This blog posts notes the passing of John Wardlaw. Wardlaw served as the executive director of the Hartford Housing Authority in Hartford, Conn., for years and was a visionary when it came to remaking public housing.
Here’s part of a 1995 story that describes how Wardlaw grew up in Asheville. (Wardlaw’s twin brother, Bohne Wardlaw, is mentioned. He is still in Asheville and now serves on the city’s Civil Service Board):
When John Wardlaw turned 12, his father gave him a rifle. He used it to hunt food — rabbit, possum, deer, whatever he could find.
The Wardlaws lived on the outskirts of Asheville, N.C., then a small city, in a five-room house with no electricity or running water. His father, a railroad worker, and mother, a housewife, had 16 children.
Of the 10 Wardlaw boys, John was the multisport athlete who practiced until the sun went down.
“He’s always been determined,” said Bohne Wardlaw, John’s twin brother and now an Asheville police officer. “He wanted to be the best at everything. He just wouldn’t give up.”
Wardlaw looks back on his childhood as a positive experience that taught him to focus.
“I didn’t ask anybody for anything, and I didn’t expect anything,” he said. “But I learned to share, I learned what partnership was, I learned what family was.”
It was a chance encounter, when Wardlaw was a 9-year-old caddy, that changed a lot.
One morning at the Asheville Country Club he took the wrong bag to the first tee and ended up being sent home, crying. As he walked away, a wealthy businessman and golfer consoled him and told him to come back the next day. Wardlaw shouldered the man’s bag for the whole summer. Soon, he was earning money working on the man’s estate, and learning golf.
“I was able to see the other half,” Wardlaw said. “Subconsciously, I started drawing that comparison very early.”
Wardlaw went to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University on a football scholarship and graduated with a degree in sociology. He played professional football in Canada, then played briefly for the New York Jets in the early 1960s. Along the way, his first wife left him, taking the couple’s three children back south.
By the mid-1970s Wardlaw was working with Hartford juvenile delinquents. In 1977 he was recruited for housing authority director, despite having no degree in public administration.
He figured he’d stay two years. Along the way he’s shoveled about $140 million into his crumbling buildings.