I had written a letter explaining that, effective immediately, we were now going to agree to a lease for the valve in the sub-basement, and the agreement stated that the lease was to run in perpetuity, but the first payment was the exact amount of the total outstanding bill.
Included in the lease was also an agreement for a new hot water exchanger and that would be part of the new, signed agreement. Failure to sign the lease would force us to remove the valve from our sub-basement and we would charge the steam company the amount of money it would cost to have the valve removed professionally. I signed it as the chairman of the board of directors and president of the Vietnam Veteran’s Workshop and said that I only wanted to deal with the chairman of the board of the steam company. Failure to sign the agreement would force me to begin dismantling the valve immediately by first shutting off all valves on the systemin essence, turning off the heat to four or five large office buildings in the neighborhood around our property.
The engineer read what I had printed, looked at the invoice, and smiled.
“You sure you want me to bring this back to the GM?” he said.
“Yup, and tell him I will not be taking his calls, only the calls of the chairman of his board. Tell him I think he’s an asshole for sending you to turn off our heat, and remember thistell him this exactly as I tell youare you ready?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Tell him, ‘You pull a knife, I pull a gun. You put one of mine in the hospital, I put one of yours in the morgue.’” I asked him to repeat it back to me.
In the Mamet movie The Untouchables, that was a line that had stuck in my head.
Within an hour, I got a call from the mayor of the city of Boston.
“Have you lost your mind?” said the mayor. “Come to my office right now. I want to hear this from you to me in person.”
Since we were neighbors, all I needed to do was walk maybe fifty yards to City Hall. I was there in less than ten minutes.
The mayor was bullshit.
“You can’t do this. You cannot do this!”
“Well, legally, I can do this, and I’m going to do this.” I also said that when I go back to the shelter I’m going to call the media and explain to them that I can’t let the steam 112
company shut off our heat, and as a result, have come up with a solution that the steam company has rejecteda fair solutionand they got so mad about it, they called the mayor.
The mayor looked at me and narrowed his eyes.
“You wouldn’t do that.”
I said, “You know I will, and I have no choice. You know that they have me backed into a corner and it’s not my fault. Help me find a better solution.”
The mayor made me agree that I wouldn’t call the media and said he would talk to the steam company himself about making a deal. Just as I was about to leave he asked me if I had threatened their GM with putting him in the morgue.
Looking at the mayor, I winked. “Let me know when you have something to discuss,” I said as I left his office.
Over the next couple of days, the deputy mayor of Boston (the guy who really ran the city) came to visit me on a couple of occasions at the shelter.
“How the hell did you know the steam company didn’t have paperwork that allowed them to have that valve in the sub-basement?” he asked.
“I didn’t know,” I said, “and I still don’t. But regardless of that, let me show you something.” I brought him to the shower room. “We have hot water, not from the steam company but from this,” and I opened a door that showed the five hot water heaters all connected together.
“This is what we are forced to do.”
The deputy mayor pulled me aside. “You have helped someone close to me,” he said,
“really close to me and my family. I will make this work, but don’t call the media.”
The next day, the engineer who came to shut off the heat from the steam company showed up. “Well, I don’t know if you’re crazy or if you’re a genius,” he said, “but I’m here with a crew to put in the new hot water exchanger.”
“Really? When?” I asked.
“Right now,” he said, “We have it on the truck outside. It will take us about a week to take out the old system and get the new one installed, but that’s what I was told to do. I also wanted to give you this.” He handed me a VHS copy of The Untouchables and he said, “I 113
watched this the other night with my wife and about fell out of my chair when I heard Sean Connery say, “You pull a knife, I pull a gun. You put one of mine in the hospital, and I put one of yours in the morgue.”
He then smiled at me and went to work.
Over the next month or so, I met with the deputy mayor of Boston a couple of times and he said all of our outstanding bills had been taken care of, and that soon the governor was going to give us a new homeless assistance contract. I was to make sure I put money into that contract’s budget for heat.
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Chapter 18: The Birth of Vet Tech
We had on our staff a guy who was a graduate of Notre Dame, Jim Yates, and he was a regular rocket scientist when it came to government grants and their requirements. He was smart, worked hard and was actually in the guard or reserves as an officer.
He came to me one day and said the Department of Labor has a grant specifically for the homeless and it’s about getting homeless veterans trained and job ready. He wanted some guidance on how best to approach the grant.
“Well, what could we teach them?” I asked.
“Well, we could teach them how to drive our bus. It takes a special CDL license to do that, and when someone has that license, they can drive tractor trailers.”
“Good idea. What else?”
“We could train food service cooks, as we are serving well in excess of 350,000 meals per year, and we could get an instructor and have real-time experience as part of the training.”
