South Mountain Company

Martha’s Vineyard’s integrated design/build company

This blog provides up-to-date news of goings on at South Mountain Company and occasional musings from John Abrams (and others).

Collaboration

Two Stories About David McCullough

By South Mountain Co. |

Photo by Steve Senne of the Associated Press

As you know, David McCullough died last week – an immense loss for the Vineyard and our world. I want to tell two stories about the consummate storyteller himself.

During the last days of January 2000, South Mountain Company’s 25 employees, along with several friends and planning experts, spent two days thinking about the future of the Vineyard. Our goals were several:

  • to sketch the outline of a future we would like to see;
  • to decide what commitments we, as a company, were willing to make to achieve such a future; and
  • to share our findings with the Vineyard community in ways that might inspire similar inquiries, create dialogue, and lead to action.

We called the session “Future Sketch,” and invited a few people from outside the company to broaden our perspectives. We invited David to open the meeting. He agreed and addressed the group early on a Friday morning.

He spoke about the Chagres River, which was the major obstacle to the building of the Panama Canal, but which was eventually used in a simple but ingenious way to become a part of the overall engineering solution. He related this to the “river of money” pouring into the Vineyard which, he said, was “undoing a way of life.” He expressed two ideas that became central to our discussions:

  • We must re-direct the river of money (that causes such harm) to restoration of community; and
  • Our future is a design issue – it should be the result of intent rather than circumstance.

In the same way that he set the tone for the first Islanders Write event in 2014, and those that would follow, David’s presence set the tone for our retreat.

A few years later, when the Island Affordable Housing Fund was leading the first significant effort to address the Vineyard’s affordable housing needs, we invited David to speak at a fundraising party. His assignment: to convince the Vineyard’s seasonal community to embrace an idea that was novel at the time – that they should be responsible for funding affordable housing efforts.

On a clear summer night, the well-heeled crowd gathered on an expansive lawn overlooking the Edgartown harbor. David took the microphone. He spoke again about the Panama Canal and the Chargres River and “The River of Money” and how we must use it to improve, solve, and resolve problems. This is, in part, what he said:

“We’re failing here on Martha’s Vineyard. We’re failing in a more serious way than we know. What we came here for, what we love about the place is eroding before our very eyes. The essence of civilization is continuity, and continuity must exist for everybody.

It ought to become socially unacceptable among people of affluence on this island not to take part in helping to solve these problems. We ought to be saying to everyone, to ourselves, if you want to be here, you want to be a citizen here, you want to own a home here, you want to take part in the community here, open up your wallet and pay your part proportionately.

Because if the people who need to live here, year-round, who do the work, who make it work, can’t live here, it’s all going to collapse. Simple as that. And this isn’t charity. Let’s forget that. This isn’t charity. This is reality. This is being members of a great community. And it’s emblematic of the oldest, simplest truth in the world: if you want to be happy, do everything you can to make other people happy.”

There was a dramatic silence when he finished as people absorbed his message. Then the audience began to clap and cheer. The people who were clapping and cheering had just been admonished by the famous author and biographer. Many of them went on to become strong supporters of affordable housing; some of them still are today, even as the crisis he addressed 20 years ago is more pronounced than ever before.

Those are my McCullough stories. I’m sure many others have their own, which will re-surface as people share their memories of this influential but modest man. He was soft-spoken and un-assuming, but his message was always powerful.

A Design/Build Breakthrough

By South Mountain Co. |

For many years South Mountain has engaged in master planning and conceptual design efforts for island non-profits – Martha’s Vineyard Community Services, MV Museum, Island Grown Initiative, The MV Public Charter School, Featherstone Center for the Arts, The Nature Conservancy, and others.

