H.A.N.D.S. bids a fond farewell as its director retires

ORANGE, NJ — The Housing and Neighborhood Development Services of New Jersey, based in Orange Township’s Valley section, held its 17th annual Community Leadership Awards banquet at the Appian Way restaurant on Landon Street on Wednesday, Dec. 7.

But this year’s celebration of all things related to developing the Valley Arts District was bittersweet, since it also served as longtime H.A.N.D.S. Executive Director Patrick Morrissy’s retirement party. Billed as “A Night Honoring Patrick Morrissy,” the banquet gave attendees a chance to reminisce about shared memories, struggles and triumphs during the past 17 years.

“One of my earliest New Jersey memories — I had just moved here from Michigan the previous year I think — was of you enlisting me to join you to testify at a legislative hearing in Trenton in favor of a tenants rights bill that they were working on,” Diane Sterner, the Community Strategies advisor for New Jersey Community Capital, said at the event on Wednesday, Dec. 7. “It was my first-ever legislative hearing and, to my amazement, we were successful in getting our bill passed. And you told me that my testimony was really, really good which, coming from you at that time, was like a really big deal.”

Sterner said that experience working alongside Morrissy and others, “Launched my lifelong interest in public policy and community organizing.”

New Jersey Community Capital President Wayne Meyer recalled the many challenges he and Morrissy faced and overcame together during the early founding days of H.A.N.D.S.

“Public housing is obviously a linchpin to rebuilding neighborhoods and, if you think about it, from a project standpoint, systems standpoint, it’s remarkable,” Meyer said Wednesday, Dec. 7. “The first thing is around the vacant properties and how we strategized around how do we intervene on the really key properties to help stabilize neighborhoods. And out of that came working with Alan and Diane and Howard and the Abandoned Property Rehabilitation Act. Really amazing.”

Southern Comfort Cafe co-owner Rochelle Brown-Johnson said she always liked acronyms, so working with Morrissy and H.A.N.D.S. came naturally to her until, she said, he decided to convince her to open up her own restaurant and go into business for herself.

“I kind of represent, I think, the new generation and at the end of the say I’m just a Jersey girl. Pat is a Jersey guy and the thing I like about Pat is that he cares more about Orange than some of the people that live here,” Brown-Johnson said at the event. “Pat has this magical way of just showing up. He’s not a man that just talks about it; he is about it. Pat has swag.”

Robin Gordon, the director of administration at H.A.N.D.S., said Morrissy’s swag includes attaching paper clips to his hand while he talks on the phone, which is something that most people don’t know about him. She and other co-workers got together and had an official “Key to Unlocking Communities” fashioned for Morissy as a going-away present, so that he would never forget the skills and abilities that have made him who he is. She said these attributes have turned H.A.N.D.S. into an organization that means a lot to so many people in and around Orange.

Gordon and H.A.N.D.S. Board of Directors Chairman Elliott Lee, likened Morrissy to the character George Bailey from the classic movie “It’s A Wonderful Life,” which starred actor Jimmy Stewart.

“We’ve all benefitted from Pat’s legacy of impact,” said Gordon on Wednesday, Dec. 7. “His strongest traits are creative thinking and boundless perseverance. H.A.N.D.S.’ strategy of vacant property rescue has evolved from listening to community residents and a willingness to adapt. Unlocking troubled properties is a long and difficult process — most would not have stuck with it, creating systems to build on that need and using the power of the arts to build a community and act as an economic engine.”

For all those reasons and more, Gordon said Morrissy more than earned the Key to Unlocking Communities he has held for 30 years. Morrissy, on the other hand, said he feels as though he’s never worked a day in his life, because everything he has done in Orange, especially in the Valley Arts District, has been a labor of love.

“It’s obviously easy to imagine that this work and my professional life — from the time I came to Orange and joined a group of young radicals who were raising hell and building communities and having fun — was predestined, but it wasn’t,” said Morrissy on Wednesday, Dec. 7. “One of the better things I did was that campaign where we got 3,500 votes and were just 6,000 shy of winning. But out of that effort, I drew together people that knew me and worked with me on the campaign and we asked ‘What do we do next?’ Not in two years or four years from then, but right now.

“And that’s how H.A.N.D.S. came to be. We talked about, how do we capture so many people and so many issues that we raised and, as Jeanie told you, it wasn’t a perfectly straight line, but it was about six or seven months later that the first board of directors of H.A.N.D.S. came together. My point is: what’s made it easy was people like you,” Morrissy told attendees.

After that, Morrissy grabbed a guitar and launched into impromptu renditions of “This Land is Your Land” and “Stand By Me” and sang his way off into the figurative sunset, promising to return.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Morrissy said. “I’ll still be around. You’ll still see me in Orange. I’m not really leaving.”

  Community Leadership Awards banquet, Elliott Lee, H.A.N.D.S., Housing and Neighborhood Development Services of New Jersey, Key to Unlocking Communities, Patrick Morrissy, Robin Gordon, Rochelle Brown-Johnson, Wayne Meyer