“Excellent. And what else?”
“We could train vets how to fix computers,” he said.
“Another great idea. What else?”
“Well, we could train security guards and those are easy jobs to get.”
That then led to the idea of a special training program for homeless veterans known as Vet Tech.
We made Vet Tech’s grant application for just over a half million dollars and we waited.
Months went by and other things were happening when one day I get a call from someone at the Department of Labor congratulating me on the awarding of the Vet Tech grant.
“You were selected,” is all this guy said.
Then the calls from the politicians came in.
The offices of Senator This and Congressman That said, you know, we gave you a letter of support for that grant and the politician would like to come to the shelter and do a press event.
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I didn’t even know that they had been asked.
I found Jim, the Notre Dame guy, and said, “Did you get support letters from politicians?”
“SureI went to the entire Massachusetts delegation and got a letter from each one.”
“Well, they all want to come to the shelter for the press announcement that we were awarded the grant.”
“We were awarded?” he said.
“Yes. Congratulations, you did a good job.”
Now, the business of putting this grant into effect started.
I had paid little attention to the grant’s budget as it was being written, but now as I went through the numbers with the comptroller I was amazed.
“There’s money for new computers in this grant?” I said.
“Yes. For the computer factory part of this program there’s money for twenty-five new computers.”
“There’s money for the bus? Gas money for the bus?”
“Yes, there is that too,” he said.
“And am I reading this rightwe have money for staff? Trainers andholy cow, am I reading this right?there’s money that somehow goes to the state? How’d that happen?”
“We are the awardees of the grant, but actually, technically, the grant goes to the state and they get eighteen percent for administration.”
“Well then we need to have the governor here when we do the press announcement.”
At the time, the governor, Bill Weld, was a Republican, and everyone else, and I mean every other politician in Massachusetts, was a Democrat.
“That might cause some issues,” cautioned Jim.
“Well, the state is the granteeso tell everyone that I said the governor has to come.”
A few days later, at the press conference, here come the two senators Kennedy and Kerry, three or four congressmen, and of course the governor.
Each took credit for the program and each talked about how much they loved veterans.
I knew that Senator John Kerry, who was a vet, was one of the few who gave two cents 116
about what we were doing. Congressman Joe Kennedy was there and he was on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee of Congress and I knew he cared.
At the event, though, I was taken aside by an aide to Senator Ted Kennedy.
“We were called about this grant,” he said, “and wanted you to know that we stuck our necks out for you and this program.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t exactly have a stellar reputation inside the administration. And when a grant like this is down to the final selections, and a decision is needed, they call the delegation.
We stuck our necks out for you. The senator doesn’t even know, but I wanted you to know, as a senior member of his staff, that we stuck our necks out for you guys.”
I knew then that it was true; it was Kennedy’s office that had done this.
I am sure that John Kerry had a hand too, and maybe Barney Frank, but the real juice, the real reason we were selected, was Ted Kennedy, and I vowed to never forget that.
When it came time for my comments at the press conference I thanked them all for attending and I made a special effort to point out that without the efforts of Senator Kennedy and his staff, this grant would not have been possible.
After the cameras left, I was approached by one of the staff of a congressman in attendance.
“Why’d you only give the credit to Kennedy?”
“I thanked you all,” I said.
“Well, you went out of your way to thank Kennedy, and I don’t think he did squat.”
It was right there that a light bulb went on in my head.
This is how the game is played.
In the future, I was determined, that there would be a series of press announcements, and at each announcement each attendee would be credited with the award.
As time went by, Vet Tech became a national model and even today, it still shines.
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Chapter 19: General Colin Powell Delivers the Commencement Address Vet Tech had been on its feet for close to a year when I read in a D.C. newspaper that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, was going to be in Boston for an event at Harvard University at the end of that month.
By a complete coincidence, our Vet Tech program was set to graduate our very first group of homeless vets. They had each learned one of several skills: drive the bus and get a CDL license, fix computers (at the time, that was a hot topic), cook in the mess hall and get a job at the airport working for the company that prepared all the airplane food, or be security guards who protected the shelter and also worked the graveyard shift at various security companies around the city. I thought to myself how cool would it be to have the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff be the commencement speaker.
I sent a letter to his office at the Pentagon with my request for the general to be our speaker. With typical military precision, a week later I had a colonel on the line, asking me what the hell was the New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans.
After a few moments of backfilling him in about what we were and what we did, he said,
“You’re telling me that today, in the United States of America, we have veterans who are homeless?”
