Hamilton ‘will be a hard act to follow’

By Melanie Cordova

Described as a tall, courtly man with a big smile by co-workers, Jack Hamilton, Executive Director of the Community Action Agency of Somerville, has been a staple of the Somerville and Cambridge community for 27 years.

‚ÄúThere have been people who have worked here for 27 years and Jack has been the only Executive Director they have ever known,‚Äù CAAS’s Director of Planning, Dennis Fischman said.

Yet, next January, there will be a major change at the Union Square agency: Hamilton will not be returning. After more than a quarter century working at CAAS, Hamilton has decided to retire.

‚ÄúThere are some other things I really want to do‚ĶI haven’t read poetry in years, I want to listen to classical music, I want to play some music,‚Äù Hamilton said about his expected time off, ‚ÄúI’m also getting older, I think the agency can use some new energy.‚Äù

Almost 27 years ago, Hamilton was the new energy at CAAS.

“I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and I always wanted to change how the world was,” Hamilton said about his decision to fight poverty.

Growing up poor in Jamaica Plain, Hamilton remembers mothers choosing between buying food for their families or buying clothing to cover themselves. “I think my mother went 15 years without new clothes,” Hamilton said.

‚ÄúI grew up with a sense of anger, thinking it’s not supposed to be this way, it doesn’t have to be this way.‚Äù

Although Hamilton said he thinks that he always wanted to do the kind work CAAS does because of his background, he took a detour to get there, gaining knowledge of another language on the way.

‚ÄúI speak Portuguese because I lived in Brazil when I was a Catholic priest,‚Äù Hamilton said. ‚ÄúIt didn’t last very long.‚Äù A revolution in Brazil forced Hamilton to leave in 1969.

Upon returning to the States, he began working at a bank and then one day saw a job advertisement that said, “We are looking for a Portuguese speaker who likes people.” Hamilton got the job.

After working at a few similar jobs, Hamilton moved to Somerville. “I came to Somerville because Somerville had a reputation for being a very close-knit community and having multigenerational families, which is a good sign of stability in a community.”

Following work as Executive Director at CASCAP, an agency that provides residential services to the chronically mentally ill, and then at Somerville Community Youth Center, an agency that provided alternative education, teacher training, and other community youth programs; Hamilton finally landed the position of Executive Director at CAAS.

‚ÄúI think our agency has set a tone in the community by just being here,‚Äù Hamilton said about CAAS, ‚Äúyou don’t rag on poor people and immigrants, we’ve set a pro-people atmosphere in this city.‚Äù

Hamilton hopes that the agency will continue with this tone after he is gone next year. “I hope CAAS continues to be very prominent in protecting human rights, I hope they are very much in the forefront fighting poverty, and I hope they continue working for justice.”

Although Hamilton’s co-workers also hope to continue fighting poverty, they said they would miss Hamilton too. Especially his curiosity.

‚ÄúWhenever someone comes into the office, Jack wants to find out where they’re from, what language they speak, where their names comes from,‚Äù Fischman said, ‚Äúand he encourages the people that work here to be curious too, to learn not to believe that we already know how to serve people best, but to keep trying to figure out new ways of doing our job.‚Äù

While CAAS is still looking for someone to take the position of Executive Director for next year, Fischman said that Hamilton will certainly be “a hard act to follow.”