More than twenty-eight years ago, in the summer of 1994, Nuva, a Gloucester social services agency, along with Addison Gilbert Hospital, Project RAP, the Center for Addictive Behaviors, and Health and Education Services, merged under the corporate umbrella of Beverly Hospital. At the time Nuva had $4 million in contracts and $3 million in property.
From an article, written by Ron, in the Gloucester Daily Times.
In January of 1983 I became the executive director of Nuva. I had been a one-day-a-week consultant to the agency, utilizing my master’s degree in psychology, and I had a deep empathy for people in pain. I knew the challenges Nuva was facing. When the departing director recommended me for the position, the board agreed to hire me as acting director for six months to assess my leadership. At that time the organization oversaw three programs: a substance-abuse counseling service run by Janet Green Garrison and funded by the Department of Public Health; the Cape Ann Social Club, led by Jane Zaslow and funded by the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health; and a small school for special education. The gross budget was $150,000. We were in debt, and the school was faltering.
The agency’s name has a tangled and mysterious history. Apparently, sometime in the late 1960s or early ’70s, a group of ex-addicts came together to form the nonprofit corporation NUVA, an acronym that some speculate meant No Use Visual Appreciation–that is, get high on life or nature. Nuva’s grassroots origins came directly from the suffering of the community. That suffering, legend has it, stemmed from heroin abuse related to the Vietnam conflict. In the late 1970s NUVA ran into problems with the IRS. The tax collection issue was solved, and the acronym NUVA was changed in the agency’s incorporation documents to Nuva, a word whose meaning no one seemed to know.
In February 1983, a month after becoming director, I attended a workshop where I met the organizer Lisa Kaplan. I hired her to assist Nuva with writing grants. Within months the agency began to expand. The school was closed; the Social Club added more days per week; the substance-abuse counseling program opened its doors to more clients; and a new mental health mentoring program was added, run by Margaret Herman.
One day in 1984, after about a year on the job, when I was sitting before a board at a foundation in Boston, I was asked, “What does Nuva mean?” Without much hesitation I said, “Nuva is a corruption of two Portuguese words meaning ‘New Way, New Life, New Direction.’” We got the grant.
Over the next two years a new community problem developed: homelessness. An inter-city group led by Peter Anastas was created to assess and meet the challenge. Different agencies approached the problem with different emphases. Nuva developed a program for homeless women and children if the mother was suffering from drug addiction. We established the Huntress Shelter, led by Judy Girard, in a building that was once the city’s poor farm. A few years later the program moved to a larger facility near Niles Beach, where it became known as Taking Care of Business. It was the only residential facility in Massachusetts treating addiction while teaching parenting, budgeting, and food preparation skills to mothers, along with therapeutic puppetry for children.
Around 1986 local businessman Geoffrey Richon approached Nuva with a proposal to convert a 19-bedroom building he had bought in downtown Gloucester into a sober house. A year later we established the Easler Residential Program with a drug-free environment and lifestyle. In 1990 the Boston architectural firm Payette Associates proposed renovating parts of the building. Their completed renovation was featured in the December 1991 issue of Interiors Magazine.
In 1988 we created Common Ground, run by Lee Harriott, to provide children 7-18 years of age living in Maplewood Park with constructive after-school and weekend activities, as well as a forum to discuss substance abuse as the kids experienced it. The grant was written by Nuva’s Nancy Goodman and funded by a community block grant, with supporting contributions from Nuva and the Gloucester Housing Authority. Two years later additional funding from the Governor’s Alliance Against Drugs enabled us to include peer educators trained in supporting youngsters to avoid drugs and other unhealthy substances.
Also in 1988 Nuva established the Mayor’s Drug Task Force. Its recommendations generated a blueprint for integrating drug prevention and law enforcement, which two years later became the Gloucester Prevention Network, with representation from Addison Gilbert Hospital, Cape Ann Drop-a-Dime (a Nuva program), Cape Ann Teen Council, Cape Ann YMCA, Center for Addictive Behaviors, child development programs, Citizens for a Sober Alternative, Day by Day Bookstore, Gloucester Beach and Recreation Department, Gloucester Board of Health, Gloucester City Council, Gloucester Daily Times, Gloucester District Court Probation Department, Gloucester Fishermen’s Program, Gloucester Housing Authority, Gloucester Police Department, Gloucester Public Schools, Gorton’s of Gloucester, Governor’s Alliance Against Drugs, Greater Cape Ann Mental Health Center, Kid’s Care, New England Cablevision, Project RAP, Reclaim Our Community, St. Ann’s Church, Gloucester Unitarian Universalist Church, the Visiting Nurse Association of the North Shore, and private citizens.
The next big public health threat came from AIDS, which was causing a dramatic increase in mortality among addicts. When the Department of Public Health asked Nuva to create a methadone program to decrease the spread of AIDS, consideration of this prospect split the board of directors. When the decision was made to go forward with the program, we sadly lost board members. In 1989 Nuva opened a methadone clinic, which became an alternative test site for AIDS, and began an AIDS education program. Nuva also opened the Gateway Clinic with Addison Gilbert Hospital to fill the gap in services for HIV-positive individuals. We did this in cooperation with the North Shore AIDS Project and the Visiting Nurse Association. We also established the AIDS Outreach Program, run by Mike Cook, which worked closely with the Cape Ann AIDS Task Force, providing a hotline for confidential advice and referrals to maximize care. In 1991 our development of a multi-agency consortium enabled Nuva, together with the Visiting Nurse Association, North Shore AIDS Project and Strongest Link, to obtain funds through the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act, leading to the formation of OASIS (Organized AIDS Services Integrating Support).
In 1990 Nuva began a partnership with Bill Dugan of the Gloucester Housing Authority and the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health to plan a group home for mentally ill adults. This resulted in the opening of the Hillside Residential Treatment Program on Washington Street, run by Jack Petras, offering long-term care for eight adults.
Not long after that, Bruce Menin, executive director of Ploughshares in Topsfield, proposed a merger of our two organizations. Bruce had been impressed by Nuva’s grassroots, community-based style. Ploughshares had acquired the three-acre Nike Village from the federal government, but its program for homeless folks utilized only 4 or 5 of the 13 three-bedroom houses. Merging with Nuva would help Ploughshares use the rest of the buildings for mental health, AIDS programs, sober living, and similar purposes. The merger was consummated in the early 1990s.
In 1990 Nuva received a five-year grant from the federal Office for Substance Abuse Prevention. Under the leadership of Phil Salzman and based on recommendations by the Mayor’s Task Force, we organized discrete community subgroups throughout the city and the North Shore to combat substance abuse, particularly among children and adolescents.
I thank Nuva’s board of directors, who kept us on mission over those tumultuous years, and especially our fiscal director, Eileen Hines. Her accounting abilities grew in sophistication as the agency grew in complexity.
It was an honor to serve Gloucester and a privilege to have been trusted by this strong, 400-year-old city. It is also gratifying to see that many of the programs created over 30 years ago are still in operation, mostly run by the Lahey Clinic. Today Nuva is a mere footnote to the resilience of Gloucester. We are proud to have played a role in this city’s great history.