job. That led to the loss of the apartment. Then her brother suddenly died, and it all got so much worse. 

Somehow, one day, Alice Galvin, the daughter of a truck driver and a homemaker, the sister to three siblings, the girl who grew up in a ten-room home in Somerville, found herself at St. Patrick’s shelter.

“This wasn’t how I was brought up,” she said.

She had worked her whole adult life, supporting herself with jobs at Liberty Mutual, at lawyers’ offices, as a certified nursing assistant. For a while there, after her parents died, and the family home was sold, she lived on her own. She welcomed other homeless people into her apartment, friends of her boyfriend—cooked them a meal, offered them the use of her shower.

"Something little to make someone happy," she said.

But the wages she earned were never enough to get by, and when her savings ran out, the rent became too much, and the moving from couch to couch began. Two years later, it ended with her aunt telling Alice to go to St. Patrick’s. 

In the guidebook, several pages are devoted to those early days of homelessness— what to do, what to expect. 

“You’ll be scared,” one woman says. “But try to keep listening, look around—maybe someone will come to you, and extend a hand.”

Those first few hours at the shelter are missing from Alice’s mind. But she can clearly remember later that night, the image of her new roommates: three elderly women, one of them struggling to walk. Alice had withered to 93 pounds by then. She lay her body down on the plastic mattress, and cried herself to sleep.


The Labyrinth of Services

The next morning, Alice’s new life began. She learned where to sit during meals, who was safe to speak with, which staff members to trust. The women introduced her to daily routines, like the lottery for beds. 

It’s all laid out in the guidebook now, for other women to read: When some shelters run out of space, they hand out slips of paper. If yours is blank, you get a bed. If yours has an X, you don’t.

“I got an X,” one woman recalls. “I panicked.”

But there are ways to find shelter if you’re desperate, and the guidebook describes them, along with other insider tips, from when to call certain shelters to where to find free furniture.

If Alice had her way, this guidebook would be sitting on the shelves of libraries and police stations and city halls, anywhere a newly homeless woman might go. 
Alice herself has already handed out a few copies. She turns to the page where her favorite programs are listed, and points to names.

“You call these people immediately,” she tells women. 

In the tangle of any sprawling system, there are helpful people, and not so helpful people. Alice got lucky. She found Pat early. She was living at St. Patrick’s at the time, and Pat was working in the women’s clinic.

Over the years, Pat has pulled Alice through. She’s helped her fill out the paperwork for disability benefits; encouraged her in the wait for Section 8 housing; prescribed medication for her panic attacks. The Saturday morning Alice decided to get sober, she called Pat, who suggested a hospital that could help. 

“She pushes you into that direction, and you follow it,” Alice says. 


Making a New Home

A year and a half ago, when Alice moved into her new apartment, she blew up the donated air mattress, and positioned it in a corner of the kitchen. Someone had to remind her she had a bedroom. 

The furniture arrived, the apartment filled out—the green vase, the wood nightstand, relics from her childhood home, all brought out from storage. It should have been a happy time.

But there was the silence to cope with.

“It was so empty,” said Alice, who started drinking heavily around that time. “There’s only so many times you can walk around the block.”

In the shelters, for better and worse, she had a community. She was appreciated: the five foot tall force of nature with the funny-sounding voice. She would cut the other women’s hair, and fix it up to look so nice. Now she lay in bed in her new federally subsidized apartment, the covers pulled up over her head.

In the guidebook, women have suggestions for this tough transition: get a pet, find a job, join a support group.

“Make yourself go out, even if you don’t want to,” one woman advises.

Alice would not budge for months. And then something clicked. She got sober and stayed that way. A job is in her future now. She knows she can do it. 

She worked a while when she was homeless—a temporary stint, two buses, one train to get there, caring for someone’s severely disabled aunt. Maybe she’ll find work as a certified nursing assistant again.

For now, Alice tends to the plants she bought for the apartment building’s backyard. She plays with her cats. She advises her neighbors on the best local food banks.

And every once in a while, she reads a letter Pat once wrote on her behalf. In it, she calls Alice a “source of inspiration and hope” to many women in the shelter. “Exemplary character,” is how Pat puts it.

When Alice first read the letter, it seemed like someone else was at the center of it. She could not see herself in Pat’s words. Then, slowly, finally, she did. 

ROXBURY—Other men are fidgeting, staring out the window, waiting for their time at Whittier Street Health Center to end.

Not Charles.

Charles takes a seat in the second row, a 29-year-old man in a crisp white T-shirt. He leans forward. He asks questions.  

He’s required to take this class on men’s health, as part of a prison release program. But this is helpful information right here, about disease and how to prevent it.  One thing, he already knows:

“Black guys die early.”