But when these organizations moved from planning to design and construction, our design/build commitment (we don’t build what we don’t design and we don’t design what we don’t build) left us out in the cold. Non-profit Boards of Directors, with a fiduciary responsibility to their donors and organizations, generally feel that the conventional project delivery method – i.e., architecture firm designs, builders submit competitive construction bids, and a contract is awarded – is the only viable path. Our design/build method (architecture and construction by the same company) contradicts their allegiance to the perceived financial efficiency of the traditional approach. Even though some board members are attracted to the potential efficacy of single entity responsibility, it’s understandable that they would be concerned about eliminating the financial control of a competitive bid process. This has been a tough obstacle to overcome.

The Breakthrough came in 2017 when we were helping Camp Jabberwocky plan renovations. Camp Jabberwocky is the oldest sleep away camp in America for people with disabilities. It’s a magical place where dreams come true and nothing is impossible. It’s been that way for 65 years.

The main building on their campus needed major change. After some initial programming work, we spoke to their board about the possibility of hiring SMCo for architecture and construction services. The same old problem surfaced. Not long before, we had been hired to develop a schematic design for the new Martha’s Vineyard Museum and had been disappointed when they elected not to accept design/build for the next phases.

This time, we had an idea.

We developed an important clause to add to our design agreement. Essentially, it said that:
• At the completion of design we would prepare a detailed cost estimate for construction.
• Then Camp Jabberwocky could elect to hire an independent professional estimator to provide a comparative estimate.
• If the independent estimator’s construction estimate was close to, or higher, than ours, the construction contract would automatically be awarded to us.
• If it was more than 5% lower, there would be a reconciliation process to assess the reasons for the differences and reach agreement on a final price.
• If the parties were unable to agree, Jabberwocky could use our plans to get bids from other construction companies.

This suggestion breached the dam; we signed a construction contract, and the project was built. Since then, two other boards – Martha’s Vineyard Community Services (MVCS) and Island Grown Initiative (IGI) – have agreed to this approach for major projects. The result: three of the most rewarding endeavors in our history.

It’s notable that by the time we completed the Jabberwocky design, enough trust had been built that their board decided to forego the comparative estimate opportunity and directly engage SMCo for construction.

MVCS is the island’s umbrella social service agency; it provides an array of services to thousands of islanders each year. Just after the Jabberwocky project was completed, we created a master plan to replace the dilapidated and insufficient MVCS buildings – to make a new campus – and completed the design for their Early Childhood Center, the first phase of the campus re-build. Their board took a more conservative approach and hired an outside estimation firm, whose pricing turned out to be higher than ours. They signed our construction contract, and we completed the project on time and on budget in 2021. The organization and the families the building serves could not be happier. We begin design of phase two this fall.

Meanwhile, we will soon complete design for a new Education and Innovation Center, three units of staff housing, and extensive infrastructure improvements at IGI’s Island Grown Farm. When we complete our construction estimate in the fall, we do not know how the board will proceed. Either way (the Jabberwocky way or the MVCS way) works for us.

One way or another, we are thrilled by the prospect of building this project, about which longtime land planner and sustainability advocate Rob Kendall recently wrote in the Vineyard papers, as public permitting hearings proceeded at The Martha’s Vineyard Commission (MVC), “This is a gift from the Island community to itself. The plan has the long-term educational potential to move the island closer to a more sustainable food and energy future.”

We are looking forward to IGI construction, to MVCS Phase Two, and to more of this mission-driven institutional work in the future. Using SMCo’s integrated design/build approach, we are bringing high performance and high-quality development to a sector we respect and organizations we cherish. This trilogy of exemplary projects embodies our values and allows us to contribute to and synergize with our community in a very public way. Our staff loves the opportunity to explore different building types and scales, new ways to practice our craft, and the purpose and meaning embedded in this work. We are humbled by the great work these organizations do and proud of our modest contributions to their success.

And it’s all because we stopped seeing our approach as an obstacle, gave up
trying to convince boards to take us on faith, listened carefully to their concerns, and devised a way to alleviate them. There are lessons here: saying no to no is valuable, finding the heart of an impasse can inspire innovation, and making minor method adjustments can produce major harvests.

In this case, a simple solution caused a quantum leap.

