Aliyya Swaby Photo
Hamilton at her Wooster Square home.
Brand-new heiress Wendy Hamilton said that she wants to donate a million inherited dollars to the city’s poor, black and homeless — a process that’s at times is proving more complicated than she expected.
Hamilton, a 66-year-old local activist on homeless and social justice issues and self-described “Bernie Sanders socialist,” said she recently inherited $2 million from the estate of her late grandmother, who died about “20 some-odd years ago.”
Some of the initial sum was diverted to her younger brother. She received the rest. So far, she said, she has spent about $300,000. She’s looking to donate another $700,000 or so.
A secrecy clause in the will prevents her from discussing the origin story of the millions, which stemmed from a family-owned private company, Hamilton said in an interview in the one-bedroom Greene Street apartment she shares with husband Jim Duarte and her excitable rescued pitbull Suzie. She was more than chatty about how and why she is giving half the money away — and what she expects from her recipients in return.
Hamilton said she hopes drawing media attention to her donations will encourage other wealthy people in New Haven to stop “hoarding” their money and instead give it to worthy causes in the city.
Her first step in January was to give $100,000 to Sunrise Cafe, a free breakfast program at St. Paul and St. James Episcopal Church on Olive Street in Wooster Square neighborhood. John Bradley, executive director of Liberty Community Services, which runs the cafe, said the money would keep the cafe open for another year, when interviewed about the gift by the New Haven Register.
“I want to do as much as I can for my town, where I’m going to live and die,” Hamilton said.
No Kids. No Debt. No Materialism
Duarte: Hamilton is the radical one.
“My husband is very worried about being poor,” Hamilton said, so they may keep about half the $2 million to pay the bills through their sunset years. “This is all I want,” Hamilton said, indicating her modest furniture and the “tchotchkes” lined up neatly on her bookshelf and desk.
Hamilton had no children with Duarte, who is 68, or with her first husband, a white-collar worker at Yale who first brought her from New York to practice nursing in New Haven in 1984. She said she had her tubes tied in New York when she was 23 “because I knew I couldn’t afford” children: “I knew when I was 16 that [having a child] was a bad idea.”
She has paid off her mortgage. She doesn’t travel. She has no major debt.
Now a millionaire, she said, rather than buy new material goods, she is fervently directing her efforts and money toward a pet goal: ending homelessness in the city.
“I’m an angry black man trapped in the body of a white woman,” she said.
Hilary nutcracker and Bill screwdriver.
Talking in the morning of Super Tuesday’s set of primary elections, Hamilton professed her devotion to Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, whose campaign swag she has been passing around to friends in the city. Despite her disdain for fellow Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, Hamilton’s home is full of ironic Clinton memorabilia, including a “nutcracker” Hillary doll and a “screwdriver” Bill doll.
She used $2,000 to take her and a friend to New Hampshire for three days and three nights during the February primary season. “It was exhilarating,” she said.
Husband Duarte is self-professedly less radical. “I’m a Democrat period,” he said. “Somebody has to even out the balance.”
But he’s a big Sanders fan. “I want to sleep tonight,” he added sardonically. He first connected with Hamilton when she was walking down South Beach on Martha’s Vineyard in 1968. But they each got married to their first spouses. He was married 30 years. “That came to an end, and she was available,” Duarte said.
Keitazulu Benefits
Keitazulu: Expansion plans
Hamilton avidly campaigned for local independent candidate Sundiata Keitazulu in the 2015 mayoral election. Keitazulu won 269 votes in the election compared to incumbent Mayor Toni Harp’s 10,784.
Hamilton gave Keitazulu $14,000 from her millions last week, which he said he will use to invest in his business, “Nate The Snake Drain Cleaning Service.”
Keitazulu said Hamilton is filling a gap that prevents many “minority businesses” from being funded. He said he tried to get a bank loan many times but “never managed to succeed.” He said he will use Hamilton’s $14,000 — and an extra promised $35,000 — to buy two new trucks, hire two or three people and get updated equipment for the business, which he hopes to expand to Bridgeport and Hartford.
“It was a surprise and shock to me” to receive the money, he said. “She said I was the first person to really thank her.”
A few weeks ago, Hamilton got in touch with the city’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Trees asking Director Rebecca Bombero to name the price to rent Lighthouse Point’s historic carousel for July and August. Hamilton wants to keep it open daily free especially for children who want to play on it. Often people rent the carousel during the summer for weddings and special events.
Bombero said Thursday she’s putting together a request in response to her meeting with Hamilton: “I’m trying to figure out the mechanics and what the budget would be” with staff time.
Hamilton also gave $14,000 to fund the Progressive Action Roundtable newsletter, which lists activist events around town.
New Bucks For New Light
Conaway: Hamilton’s plan is too aggressive.
A month ago, Hamilton donated $20,000 to New Light High School on Wooster Square Park, an alternative school a block away from her home. Principal Larry Conaway is responsible for ensuring his overaged, under-credited students make it through high school into a vocational program — with few resources and little support.
Conaway said he will use Hamilton’s money to upgrade the art room, build the science department and strengthen student organizations — “all the things we don’t have money to do right now.”
He said it was “noble” of Hamilton to think of New Light. He has only recently begun to draw on community partners for help the school does not receive through district funding.
In return, Hamilton asked to teach an elective at the school’s summer session on Native American culture. “I’ve always wanted to teach,” she said. “I said, ‘Well, I just gave him $20K.’ … Now I can walk over and teach a course.” A voracious reader, Hamilton is already preparing for her new role and opened a suitcase full of books to show her thoroughness. The main textbook: S. C. Gwynne’s “Empire of the Summer Moon” on the history of the Comanche tribe in the Western United States.
Hamilton wants to give more money to New Light, but this time with conditions. She wants Wells Fargo Bank, one of the school’s community partners, to match a $30,0000 to $50,000 donation. “I want to do it with press coverage,” she said.
Conaway has not gotten back to her about that plan, she said. When interviewed by the Independent, Conway said he was not really “in agreement” with that tactic. Though appreciative of Hamilton’s generosity, he said, “I don’t think you can force people to do anything. I work in philanthropy. People got to have a passion. They have to want to do that. Wendy is a little more aggressive than that.”
“I was hoping this would fly under the radar,” Conaway said. “But that’s not what Wendy wants. That’s what comes when you accept donations.”
Hamilton said she still has “enough to give to whoever I want.” She has considered donating to East Rock resettlement agency Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, but “it’s too far for me to walk” to deliver the check. Still, she said, “I may end up giving them money.”
She spoke of buying Sunrise Cafe its own building to continue feeding those who cannot afford regular food. But she said she’s not quite loaded enough to do that on her own, especially not including needed remodeling and especially not in pricey Wooster Square. She has reached out to other wealthy people in the city to ask them to split the cost. So far, she said, no one has said yes.
“If I were richer, I would be doing it for hundreds of apartments,” getting homeless people stable homes and proper resources, she said.
Hamilton grew up middle-class in New York to a family of Jewish liberals, and attended the private progressive school Little Red School House in the 1960s. Much of her family is now dead, she said. Though she won’t reveal the way her grandmother made the money, she promises it’s clean, that her family never “scheistered anybody.”
The family donated to causes like Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders. She’s trying to continue the family tradition. But the process is taking more effort than she had thought. “I don’t know why,” she said. “It’s hard to give money away.”