|
|
|
A Man in Full
When something really, really needs to get done, Bill O'Brien is greater New Haven's go-to guy
|
Business New Haven
1/22/2001
By: Lori Green
|
If we're lucky, many of us will eventually reach a point in life when we realize that going on meaningfully means giving back more. That is, giving before we've made or inherited a million bucks. Some of us do what we can: a donation here, a few hours there. Others press ahead in the hope that the rain they make will fall everywhere.
But few of us, from the start, have regarded benefiting others - particularly people we don't even know - as part of our daily work. At age 61, Business New Haven's Citizen of the Year, William T. O'Brien, has done just that. O'Brien has given “back” so much for so long that it's hard to tell whether he ever took anything out just for himself in the first place.
Hometown banker, accomplished photographer, athletics promoter and all-around civic dreamboat, O'Brien has garnered dozens of awards and honors recognizing his low-keyed, high-powered approach to getting things done. Not results that furthered his own interests or those of a small coterie of local insiders, but initiatives that improved the lives of people throughout New Haven County.
Born and raised on State Street, O'Brien's childhood nurtured in him an abiding love for the City of Elms. His father worked for the railroad, while his mother was for a time employed by toy-manufacturer A.C. Gilbert. After attending Notre Dame High School, O'Brien entered Quinnipiac College, where he received a degree in business administration in 1962.
Eager to enter the world of banking, O'Brien went on to train at Williams College of Banking and the University of Oklahoma before accepting his first job at what was then First New Haven National Bank (on the site, One Church Street, now occupied by Business New Haven). In 1973, O'Brien moved to Hamden National Bank, later to be reorganized as the Lafayette-American Bank & Trust Co. There he worked in branch management, commercial lending, marketing and business development, soon enough earning promotion to senior vice president.
But that was only his day job. Not long after O'Brien, with his wife Maureen, and their two sons, Michael and Gregory moved to Branford, the phone began to ring with pleas for his organizational and fundraising talents.
Take the time then-First Selectwoman Judy Gott called in 1989 to discuss the ailing Branford festival event. Recalls O'Brien: “Judy said she wanted me to come in and discuss the festival with her, and as soon as I got into her office, she asked me to run it.” Although O'Brien claims he'd never run a festival before, he went home that night, made a few phone calls and got a lot of support.
“It turned out to be a great event,” says O'Brien, who dug the festival out its $15,000 hole to netting $31,000 the first year. His secret sauce? Securing corporate sponsors. That put the festival in the black by $15,000 for its second year out.
The number and range of community projects and campaigns that O'Brien has since breathed life into is astonishing. In the late '80s and '90s these included chairing the regional Archbishop's Annual Appeal, chairing the Branford United Way, serving on the boards of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce, Junior Achievement, the New Haven Nighthawks hockey club, the New Haven Symphony, Quinnipiac University and the Special Olympics World Games. (This is not an exhaustive list, mind you - as exhausting as it might sound to the average person.)
And contrary to his demeanor, O'Brien just isn't an average person. He's got too much, drive, conviction, compassion and- that rarest of commodities - tact. The man magnetizes people, focuses their energy and cooks up enthusiasm in the hushed tones of, well, a buttoned-down banker.
It's probably only his wife who wonders about him sometimes. “My wife asked me where I'd gone last Sunday morning, and I told her I'd been out taking pictures of the ice fishermen on Lake Saltonstall,” O'Brien recalls In fact, O'Brien is rarely to be found without one of his cameras. “Occasionally I'll take my camera with me when I'm bike-riding, in case I run across some flying swans,” he explains.
Two dozen of O'Brien's stunning color photographs of New Haven vistas and skylines are published in a recent book Elms, Arms & Ivy: New Haven in the Twentieth Century by Robert Leeney, editor emeritus of the New Haven Register and honorary director of the New Haven Colony Historical Society. In a rare moment of bravura, O'Brien notes that he's taken photos from the roofs of every building in New Haven.
Many of those photos appear in the book and others, like the one he recently took from atop the Taft Hotel building are on their way to a public viewing or archive. Explains O'Brien: “New Haven is a beautiful city with many different angles. I always keep a point-and-shoot camera under the front seat of my car. If I like I what I get, I put it in an album and let people judge what they think it's worth.”
Well, they're doing that. The Regional Water Authority holiday greeting card carried O'Brien's evocative photograph of peak foliage along Lake Saltonstall, a stone's throw from O'Brien's Branford home. While O'Brien politely queued up at the New Haven Colony Historical Society to have his copy of Leeney's book autographed by the author, a woman ahead in the line overheard that he was the primary credited photographer for the book and insisted on getting O'Brien to sign the photos in her copy of the book.
Other prized O'Brien photos are on display as part of the Yale collection. As O'Brien tells it, “When Yale beat Harvard last year with less than half a minute to go, I took a picture of the winning catch and touchdown.” Great timing, and the picture itself is a winner, included by Yale in a number of publications and displays.
Beyond the playing fields, O'Brien is focused on improving the quality of recreation for youth in the region. As commissioner for the interscholastic Southern Connecticut Conference, O'Brien made it possible for public and parochial schools, both urban and suburban, to compete. As O'Brien saw it, the way things were traditionally set up for 75 years, urban schools had a problem because their basketball teams only played only other city schools. O'Brien raised funds for transportation and coordination, and built awareness and consensus among the various leagues across southern Connecticut.
