In its heyday, Northeast Career Planning’s Menands offices packaged 18,000 Nerf footballs a day.
They were shipped out to Northeast stores. It was the same for several General Electric products, Beech-Nut foods and Mattel merchandise.
Many have attributed the agency’s success to one man, 35-year employee and 25-year executive director William Norton.
On Friday, Jan. 4, Norton retired from his post. Countless workers called consumers at the Menands warehouse — came to say goodbye. A half hour later they were all back at work.
Norton headed NCP, a 53-year-old nonprofit organization that helps place people with disabilities in jobs, and helps recovering drug addicts and alcoholics get back to work.
When Norton, 67, first started the operation, it was called The Workshop. The name changed when Norton started the push to get people good work in the community rather than just in-house.
Under his tenure, thousands have joined, or remained in, the workforce, bringing the once $300,000 operating budget up to $8 million and putting anywhere from 400 to 500 people a year back on track and back to work.
Initially it was a lot more work trying to build this place. The whole philosophy changed in rehab. It changed to community placement get ’em working,` said Norton.
NCP at one time placed about 500 people a year, he said.
Now, although the numbers are down slightly, the rate of pay is higher for many.
Every day, nearly 120 workers pile into one of two of the Menands production warehouses where workers package goods for delivery. When the operation first started in the 1950s, the site was the largest warehouse outside of New York City, but outsourcing has taken its toll on NCP.
Norton and his staff’s response was to push harder on communities from Hudson in the south to Glens Falls in the north, setting up satellite offices to not only provide work out of the Menands offices but within the community workforce.
Without the work, some people would have just stayed home collecting disability pay. Instead, they have become longtime members of the regional workforce, and reliable ones at that.
`I enjoyed the work and meeting new friends all those years I’ve been here. It helped me a lot. I had a lot of new jobs and learned a lot of new things,` said Hazel Gutkoska, 51.
She retired last year after 31 years of work through NCP.
Hazel suffers from debilitating seizures. There was a lot of work she was unable to do, she said. NCP and Norton helped her, and her husband, find good work and find each other.
Hazel’s husband, Richard, 56, lost half of his brain in a car accident when he was 4 years old. He retired with Hazel after working with NCP 40 years. The two have been married for 15 years.
Despite their disabilities, the two have made a hard-working life together in fields such as in-house production work in Menands or outside jobs, like microfilming, said Hazel.
`I didn’t want to sit at home and do nothing. I proved to my family that I could do it,` Hazel said.
She presented Norton with a plaque thanking him for his years of services and commitment to NCP. Many lined up to personally thank him. Some gave cards and gifts, one played Norton a song on his harmonica. Most were teary-eyed, including Norton.
`You really made it what it is. I’m going to miss you all,` Norton said over lunch.
Richard Bennett will take over as NCP’s executive director.
Norton began his career at NCP in 1979 as an assistant business manager. He said he is confident Bennett will carry on NCP’s mission and will more than meet the task of continuing to find work for the Capital District’s disabled community.“