On Building Second Homes

By South Mountain Co. |

This piece was written for and published in Fine Homebuilding. Thanks to Kevin Ireton (former FH editor) for the idea and his stellar editing. As always, he held my feet to the fire.

“How can you justify devoting so much time and energy to building vacation homes for rich people?”

It’s a good question,and one that I’ve heard often during my nearly 50 years on Martha’s Vineyard. In resort communities, many don’t have a first home. They’re scrambling to find stable housing while more than half the houses sit empty much of the year. That’s a problem. And in light of our climate crisis, the significant materials and energy dedicated to building and operating those houses compounds the problem.

When I came here in the 1970s, designing and building homes was so thrilling that I was content to build anything that developed new skills and knowledge. Working with head and hands gave me great pleasure; the idea that people would pay me to do it felt like a bonus. After a few years, however, the joy of the work and the satisfaction of the results were no longer enough. By then second homes had become a staple of our company, South Mountain, and my colleagues and I began to ask ourselves how we could justify this work.

The answer came in 1980. It began with a phone call from a woman named Madeline, who asked if I would look at a piece of land with her. She was a 60-year-old librarian whose husband had recently died. They had no children, and they had always lived in rented apartments. Her dream was to own property. She had $7,000 in cash. A realtor showed her a lot priced at exactly that, but her friends advised against buying it due to its topography and location.

The steeply sloping parcel was adjacent to the main road from Vineyard Haven to Edgartown. Traffic on the road was noisy and constant. The property faced due south toward a beautiful little valley. Except for the proximity to the road, it was lovely. I suggested an earth-bermed, partially underground house and told her we could design the noise of traffic right out of the picture. She was excited. She bought it.

At about the same time, I was approached by a single mother who owned property in West Tisbury and wondered whether we could build a house she could afford. Her budget was too small, but we had heard that the Farmer’s Home Administration was providing 1% loans to those with low and moderate income. We hoped to bundle a nice passive-solar house for Cathy and the earth-bermed house for Madeline, though the Farmer’s Home fixed-expenditure cap did not take into account either the Vineyard’s high construction costs or the long-term energy savings our houses would realize. We applied anyway.

We created plans for simple, compact houses and submitted them to Farmer’s Home with a request that they raise the mortgage limit (from $40,000 to $48,000) on each house due to the energy savings, which we analyzed and documented. After some bureaucratic wrangling, the increase was approved. Unfortunately, it still wasn’t enough to build the houses, unless we cut our overhead and profit to nothing and reduced our labor rates to below cost. Additional subsidies were needed.

Enter David and Pat Squire, who had purchased land in Edgartown and designed a second home with a Boston architect. They asked if we would be interested in bidding on the construction, and I told them that South Mountain built only those projects that we designed and that we didn’t bid on construction projects. They persisted, and a radical thought occurred to me: What if we gave the Squires a bid that had an explicit “premium” built in to subsidize the two Farmer’s Home houses? I shared the idea with the Squires, and they invited us to submit such a bid.

Our bid, one of three, was roughly $40,000 more than the next highest. They chose us nonetheless, and we built their house. We also built the two small houses for Madeline and Cathy by making up the shortfall with our extra earnings from the Squire project. Dreams came true, and mortgage payments were under $200. The Squires’ philosophical alignment with our purpose led them to become strong supporters of affordable-housing efforts on the Vineyard. Years later, when the Island Affordable Housing Fund was established to raise money for affordable housing, David became an important board member.

That was the first and only time that South Mountain inflated the cost of a project to support affordable housing efforts, but the experience inspired an idea that shaped the future of our company. If we could become a reasonably profitable enterprise, we could devote a portion of our earnings to affordable housing work for our community, and we could engage our wealthy clients in the issue.

At that point, the work of building second homes became meaningful. From then on, I often told new clients that they could count on me to ask them, in the future, to help with the Vineyard’s affordable housing problem (which they exacerbate, of course). I have done that now for 40 years, and the response has been heartwarming millions of dollars donated for attainable year-round housing.

