Before he began addressing the audience, Ralph Gagliardo, from the Faces of Homelessness Speakers Bureau, said in an interview that it is ”important to spread the message that homelessness is a growing issue that is not going away and should not be ignored, and just as importantly that it can happen to anyone at any time during their life. And it also is important to realize there are a lot of stereotypes around homelessness, and I feel like part of my job is to dispel those stereotypes.” 

The speakers bureau is part of Hands on Hartford, founded in 1969, which describes itself as a “social service nonprofit organization that serves Hartford’s most economically challenged residents in the areas of food, housing, and health.” 

Senior Anna Bolwell led the effort to bring Hands on Hartford to the convocation on Friday, January 10, and helped organized an event later in the day to make care packages — containing such things as hygiene items, hats, gloves, and socks — for those experiencing homelessness in the Hartford community.  

There was no reason for Ralph to think he would some day live on the streets. He owned his own business, he told the convocation audience, restoring antique and classic cars. Then one day the vehicle he was driving was slammed into “by an 18-wheeler," and that tractor trailer accident changed his life. “It felt like a trash compactor,” he said, “and I wasn’t sure if it was going to stop or I was just going to get crushed.” He would end up with back injuries, which led to pain medication, which led to addiction, which led to relapses and being in and out of prison. He lost his business, but more painful than that, he said, was hurting his family. 

The 10-year period, he said, included about 3 ½ total years of prison time. He lived in cars and tents and outside wherever he could.  

“Every day is like being in a whirlpool where you’re just going around and around,” he said. He also equated that part of his life to a book: “Each page is telling [part of the story] but when you’re homeless you’re in between the story. The story is going by without you. Life is going by.” 

In the end, he said, what saved him was the fear of fentanyl, the highly addictive drug. He saw it taking down one person after another who were part of his circle. He said he knew he would die if he went back to street life.  

Then one day he was at an event in Hartford, a theme of which was sharing and caring. There was food, programming, and at the end an open microphone. He got up to speak. When he was in jail, Ralph had written a poem to his daughter about not being in her life. At the Hartford event, he shared the poem as a spoken word piece, choking up along the way.  

After that experience, Ralph was asked to write for a street newspaper in Hartford organized by the Charter Oak Cultural Center. “The people who contributed basically were disenfranchised from society or at least felt that way,” he said.  

Writing for the newspaper in turn led him to take some classes for people trying to stay off the street, then to Goodwin College, where he earned a bachelor’s degree and spoke at his graduation. He was in his early 50s. He remembers the actor Danny Glover and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal coming up to him after he talked, but most touching was the presence of one person in the audience. At the end his daughter got up and yelled, “I love you, Dad.” 

Reflected on that moment, Ralph said, “It’s never too late to turn your life around. Every day is an opportunity to do better than the day before.” He has been a part of the Faces of Homelessness Speakers Bureau for about 12 years now. Hands on Hartford was always there for him, he said. “There was always a warm place, a hot meal, friendly people. ... It kept me going all those years I was on the street.”  

Ralph is one of six speakers in the speakers bureau’s program. All six have experienced homelessness. And those last two words are important to him. 

“I heard someone the other day refer to a person as ‘experiencing homelessness.’ ... We’re always saying homeless person. ... Homelessness is not a medical condition,” Ralph said in the Q & A portion of the convocation. “It's a period of life someone is going through, so to identify someone [as experiencing homelessness] is more accurate.”  

Ralph also talked about stigmas and labels — such as “addict,” “alcoholic,” “lazy” — that are associated with those experiencing homelessness. “All these things may be partial truths but are not the whole picture,” he said. He cautioned people on the language used, judgments made. 

When asked by a student if he was scared of a relapse, he said would not call it being scared, but that he is “very vigilant ... very conscious of my sobriety,” which has “made my life so much better, so much more productive.” He said that the joy in life — which he had lost — is back. That gives him incentive to stay clean. 

Another question was what a person can do to help someone experiencing homelessness. “Be kind, be compassionate,” Ralph answered.  “Realize homelessness is something someone is going through, not who they are. It is a point in their life.” 

He talked about the common experience of encountering a person on the side of the road requesting help. One idea, he said, is to carry a care package in your car that you can give to someone who needs it. Later Friday night students would be putting together just that sort of thing. 

The idea to bring Ralph here for a convocation and build the care packages took shape last year. Anna, a Norton Family Center for the Common Good intern and secretary of the Pelican Service Organization, had brought the idea to Heather Henderson, the director of community engagement, and they worked with Matt Kammrath, the director of the Norton Center. 

Anna did a similar care-package project when she was in middle school., and last year she attended a smaller event at the Norton Center involving Hands on Hartford and its Faces of Homelessness Speakers Bureau. Junior Lilly Oslin organized that event. 

“There is just so much support here,” Anna said in an interview earlier this week. “Ms. Henderson was my biggest supporter, and without her it would have been impossible.”  

“It gives me pride,” Heather said, “to see students realize their desires to help others.”