“Yes sir,” I said, “I have a building full of them, and there are thousands more on the streets of every city.” I proceeded to tell him about our training program, which to us was a huge success. Our graduation ceremony coincided with the general’s visit to Harvard, and if the general could possibly be our commencement speaker after that Harvard event, it would inspire the veterans who were in the program and give a sense of dignity to every homeless veteran in our shelter.
Of course our little graduation ceremony could not compare with that of Harvard Universityat least not on a scale of pomp and ceremony. But to our homeless vets it would be life changing. For each graduate the Vet Tech program meant a door opening to a humble but free existence, away from the charity of the shelter and the humiliation of living their lives on the very streets they had once helped to defend.
“Let me get back to you, Mr. Smith.”
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I had been around the block enough times to know these words meant “Sorryno.”
I started to work on a more realistic locally based graduation speaker. I arranged for the commissioner of veteran’s services for the city of Boston to be our speaker, and I was grateful to have him.
Then my phone rang. It was the colonel.
“If you can make the ceremony from two to three o’clock in the afternoon, the general would be honored to attend,” he said.
I was so thrilled that I started to babble. “Can we plan on that?” I asked.
“General Powell is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” said the colonel. “If he says he will be there, I think you can definitely depend on that, Mr. Smith.”
I asked if it was OK to have some media, as we had already planned on inviting the media. The colonel said sure, the more the better.
At the next town meeting the atmosphere was electric. All the veterans came alive when I announced the graduation of Vet Tech students would be conducted at the end of the month from two to three in the afternoonand the commencement speaker would be General Colin Powell.
Everything seemed to go into overdrive.
RR&L and his staff somehow got their hands on two hundred gallons of paint, and every wall and door and piece of trim got a fresh coat before the event. We set up the first-floor meeting room with a speaker’s podium and a stage and made the place look four-square ready.
On the graduation day, the Vet Tech grads, family members, staff, and other homeless vets were shaved, showered, and dressed in their best clothes and assembled in the meeting room and in the hallways. Members of the media lined the room up against the walls. All the TV stations were there. The air was charged with expectation.
At two o’clock sharp, through the front doors of 17 Court Street, in uniform, walked General Colin Powell.
I saw the Americal Division patch on his shoulder and knew right then and there that it was somehow destined to happen. After introducing myself I told the general that I also 119
had served in the Americal. He gave me his million-dollar smile and said, “Welcome home, Ken.”
The event was a huge success. The media were tripping over themselves asking questions that had nothing to do with the graduation of the homeless veterans; on that day I learned from the general how to politely answer a question without answering a question.
I watched him duck and weave around loaded questions and then always bring the answer back to the fact that here in this shelter, veterans were learning new skills and graduating.
Homeless veterans were looking for a hand up and not a hand out, he saidand that is something I will forever remember.
General Powell didn’t have to take a detour from Harvard to visit our shelter, but he did, and for that, every homeless vet was grateful.
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Chapter 20: Joe Moakley Meeting and the SRO Deal
Congressman Joe Moakley was chairman of the Rules Committee in Congress. He also had his district offices in Boston, less than two miles from the shelter.
We had been in the shelter business about a year and a half and it was obvious to me that without some significant capital investment to improve the obvious deficiencies in the building, we were going to lose the battle of keeping the place alive. The building had antiquated plumbing, faulty wastewater systems that backed up all the time, poor electrical systems that kept me up at night, broken elevators that made each elevator ride a crap shoot of either getting to the floor you wanted or getting stuck for hours, toxic asbestos on most floors, and a host of safety issues that would take millions of dollars to fix and repair.
One day I was meeting with Howard Levine at his office and going over some legal issues and I said, we need a godfather, we need someonea senator a congressman, someonewho can step up and help us, or this program is going to capsize. Water was coming over the gunwales is how I think I put it.
It seemed that every month the little money we were getting was pouring down a hole of “repair this or repair that” and each time we spent the money on a repair, two more things needing immediate repair would pop up that were just as critical. It was a triage of building maintenance that never quit.
We were burning the candle at both ends just trying to keep the systems alive. I felt like I was in an old movie, with a ship that was always on the verge of breaking down, and I was stuck in the engine room, with the engine smoking oil and the grinding sounds of gears not working right surrounding me.
Howard’s suggestion was to see if we could get a meeting with a congressman. I said I would do what I could. When I got back to the shelter I wrote a letter asking for a meeting with Congressman Joe Kennedy. A few days later a senior member of his staff called me. He told me there was no way he could do anything to help us with getting a grant or an earmark to do any of the repairs. “You’re going to have to look elsewhere,” he said, “and my suggestion is to try to get a meeting with Joe Moakley. He’s the senior member of the delegation and he could help if he wanted.”
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I then sent a letter into Moakley’s office and didn’t hear back for weeks. I forgot about the request until one day, the chief of staff of Moakley’s office called.