Building second homes also allowed us to experiment and take risks. One of these occurred in 1987 when, in response to a request from two long-time employees for a greater stake, I sold South Mountain to my employees (and myself). We became a worker-owned cooperative and began to introduce new values to our business activities. For example, we committed to the creation of lifelong living-wage jobs and family-first policies, such as flexible work arrangements and stellar benefits. We began to codify our commitment to our community by donating to essential nonprofits and engaging in pro-bono work. We became a triple bottom line company long before we’d ever heard the term, measuring our success not just by our profits but also by effects on people and the planet.

Our journey since then has been influenced by many others, but particularly by Patagonia, the outdoor clothing and gear company that has become the gold standard for corporate social and environmental responsibility. Just like our second homes, many of Patagonia’s products are nonessential. Not everyone needs a pair of $300 ski pants or a lifetime wetsuit. So the company balances that reality with its social and environmental contributions, its political advocacy, and its important innovations, such as pioneering the use of organic and recycled cotton, and buying back old garments to refurbish and resell for far less than new ones.

Inspiration from Patagonia and others, combined with our own cantankerous sense of justice, has helped South Mountain become at once a profitable business, an active agent of community change, and a supporter of the local economy that supports us.

Today our second-home work is unusual in several ways. First, we restrict the size of the houses we are willing to build. Only on rare occasions, on very large parcels, have we designed and built houses over 3500 sq. ft.

We also use our second-home work for de-facto research to advance the building industry, especially with regards to energy performance, comfort, health, and durability. By experimenting with the homes of our well-to-do clients, we’ve learned a lot about high-performance building. As a result, we set minimum performance standards for our buildings that are well above code. Now we mostly produce net-zero-possible buildings. We use reclaimed materials extensively and are beginning to reduce embodied carbon (a work in progress with net-zero carbon as the ultimate goal).

By elevating performance standards, we make models that others can emulate and that we can incorporate in our affordable housing work. For us, truly affordable housing differs from luxury housing in only three ways: it’s smaller, it’s less detailed, and it’s differently financed. The performance and quality are uncompromised.

Perhaps the biggest step we have taken with our second-home work is doing less of it. Over time, we diversified South Mountain’s work into five parts; here’s a rough breakdown over the past year in terms of dollars per category:
• Limited-use second homes: 10%
• Year-round, fully occupied homes: 20%
• Attainable workforce housing: 10%
• Institutional work for nonprofits: 35%
• Solar for homes and businesses not built by us: 25%

This is only one year, and it happens to be a year with an uncharacteristically small amount of second-home work, but it indicates a direction: less harm, more good. Causing no harm is impossible — we are part of the problem too — but we share our experiences and hope others will join our push to turn some of the negative impacts of building into positive benefits for communities and the environment.

An added benefit of our business practices is that the second-home clients we attract tend to share our values. We love working with them. They go from being clients to becoming partners in our efforts to make the Vineyard a better place. Many have become friends for life. The rewards of this work and these relationships have become deeply ingrained in our core purpose.

A Joyous Building

By South Mountain Co. |

When a pack of wide-eyed youngsters cut the ribbons for the Island’s new Early Education and Care Center (EECC) earlier this month, it was a crowning moment – for both Martha’s Vineyard Community Services (MVCS) and South Mountain. It concluded five years of intensive planning, design, permitting and construction. (Technically it was far longer – MVCS first contacted us about renovating or replacing their outgrown, outmoded, and problematic buildings in 1999. But it wasn’t until 2017 that the organization was ready to create a long-term vision for a new campus and raise the funds to make it happen).

The new building is a tremendous improvement, but ultimately, it’s the program that the building houses that’s more important than the building itself. In a recent Vineyard Gazette article, Louisa Hufstader writes that “Nearly half of the Island’s children aged five and younger have no place to go for care and education while their parents are working.” The new EECC is the Vineyard’s largest early child care provider, with space for 65 kids plus a home-based Head Start program that accommodates another 40.

