Ken Galdston and Carol Burkhart

"I’m a gardener.  We’re in the Valley, we’re building a Valley organization with the folks that are here, and whatever we develop needs to grow out of their experience and who they are.  My role is to challenge them."

     - Ken Galdston

Carol Burkhart, now Carol Burkhart-Lyons, came to the Naugatuck Valley Project as an organizer from Buffalo, where she had worked with Ken Galdston.

"Back in 1971, my father had worked over 25years in the machine shop, and all of a sudden, one day, it was announced it was closing down and moving out.  My parents were deaf, so I had to go to bat for him.  I went to the union and they were just as helpless as my dad was.  And it made me very angry to think that this man had worked all those years thinking he was protected with the union and wasn’t protected at all.  I ended up going to my Congressman, my Councilman, and fighting to get his pension.  He ended up with about $21 dollars a month for the rest of his life which is pretty pathetic...

With that kind of history, and watching my aunts and uncles moving out of town because Westinghouse closed up, when I came to the Valley I was just very inspired by the work that Ken was doing."

Carol said her contribution was deepening the organization.

"When I say deepen it, I mean to get people to look at who they are, why they do what they do in their daily lives, to look at their values as far as home life, church life, union life, job life, to wrestle with it and to be uncomfortable with it.  I’m waking up a lot of anger that they already have.  And very justifiably so.  That they should be angry and that they should be awakened to fight these outside giants that have come and ravished their personal lives."