Meet a TwinBridger: Fern Hurley
By Richard Landers
Fern with husband John and daughter Molly at Machu Picchu.
A social worker with a conscience? Okay, that’s to be expected. A social worker with a conscience who’s also a world traveler? That’s a little different. A social worker with a conscience who’s also a world traveler and a very experienced administrator for an important non-profit organization in the Capital Region? That sounds interesting—let’s talk to Fern Hurley!
Fern is Associate Executive Director of CAPTAIN Community Human Services and oversees some 30 programs. Their mission statement says the organization “supports and empowers people of all ages to reach their goals of personal growth and self-sufficiency. We strengthen communities.”
The mission encompasses a wide range of activities—the “What We Do” tab on their website (www.captaincares.org) lists 13 different things from after-school care to emergency assistance to homelessness prevention to aiding runaway youth to senior services and on and on. The need is great, especially among the mobile home courts in Saratoga County.
The relationship between CAPTAIN and Twin Bridges goes back quite a few years. CAPTAIN now holds a non-profit organization membership in Twin Bridges which allows several CAPTAIN employees to participate as Rotary members for a dues structure that costs little more than an individual membership.
“This is a real advantage,” says Fern. “All of these folks are busy, full-time employees and this way they can all contribute on a part-time basis.”
Although CAPTAIN is much larger than Twin Bridges, the two organizations have a mutually beneficial relationship, according to Fern. Twin Bridges helps support CAPTAIN financially, most recently with a $2,000 donation to support a distracted driving program at Shenendehowa High School and has also helped with hands-on work. The CAPteen Program is a youth development project aimed at involving local teens in community service, philanthropy, and helping those in need. The CAPteens have provided much needed volunteer labor for Twin Bridges’ very popular holiday events—"Breakfast with Santa & Mrs. Claus” in December and “Breakfast with the Easter Bunny” in the spring. The labor of 10 to 12 CAPteens is essential to the events. Fern explains how the teenagers also benefit—"they really enjoy the activity; they really want to help, and they see the Twin Bridges adults cooking, serving, bussing tables, working together in a positive way to benefit the community.” (CAPTAIN’s new Executive Director, Scott DeMarco, was a CAPteen back in the day.)
As for herself, Fern enjoys the people and the mission of Twin Bridges. She particularly likes the hands-on work—the breakfasts, the Build a Bed for kids project, the Chamber Angels shopping for presents during the holidays, the monthly visits to the Home of the Good Shepherd. She also likes the connections made with other members. For example, when she needed a headshot for the CAPTAIN website, she called longtime Twin Bridges member and excellent photographer, Larry Bailey.
Asked what she loves to do, Fern came up with three things—travel, yoga and Christmas trees, all longtime pursuits. She has been all over Europe and South America, and met her husband John, native of Great Britain, at a youth hostel in Atlanta. A trip to Peru (see photo) included a hike up Machu Pichu and a visit with the Paddington Bear statue in Lima. (You may recall that Paddington came from Peru.)
She credits yoga, which she does every morning, with getting her into “the right head space.”
And Christmas trees? “ I love ‘em,” Fern says. She comes by that love naturally, having grown up on a Christmas tree farm in the tiny hamlet of Medusa, NY, part of the town of Rensselaerville in Albany County. “I have to have a live tree every year and it takes an hour or two to find the right one.” She also loves to decorate for the holidays in her 100-year-old home in Round Lake.
Fern, a graduate of Niagara University with a master’s in social work from New York University, did not start out in social work. Instead, she worked with her mother and brother in a Sylvan Learning Center. Eventually her mother sold that business after Fern and her brother decided they did not want to continue in it. She looked for social work opportunities and found one at CAPTAIN running Cheryl’s Lodge, a program that started out as a place for kids to go after school and do homework; it has now grown into a community center with numerous programs including high school equivalency classes, income tax preparation, and senior citizen activities.
There is one thing for sure—Fern won’t get bored any time soon.