The scruffiest of the ribbon-cutting bunch – with his long unruly blonde hair – was my three-year old grandson Rockland. Among those behind him was Heather Quinn.

In the summer of 2008, my daughter Sophie was working at the Art Cliff Diner. Heather worked there too. At the time my wife Chris was the director of the Chilmark Preschool. Sophie learned that Heather had early childhood training and was a licensed preschool teacher. She told her mom about her new friend and said she should offer her a job. Chris did, and Heather took it.

In 2010 Chris was diagnosed with brain cancer and had surgery to remove it. One day during recovery at Mass General, Chris had a conference call with her teachers at the Chilmark Pre-School. She told them it was unlikely she’d be back for a long time (which turned out to be never). She said, “Heather, I want you to be the director. Laurisa, Talia, and Kathie – I want you to support Heather in every way that you can, and I know you will.” Both things happened.

A few years later Heather was hired to be the director of Early Childhood Programs at MVCS. Due to under-staffing, Heather has been teaching this year (as director, she usually doesn’t). Remarkably, the class that she teaches is Rock’s. Full circle. The woman mentored by Chris (the grandmother Rock never knew, because she died six months before he was born) is now Rock’s teacher. One of those multi-generational serendipitous stories that the Vineyard is full of, right?

Just a few years before Sophie met Heather at the Art Cliff, a young architect named Ryan Bushey came to work at South Mountain. Over time he became a company owner and today he is our Director of Architecture.

Ryan was the architect for the new EECC. But he was really the conductor of a comprehensive orchestra that always played in tune, due in large part to his attentiveness, creativity, collaborative spirit, leadership, and dedication. He deftly wove together:

  • MVCS staff (whose input was invaluable)
  • their highly effective building committee (led by board member Stephanie Mashek)
  • a collection of consultants (including Boston early childhood specialists Studio G)
  • a team of engineers who designed the structure and mechanical systems
  • town and regional regulatory officials
  • SMCo interior designer Beth Kostman
  • SMCo production staff led by Director of Production Newell Isbell-Shinn and Project Lead Rocco Bellebuono
  • our construction partner The Valle Group (based in Falmouth)
  • and a host of trade partners who did a stellar job.
Photo by Lynn Christophers for the MV Times

The process was tremendously complex but there was little strife. Despite the pandemic, it was completed on time and on budget. When students and staff transitioned from the old center to this new one, they went from a building that couldn’t have been much worse to a one that – I say immodestly, but with conviction – couldn’t be much better. The contrast is stark.

The new building epitomizes high performance in terms of energy, comfort, health, safety, and durability. The envelope is super-insulated. The mechanical systems are designed to provide highly efficient fossil-fuel-free ventilation, heat, and cooling (as designed, the ventilation system exceeded pandemic standards and required no updating). All finishes and furnishings are non-toxic. And with the addition of solar during the next phase, the building will likely produce more energy than it consumes.

The project also minimizes the negative impact on the Island ecology.  Stormwater is managed carefully with permeable pavement and rain gardens. Wastewater is treated with a denitrification system. The native plantings will thrive without irrigation. 

This is a building full of light. Nobody fails to notice this when they enter. Large windows and generous skylights flood every nook and cranny with daylight.

It’s a tranquil place. The teachers say their job is easier now than it was in the past – the thoughtful design, soothing colors, beautiful equipment, environmental comfort – all of these promote ease and well-being for staff and students alike. Parents even say it lifts their mood at drop-off and pick-up.

Donors can be proud that it’s economical too. Approximately 90% of the work was done by islanders, which rarely occurs with Vineyard public and institutional buildings. According to a benchmarking study conducted by CHA Companies, the owner’s representative for the project, this building cost the same or less than lower quality, less efficient off-island buildings of similar scale and use. Americans have become accustomed to mediocre buildings fashioned by a lowest-bidder, race-to-the-bottom mentality. There is no good reason for this. This building will cost little to maintain and operate, and it should serve our community well for 100 years or more.