For years, Whittier has been trying to change that, working in one of the neediest neighborhoods in the city, and using these Wednesday night “rap” sessions to introduce low-income, men of color to healthy living. One of the main goals: connect them to the health care at Whittier, and keep them coming back.

Dalton Skerritt, director of Whittier’s Men’s Health Clinic, can tick off the facts: higher rates of diabetes hospitalizations, higher rates of death from AIDS. In Boston, black men are about three times more likely to die of prostate cancer than white men, according to the city’s 2009 Health of Boston report. What he wants to know from these students is why.

Bad eating habits, lack of exercise, genetics—all are factors, he confirms, when the men call those answers out. But there’s something else, something bigger.

“Oh!” comes a call from the back of the room. “Check-ups!”

Early screenings and regular check-ups. These things are, to use Dalton’s favorite word, “key.” But young men are significantly less likely than young women to have seen a doctor in the last year, according to a recent Centers for Disease Control report. 

Childbirth will often get women in the rhythm of regular doctor visits. But men are not always aware of the need to check in. Or they’re aware, and unwilling to go.

“Men wait until their foot is dropping off to go to the emergency room,” Dalton says.

In low-income communities of color, there is also the problem of access to comprehensive quality care. Whittier was already running at capacity before the recession- in the past year, visits jumped 20 percent. And still, the clinic is only serving about six percent of the neighborhood. 

********

A slight man, quick to smile, Dalton darts around the room in his orange shirt, in his multi-colored striped tie.  He hugs a concrete support, to show how AIDS can put a “headlock” on your T cells. He stumbles around, sloppy, demonstrating a warning sign for disease.  

“You think he’s drunk,” Dalton says, imitating a stranger on the street. “But he could be getting ready for a diabetic coma.”

For the past three years, Dalton has taught this health education class, mostly for the men in the clinic’s Post Prison Release Program. In some ways, he’s an unlikely candidate for the post. Until several years ago, he was a special markets manager for the beer company, Guinness.

But growing up in the Caribbean, he saw plenty of people in pain. And through the years, he made it his business to mentor other men—help them with the GED, encourage them to get check-ups. He gave them the hope he had—until his wife and baby died in a car crash, and he lost track of it.

He came out the other end mostly through music and prayer. He remarried. He raised his remaining child. But what he wanted now was different. What he wanted was this job at Whittier, the chance to connect again with men who might need his help. 

Dalton can’t do anything about the violence in Roxbury, Mattapan, and the other struggling neighborhoods Whittier serves. But he can talk them through the other threats, from the chronic diseases to the domestic fights to the daunting job search after prison.

He can be their man in pressed pants and tie, the professional they rely on for help. He tells them again and again: Happy to write anyone a reference.

“I do that for you- no problem,” he says, with that Caribbean lilt. “I don’t even hesitate.”

********

Over the years, Whittier has become a neighborhood fixture, the only community health center in Boston that's federally funded to reach out to public housing residents. Gains have been made, but the challenges are steep; one in four residents has high blood pressure, and Roxbury still has the highest infant mortality rate in the city.

The center's services are tailor-made to address the problems that sometimes come with poverty: there is substance abuse counseling and anger management groups and domestic violence outreach. The Men’s Health Clinic meets another specific need, staff there say--designed for men, run by men.

Hundreds of clients pass through the clinic every year, some referred by other agencies, others drawn in by the clinic’s annual Men’s Health Summit.

Many come from the clinic’s Post Prison Release Program, where Dalton spends much of his time.

The process is intensive. He visits the men three times before they are released, trying to determine their health needs; schedules a free check up within days of their release; connects them to services in the clinic, and beyond; then follows them for three months through daily case management.

“You’re building a serious relationship here,” he says.

A lot is at stake. Studies show ex-offenders have higher rates of chronic disease and mental illness, and often disappear into the fabric of the community without connecting to health care. 

In time, they develop conditions that are harder to cure—and more costly for the state to treat. There’s also the public health risk, when an infectious disease like AIDS goes undiagnosed, and spreads in the community. 

******

At the end of Dalton’s eight-week course, he gives each graduate a certificate. For the ex-offender, it's something to put on the resume, when every little thing counts. He also encourages his graduates to become Men’s Health Ambassadors, earning $25 for each presentation they make on men’s health, in a shelter, or a halfway house.

Of the 22 men seated before him tonight, he has no doubt that some will drift off the radar when their time at Whittier is done.

But Dalton is not discouraged. He sees low recidivism rates for the men in his program, and that’s something. Recently, Dalton says, The Department of Corrections asked for his help in designing a health education curriculum.

And there will always be success stories to sustain him—like the graduate who went to college, and found himself a stable job. Just the other day, that man noticed a rash while gardening, and instead of ignoring it, or going to the emergency room, he came here, to Whittier. 

On the way to see his doctor, he stopped by Dalton’s office to say hello.