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08/02/2017 08:30 AMVietnam veteran and East Haven resident Jack Stacey recently held a discussion at Hagaman Memorial Library about his experiences in the military as well as bringing The Wall That Heals, a half-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. designed to travel through communities in the United States, to East Haven in 2005.
Discussions like this aren’t all Jack does to help his community.
“About 15 or almost 20 years ago now I used to do this program; I used to go around to various high schools, I was in between careers, and I used to do this,” Jack says. “So I said let me resurrect that program and try to do it again.”
Being a history teacher for the past 18 years, Jack says incorporates some of the things he teaches into these discussions, including his most talk on Vietnam.
Some of the other discussions he’s led include one about Marquis de Lafayette, who camped with his troops on the East Haven Green during the Revolutionary War; Jack also gave a talk with the Historical Society about the history of Fair Haven.
“I enjoy doing things like that, I have a good time,” Jack says.
A previous East Haven Merit Award Winner, Jack says he wanted to give back even more after receiving the award, so he got involved with the committee that does selections, and has been involved with that since about 2005. The winners of the award are announced as a kick off to the annual East Haven Fall Festival.
Jack’s involvement with the Fall Festival reaches farther, too. The Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) Chapter 484 also took over the car show on Sunday at the festival, and in recent years, Jack has become the representative for the chapter at meetings pertaining to the car show.
“I don’t have a lot to do with the car show other than just sit and listen,” says Jack, whose main focus is the Merit Award, “but the festival has been phenomenal.”
Jack teaches at High School in the Community in New Haven, a magnet school with a population of about 300 kids.
It’s a “very progressive school; it was actually one of the first magnet schools in the state, and one of the things that makes it so different is the administration is always asking us if we have ideas for classes, and they allow us to develop our own curriculum,” he says.
Some of the classes and subjects Jack teaches are about Vietnam, the ‘60s, and class called “Discovering New Haven,” where he teaches about the history of New Haven. He says it’s a lot of fun to be able to teach that kind of stuff.
Jack says that the kids are great and it keeps him feeling young. He also says it’s a rewarding job, adding that he has a few students in the armed forces who will come back and visit him and tell him how much an influence he was on them.
Jack is also a member of the Civil Service Commission in town. When a person submits an application for a town job, such as a policeman or for Public Works, that person is administered a civil services test.
“The commissioner administers the test; we help out with that, we get the scores, then send names of…the highest scorers on to be hired,” he says. “Basically, we don’t have the power to hire anybody, but we do the recommending. It’s a rewarding thing, I enjoy doing it.”
His wife Susan is involved with helping the homeless and does Midnight Runs through the St Vincent De Paul Church, and Jack says he helps her at times. Jack has been a coach for his children’s teams when they were growing up, was president of the Yellowjacket Club for a time, and has worked with Clean UP East Haven when they go around doing their cleanings.
“Whatever we can do to try to make the community better, that’s what we want to do,” Jack says.
Jack says, as he mentioned in his speech when he won the Merit Award, that he remembers when former U.S. President John F. Kennedy gave his famous “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” speech. Jack says he wanted to take that further—not just about the country, but about a person’s home state and town.
Giving back to the community is something that Jack encourages his students to do as well. He says he doesn’t do what he does for the recognition, but says it’s a great feeling when he does get recognized for what he does.
“I’ve got grandchildren; they’ve got to grow up in this world, so what can I do to make it better for them?” Jack asks. “If I could just be remembered for being a good guy, and I tried to do whatever [I] could to help out the people of East Haven and the surrounding areas, that’s good with me.”