Aside from all that, the building has another quality that results from Ryan and Beth’s design approach. Sometimes I pick Rock up after school and take him to the nearby skate park where he loves to ride his scooter with his friends. When he leaves the classroom, he always bounds up the cushion sculpture in the center of the atrium and jumps off the top. Joyously.

It’s a joyous building.


Riding Toward A New Future

By John Abrams |

More than 25 years ago, I was in a room somewhere organizing a conference for the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association. There were two new faces among the group – Marc Rosenbaum and Bruce Coldham – who were engaging and appeared to know their stuff. Not long after, The Wampanoag Tribe asked SMCo to design a new Headquarters, the first building they would raise as a tribe in 300 years. I was excited, but knew we had neither knowledge or capacity to take this on alone. I asked Marc (a mechanical and systems engineer from New Hampshire) and Bruce (an architect from Western MA) if they would collaborate. They agreed; we did that project together and several more after. Although we collaborated deeply on all aspects, at the heart of our shared work, Marc was Numbers, Bruce was Pictures, and I was Words. Together, a seamless composition.

Thus began a relationship that has endured. For several decades, Marc was our go-to consultant about all things energy and systems. He taught us so much about buildings that we wouldn’t have known otherwise. He still does!

Ten years ago, our relationship changed. Marc and wife Jill moved to the Vineyard. He became an SMCo employee, and later an owner. His contributions to the company, to our buildings, and to our institutional knowledge ever since have been entirely remarkable. He thinks in a way that is unlike anyone I’ve ever met. The thing about Marc is – he cares. About truth, excellence, people, life, and impeccable data-driven information. It matters to him to make a difference; he’s committed to improving conditions for people on our planet. He does – consistently, relentlessly, and generously.

At the end of this year, our relationship will change again. Marc recently announced to our leadership team that he will end his time as an employee-owner and transition back to being a trusted consultant. He has other endeavors he wants to combine with his SMCo work, so he wants to be more independent and flexible and . . . well, you know, unemployed. He’ll still work with our architects, engineers, solar team, and production staff on most of our projects. It really won’t be much different (since he’s not in the office these pandemic days anyway). We’ll still be asking “Hey Marc…” on a regular basis. He’ll still be finding the best intelligence, dreaming up new solutions, and teaching us all. We’ll still have the benefit of well-filtered know-how from his extraordinary nationwide network of experts. He’ll still be pointing out my typos and making bad puns.

He’ll still be here. We’re very lucky and very grateful. We all hope that his path forward is all-the-way fulfilling, as we’re sure it will be. After all, he’s never been one to waste opportunity.

Our mutual friend Jamie Wolf illustrates this point with an early NESEA conference story. He remembers this guy in the front row at every presentation. Invariably, his hand would shoot up to ask penetrating questions. “I first met the back of his head,” says Jamie. “Inquiry, scrutiny, mastery. That was his method. He embodied that – it’s the NESEA ethic, but we learned it, as much as from anyone, from Marc.”

About SMCo, Marc wrote after his announcement, “ . . . This community of people is extraordinary in so many ways. . . . . I’ve never been in a group where dedication to excellence, and doing the best one can, has been so prevalent. The richness comes from the diversity of what we define as excellence. That diversity leads to differences of opinion about what should be prioritized, but the commitments we bring are the foundation of goodwill that allows us to, together, create something profoundly better than any of us could do alone.”

The first time I visited Marc and Jill in New Hampshire, decades ago, I stayed in their finished basement. Hanging on a sheetrock wall in the hallway at the foot of the stairs, where you’d expect a painting to be, was a bicycle. I asked him about it. “Oh, that’s a bicycle I built for my senior thesis at MIT. At the time, it was the lightest bicycle in the world.”

Buildings are one of his passions. Bicycles are another. He’ll surely find time for both in this new chapter – The Rosenbaum Chronicles, part three.

Larger Than Life

By John Abrams |

Paul “walking on water”.
That first house.

