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Bing Broderick ’81 The Accidental Altruist
H
aley House, based in Boston’s South End, began as a soup kitchen in the 1960s. But little by little, it has become much more: a social-service organization offering affordable housing to the homeless; a farm; a transitional employment program; a cooking program for underserved youth; a bakery café that serves as an arts and cultural hub for its Roxbury neighborhood; and, as of October, an artisanal pizza shop dedicated to economic inclusion.
None of these changes were by design, and in that way Haley House mirrors the career path of Bing Broderick ’81, its executive director since 2013. When he says that Haley House has evolved through “recognizing opportunities and needs and addressing them,” Broderick could just as well be describing his own path. In his telling, Broderick ended up at Haley House by being in the right place at the right time. After earning a BA degree in English from Haverford College, he landed a marketing job at Rounder Records in Cambridge, Mass. “It was an amazing place to work, and music had always been my passion,” says Broderick. Nevertheless, he says, “It was clear the music industry didn’t have a great future,” and after 13 years, he moved into a marketing position at WGBH. But before long, in the throes of what he calls a “midlife crisis,” he took a threemonth leave of absence in Ireland at the renowned Ballymaloe Cookery School. After returning to the States, Broderick began to volunteer for various food organizations. “Food justice and food access were really important to me,” he says. So when word spread that Haley House was opening a bakery café and needed a manager, the fit seemed perfect. That was in 2005. Under Broderick’s stewardship, Haley House Bakery Café—like the larger organization of which it is part—evolved into something well beyond a restaurant offering revolving art shows, a performance series, and regular poetry slams. “We unintentionally became a really vital community space,” says Broderick. Take Back the Kitchen, a Haley House program offering cooking classes for teens, now serves 400 urban youth each year. And the café provides job training for men and women transitioning back into the community after incarceration. In 2011, Broderick became the business manager for Haley House, and when the founding director stepped down in 2013, he was her natural successor.
Lee Vodra and I have been talking to each other through unexpected life changes and realizing that we are stronger and more competent, creative, and flexible than we had thought. We both look forward to an exciting year. Kelly McPhail Mendez ’81 has moved into her newly built home in Roanoke, Texas, and has posted lovely pictures on FB. Josh Greenfield is branching into children’s writing. Please let us know when your first title comes out, Josh! Neither Bill Seed nor Stephen Ackroyd let a little surgery get them down. Both seem to have recovered nicely and were able to get back to their regularly scheduled activities in record time. Chiming in from the Pacific Northwest, Guy Letourneau wrote, “Still working in mechanical engineering (contract for now), but last December I passed the patent bar, and I am trying to build a second business as a U.S. patent agent. Might make a decent retirement job. As for gardening and warming weather trends, last year I was successful growing tobacco here in northwestern Oregon, and this year I will try again but also add cotton as an additional test.” Guy noted that he is “call sign AF7FD, if anyone else is into amateur radio, and still trying to get decent at Morse code.” As for school ties, Guy’s niece graduated from PA last June, and he corresponds regularly with Mark Anderson ’81. Beth Bishop is the director of admissions and financial aid at the Menlo School, an independent school in Menlo Park, Calif. Beth is enjoying being in the heart of Silicon Valley. She writes, “This area is so incredibly diverse. I love it.” Greg Alker and his wife, Susan, along with their eighth-grade twins, Natalie and Brandon, are San Francisco transplants. He writes, “We called LA home for the prior 21 years. I joined the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office’s consumer protection division and quickly transferred to the environmental division, clearly out of choice and not some bureaucratic governmental chess play. I actually enjoy environmental cases and
Still, the circuitous, fortuitous journey to Haley House was not what he’d foreseen. Broderick’s summary of his experience at Ballymaloe could serve as a motto for the entire trajectory: “Once it happened, it became exactly the right thing to do at that time.”
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Andover | Winter 2016
—Jane Dornbusch
Tony Soares
Some of the seeds for his work at Haley House were sown at PA. Describing himself as a “not particularly athletic teen,” Broderick welcomed the option to do volunteer work in lieu of a sport for one term each year. “It opened my eyes to community engagement,” he says. And the arts courses he took at Andover helped lay the groundwork for turning the café into a community cultural center.