Now on Friday nights, kids from Woodbridge now play New Haven schools, and New Haven school teams might play in Madison. And as a result of more vigorous competition, the conference has won more than 125 state championships in sundry sports.
“This league has overcome many obstacles and I'm very happy with it, not only from an athletic point of view but also with regard to the other things we do,” explains O'Brien. “We offer courses in diversity and diversity training, and hopefully these kids take those lessons back to their classrooms and community.”
For example, all the team captains get together once a year to talk about the challenges of the year ahead. Galvanized by O'Brien's leadership, corporations such as Stop & Shop, SNET, his own New Haven Savings Bank, and other companies have come forward to cover expenses.
With another regional league brought into the new Millennium, O'Brien noticed that Branford lacked a venue for recognizing its many fine athletes and sportsmen. “I felt that all the great individuals who have brought honor and distinction to the town of Branford by participating in sports as a player, coach, sponsor, organizer, journalist, or just a fan” merited recognition, O'Brien says. So 13 years ago he founded the Branford Sports Hall of Fame. To ensure that sports in Branford remain vital and well-supported, O'Brien now serves as commissioner to the board of the Branford Recreation Department.
Another recent coup for the Citizen of the Year - but a bigger one for the town of Branford - was in his role as Treasurer of the Branford High School Sports Council. O'Brien raised $40,000 for lights to be installed on the school football field. When the Board of Ed announced that Branford High would be undergoing major renovations along with the building of new athletic facilities, O'Brien redirected the funds into irrigating the grass surrounding the field and into a new audio broadcast system.
Although O'Brien talks softly and carries only a camera and a bunch of different fundraising appeal letters, he's seen as one of the most awesome guys in town: each year Branford High School now honors others in his name with the William O'Brien Spirit of Community Award.
O'Brien works and plays just as hard on the New Haven side of the Q Bridge as he does on the Shoreline. He's helped to organize and fundraise for the New Haven Labor Day Road Race since 1981. The race features 20-, 18- and five-kilometer finish lines and a kid's race around the center of town. As past president of its board, O'Brien invited top runners in the world to participate, hailing from Africa and beyond. Now 4,500 runners typically join the race, 1,000 of whom hail from beyond Connecticut.
One of O'Brien's favorite recent activities involved serving as co-chair of the Hannah's Dream Playground Project. Hannah Christian, now 13 years old, suffers from spina bifida. Her family brought her dream of a playground that accommodated handicapped children to Easter Seals and they called…guess who? That's why there's that new playground today on Woodward Avenue. O'Brien partnered with Easter Seals to raise a whopping $286,000 in two and a half years to build the playground.
Okay, that's done. Now for a stop at the office.
No, O'Brien's not in trouble there for giving so much of his expertise away for free. To the contrary, O'Brien's former boss at New Haven Savings, the bank's recently retired president Charles Terrell, is one of Bill's strongest supporters.
According to O'Brien, after Lafayette American Bank was sold, he was contemplating getting into nonprofit work full-time and devoting more time to photography. Then Terrell called him up to ask to see him.
Recalls O'Brien, “When Charlie said to me, 'I've always admired what you've done in the community', I knew I wanted to work for him.” O'Brien also knew he would get Terrell's blessing - not only to bring the bank more commercial business, but to help the branches become more pro-active in getting more involved in their respective communities.
“I try to cultivate the managers of the bank in the branches to go out there in their own way. I'm not asking them to chair the United Way as I have, but I am asking them to volunteer for United Way and to join the chamber of commerce. I'd like them to at least consider joining a service club like the Lions or the Rotary or the Exchange. You've got to want to do it, we can't force people,” says O'Brien. Oh, and by the way, commercial deposits have more than tripled since O'Brien came on board.
Rather like what has happened since O'Brien became chapter president and started securing corporate sponsors for the New Haven chapter of the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame. Entering its 41st year, the foundation has hosted scholar-athletes banquets honoring more than 700 youths. It runs an all-star high school football contest between New Haven and Fairfield counties every summer at West Haven High School, which has generated a total of $20,000 over the past four years in scholarship funds divided between both teams for awards to local college freshmen.
O'Brien has also been instrumental in expanding local football action at the college level. As a member of the Walter Camp All-America Football Foundation executive committee, O'Brien is actively involved in growing the foundation's contributions to many youth-related and charitable organizations in the region. O'Brien served as president of the foundation from 1979 to 1981.
Over the course of his 27 years of service to Walter Camp, more than $500,000 has been raised for beneficiary groups. O'Brien is audibly proud of the foundation's progress: “Fundraiser dinner tickets used to be $50; now they're $200,” he says, “and we've made New Haven the football capital of the world for one weekend each February.” This year's event is scheduled for February 10.
Hey, football season's almost over, but O'Brien's still excited. What's he thinking about? A new call for his help already came in: Branford needs an animal shelter. Great - he's there.
But first, a quick bike ride. “I've ridden 23,000 miles on my bike,” says O'Brien, “and when I tell people that they think I've been all over the country. But actually I never leave Branford.”
|
Go FirstGo PreviousGo
NextGo LastGo
to Index
|
|
