Theresa Francis

“She put her fist on that table and some of the bank presidents and company presidents that she sat across from or the personnel managers -- they blushed when Theresa started talking.”

    - Mike Kearney

Theresa Francis became involved with the NVP when her job was threatened by the impending closing of Century Brass.  Within a few months she developed a key role as a leader in many aspects of the NVP, eventually becoming Vice President. 

Carol Burkhart first saw Theresa Francis during a break at a Century Brass union meeting.

“They were standing in line, single file, waiting to talk to her, like she was some pastor.  I was astounded.  I ran over to Ken and said, I know who the next leader of the Naugatuck Valley Project is going to be in this union.”

Theresa Francis remembers...

“I didn’t want to be the prettiest or the richest.  The story that got me was Solomon.  I wanted to be like Solomon.  The story about the baby – each one claimed it.  He said, O.K., cut the baby in half.  From the time I was a little kid, I wanted to care about people and to understand...

When I got older, I kind of enlarged my outlook to include everybody in my church and all my friends.  Then when I went to work, it was included to that group and then, that feeling that people are more important than possessions kind of grew to include everybody.”

“When I questioned what happened in Century, people said ‘There’s no corporate conscience.’  And I say if there’s no corporate conscience it’s because we allowed it to be that way. We should not leave our morality captured to one hour in church on Sunday.  Morality has to be in our homes and follow us into the workplace or the corporation.  When you question something that happened with a company -- like how come people are denied the things that they earned – they act like, ‘Why are you questioning this?  You’re asking somebody in the government!  You’re asking somebody in the company!  This is a private corporation!” 

"All workers have to realize that we’re responsible for our own condition.  And if we don’t devote some time to our unions or our political party or our church organization, our social groups, the laws being enacted, we’ll wake up and find ourselves with empty pension funds, bankrupt companies, disproportionate sacrifices, and a run-down community.

“And that’s where the Naugatuck Valley Project comes in.  They’ve decided that we shouldn’t have a run-down community.  If we care what happens in our city, we’ve got to be banded together for the good of everyone.  And the motto of ‘Let George do it’ has to go.  If all the people in this city are banded together to make a better place to live, then it will be a better place to live.  That’s what Naugatuck Valley Project is all about.  It’s a family – it’s like a larger family of churches, unions, small businesses, chambers of commerce, all working together to make their community the best place to live and work and to have fun.”

"You have to become involved and help with creating your community because if you don't you are a victim, and God didn't make us victims; He made us co-creators.  And that's what we're about and that's what we're supposed to be about.  That's my way of saying what the Naugatuck Valley Project is about."

    - Theresa Francis