“The congressman will be in town next week,” he said, “holding meetings with constituents on Wednesday and Thursday, and I have blocked out fifteen minutes for you to come in and speak to him personally on Thursday. You and one other person may attend, because we don’t want a room full of people. Be prepared to answer the questions of the congressman and be prepared to authenticate any request with evidence.”
What the hell did that mean? I thought to myself, be prepared with evidence? I thought it best to bring Howard Levine to this meeting, as he had both a softspoken manner and a keen mind. He reminded me of a ninja warrior in the way he did things, as he usually dressed in black and he could attack and dissect you with words like no one else I had ever met.
Plus he was a super lawyer.
The day of the meeting, I met Howard at his office and he drove us to the congressman’s offices, which were only a few blocks away. After we parked and headed into the building, Howard told me to do most of the talking to the congressman and to speak from my heart.
Joe Moakley was a WWII vet who served in the Navy, said Howard, so no Army-Navy jokes.
We entered his office and I could see that this guy was wicked busy. There had to be twenty-five other people in the waiting room and there were no empty chairs and so both Howard and I stood our turn to get in to see the congressman.
After twenty minutes or so, a door opened and our names were called by a young guy dressed in a shirt and tie who looked like he was in high school.
“Sir, this is Howard Levine and Ken Smith. They are here to speak about the homeless veterans shelter over on Court Street,” said the young guy. That was our introduction. He turned and closed the door behind him. I saw that there was someone else sitting in the corner with a pad of paper. He didn’t even lift his head uphe was just writing away.
There were three chairs in front of the congressman’s desk, so I took one and Howard took another and we waited.
Congressman Moakley was a barrel-chested man. Not that tall, less than six feet I thought, and he had an unlit cigar in his mouth.
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He was reading something and, like the other guy, had yet to lift his head up to even say hello or to shake our hands.
“So, Smith, what do you need?”
The question caught me off guardit came out of nowhere and he said it without looking at me. He was still reading some papers.
Then he looked up at me and his eyes were intense. He was looking at me and focusing on me and I felt at that moment that we were the only two people on the planet.
“Did you hear what I said?” repeated the congressman.
“Yes sir, sorry,” I managed to say. “I wanted to make sure my answer made sense and I didn’t embarrass myself. We need a way to get a government grant or a set aside, or some way to help us to repair the infrastructure of the old VA hospital on Court Street downtown.”
“I know that building well,” he said. “I have been to it many times. I’m a veteran too.”
“I know sir. I know you served in the Navy in World War Two and that’s why we came to you.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Smith. You came to me only after you went to Kennedy and he said come to me.”
“Right, that’s, that’s true,” I said. “Sorry, I forgot about that for a moment.”
“Now, for the last time, as I am very busy, what do you need?”
Howard saw me floundering and jumped right in.
“Sir, this homeless veterans program is in dire need of federal funds to help repair some of the critical life-safety issues associated with the general maintenance of a large, former federal building that has been neglected for well over forty years.”
The congressman was now looking at Howard. “How much do you need?” he asked.
“We could use one dollar and we could use ten million dollars, but the simple fact is we are between a rock and hard place in assembling a capital campaign because the needs of the building are immense.”
Moakley looked at me and then at Howard and then at me again, and said, “OK, I will see what I can do.”
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Just then the door we had entered into his office opened. Somehow the congressman either rang a bell or someone was listening, but somehow, right then and there, the meeting was over.
The guy who was sitting in the corner of the room never even looked up and never stopped writing.
As we walked to Howard’s car I said, “Well, that was a waste of time.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Howard. “He seemed interested at the very least.”
I wasn’t sure we were in the same meeting, I thought to myself.
Howard dropped me off at the shelter and later on that day I met with a woman who had come into the shelter looking for some work. She seemed totally out of placeshe looked as if she belonged behind the cosmetic counter at a major department store. She was very well put together and had that same Anne Taylor look that I remembered from Jackie Lawing at HUD.
Carla was my agelate thirtiesand she was a development director from a major nonprofit and was in between jobs.
I’ve taken a job that doesn’t start for a few months, she told me, and I’ve walked by this place for close to a year. I want to help, and will do the work of development for a fraction of what I was being paid at my last job. I have an idea on how you might get some federal monies and I have experience in applying for funds from various agencies.
I thought her proposal had some merit, but she needed to see that our offices were extremely crude, and in fact the only office not in use at the time didn’t even have a ceiling.
It was located on the first floor and was some kind of teller counting cage from when the place was an old bank, I imagined.
I took her into this office and she looked at me and said, “Are you serious?”
I said that well, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, and I was getting ready to thank her for her time when s