When Paul Simmons was 22, he built a house in Acushnet, just down the road from his hometown of New Bedford, where his father had a concrete form business. He built it from the ground up – the foundation and everything else too. He and his first wife raised two sons there.

For the last 30 years (since he was 32), Paul has battled multiple sclerosis. He was diagnosed a few days after the morning he woke up, got out of bed, and crumpled to the floor. He had no feeling from the waist down. When the doctors finally figured out what was wrong, one of them, a neurologist, told Paul he would never walk again.

“Give me that goddam wheelchair,” Paul replied. He pulled himself into it, wheeled to the door, and left the room, only looking back to say to the doctor, “I don’t ever want to see your face again.”

Three weeks later, Paul shoved the wheelchair against the wall and asked his wife for a walker. He got up. He learned to walk. A few months later, he went skiing! Paul has always loved to ski. It was the favored family activity when his kids were growing up, but in recent years, his degenerative MS has made each run more difficult.

Last year, he tackled Wildcat Mountain with his grandkids. From the summit, he looked across the valley to Tuckerman’s Ravine at Mt. Washington, remembering the times he had hiked and skied the headwall, the good lines, the beautiful days. The day before, skiing with the kids, Paul had fallen and couldn’t get up. He did, somehow. Now, a day later, he could feel that this run was going to be trouble. Maybe his last one.

He told the kids to go on ahead; he would catch up. It took him an hour and a half to struggle down the mountain, in part because it was such a monumental effort and in part because he kept stopping, looking across the valley, savoring his last run.

One of Paul’s largest scale projects.

Paul takes after his Dad. His company, L.P. Simmons (it used to stand for “Lonely and Poor” after his second divorce, now it’s “Level and Plumb” deep into his third marriage), has built all our concrete foundations for the past few decades. The rough-and-tumble, boisterous nature of Paul and his cohort overlays consummate professionalism, tremendous skill, and a remarkable breadth of experience.

Paul is very good at what he does.

Paul with son Tim circa 1992.

He has skied hundreds of days and built hundreds of foundations with no feeling in his knees. These days, he can’t manage the hard physical work; his son, Tim, manages the on-site aspect of his business. Tim says his Dad is his number one priority (don’t tell his partner Aja). He says Paul’s a genius. “He looks at a set of plans and immediately sees everything. And he can do anything. But he should have been a critic – that’s his real calling. Food, movies, me – he’ll tell you what he thinks about all of ‘em.” Tim has been through some rough times, too, and beat the odds. He feels that his father’s love was a big part of what carried him through the rapids.

Paul’s physical limitations don’t stop him. Remember that house he built 40 years ago? Since then, he has built half a dozen more in his spare time. Today he lives at the end of a dirt road in Vineyard Haven with his wife Ann. Recently, he took me for a tour. The house is chockablok full of hand-crafted treasures – ingenious woodwork (much of it made with reclaimed lumber from our yard, from jobsites, and driftwood). There are curvy polished concrete counters and fine tile work. There’s even a recent addition to the house with a beautiful iron and wood stair railing. He still does everything himself (mostly).

Paul with wife Ann in their Vineyard Haven home.

He has a tiny shop in the basement with rudimentary tools. He carefully figures out everything he needs, goes downstairs, cuts the pieces, and hauls them up. Once they’ve arrived upstairs, they don’t go back down for corrections. It’s too hard to negotiate the stairs. He measures twice and cuts once.

Whenever Paul comes to our office (these days assisted by a cane) to drop off a quote or pick up a check, he lights the place up. He’s as friendly as he is loud, and he brings a bit of joy into the day, no matter how he’s feeling. As our Director of Finance, Siobhán, describes it, “Everyone starts smiling. He’s larger than life.”

We’re lucky to work with him, to benefit from his vast experience, to enjoy his friendship, and to endure his good-natured insults and admonishments. The positive spirit and defiant optimism that pulled him up out of that wheelchair 30 years ago continue to define him. He’s a lesson to us all.