After 24 years at the Highbridge Community Life Center, Brother Ed Phelan is celebrating his retirement—sort of. 

Phelan, 67, will leave his position as executive director, a title he held for 21 years, at the end of this month. Sister Ellenrita Purcaro, currently the director of operations for the Highbridge Community Life Center (HCLC) will take Phelan’s place on January 1, 2008.

However, Phelan will serve on the HCLC board of directors, and will also embark on a new endeavor; helping to launch San Miguel schools—Catholic institutions that emphasize smaller class size, longer school hours, and provision of social services—in New York City. Phelan will work with colleagues from De La Salle Christian Brothers  to help find funding for these schools. “I suppose you would call it an encore career,” Phelan laughed, during a recent interview.

Roughly 200 guests turned out at Fordham Law School in midtown Manhattan on December 5, to bid farewell to Phelan and to celebrate his career at HCLC, which publishes the Highbridge Horizon.  Those in attendance included friends and family, current and former HCLC staff, and representatives of various agencies that have funded the center over the years. 

Phelan arrived at HCLC in 1983, as the agency’s first literacy teacher; he had previously managed the Bacherlor’s Degree program at New Rochelle College. With some amusement, he recalled getting off to a rocky start. On his first day, he said, there were three students in his class. There were only two students in his second class, and then only one student in his third class. Hoping to spark community interest in the program, Phelan went around the neighborhood sticking flyers underneath windshields.  But Ann Lovett, then the executive director of HCLC, pointed out a basic problem with that approach.

“You think you’re gonna attract literacy students with a flyer?” Phelan recalled Lovett asking him. The literacy program has come a long way since then; these days, Phelan said, the program often has more than 1000 students enrolled at one time.

In 1986, three years after starting at HCLC, Phelan took over for Lovett as executive director. At the time, many of HCLC’s programs did not yet exist, or were just getting off the ground:  The agency had launched a substance-abuse program in 1982.  In 1984, Caring For Family Life—a program that works with families whose children are at risk of abuse or neglect—began.  The first English as a Second Language (ESL) class was taught at the center one year later in 1985.  Adult-education and after-school programs were also in place.

In the twenty-two years since Phelan began as executive director, HCLC’s reach into Highbridge has expanded considerably; new services were launched, and existing ones grew. During his tenure, the abandoned mansion on Woodycrest Avenue and W. 162nd Street was converted to a residence for people living with AIDS in 1989. One year later, an old school in the upstate town of Goshen was transformed into an “empowerment center” where local children could experience a rural retreat for an afternoon or attend summer camp. In 1992,  HCLC founded its nurse-aid –training program.  In 1996, the Growing Assets Program (GAP)— which seeks to aid residents secure basic needs such as income, housing, and education— got off the ground.  In 1998, the Highbridge Horizon was founded.

Since 1990, HCLC’s funding has more than quadrupled, from roughly $1 million to $4.5 million. The agency has 110 employees.

“It has certainly moved from kind of a family business to an organization, with a good amount of maturity,” Phelan said. He suggested this expansion was not the result of agency intent, but community need. “I think an organization like this doesn’t grow much, much bigger because we decide we’re going to be bigger, or that we’re going to make more money,” Phelan added. “But rather because customers demand the growth or push the growth, or more of them come in.”

At the December 5 farewell party, those who have known Phelan for many years, along with people who met him very recently, described him as very dedicated to his work and to the community of Highbridge. “In general, what’s admirable about Ed is his passion, his energy, his vision,” said Alisa Macksey, a Lasalle Volunteer coordinator who first met Phelan when she herself was a volunteer in 2000.

Nicole Claire, a prospective HCLC board member, had only met Phelan a week earlier, and spoke to him only briefly, but offered a similar characterization. “It was just his passion, his general overall feeling for what he’s been able to accomplish,” Claire said, when asked what had struck her most in her meeting with Phelan. “His passion for the people.”

During an interview a few days earlier with the Horizon, Phelan said that one of the biggest challenges facing community organizations as they develop over time is maintaining a connection with the people they serve. “The people running organizations can get confident in themselves to the extent where they don’t check in with the people they’re helping,” Phelan said. “ And there’d be some pressure from organizations to do what the funding source says, rather than what’s needed in the community.”

Phelan did not shy away from saying that, at times, HCLC had fallen victim to these tendencies. “I think we’re guilty of all of the above,” Phelan said.

Phelan suggested his own skepticism of those in positions of power made him sensitive to the possibility of abusing his own. “I generally have a healthy disregard for authority,” Phelan said. “It comes out in questioning people who use their authority on me. From police officers to doctors, it’s always like, ‘Why?’”

But Yolanda Romero, a 20-year-resident of Highbridge and the outreach coordinator for HCLC’s Family Services program, said Phelan had, in fact, immersed himself in the community of Highbridge; Romero said Phelan did not merely help to secure funding for different programs and then step back, but rather took an active role in working with staff to implement programs. As an example, she recalled him helping her plant trees on Anderson Avenue as part of the “Neighbors of Highbridge” program, in the mid-1990s. 
“He interacted with us,” Romero said. “He wasn’t some type of executive that sat in his office.”   And, she added, Phelan doesn’t merely reach out to the community, he also invites it in. “Brother Ed’s door is never closed,” Romero said.

As he addressed friends, family, and supporters on December 5, Phelan said he felt his years of work in Highbridge had taught him several lessons, citing a recent survey of executive directors that he filled out; the results indicated he had prioritized values such as “relationship” over “autonomy,”  “cooperation” over “competition,”  and “shared power” as opposed to “power over.”

For these transformations, Phelan gave credit to a particular section of the community. “I think the main influence on me to change,” he said, “was the women in Highbridge.”