Brother Carl Hardrick Institute awarded $50,000 grant to help reduce gun and street violence
A new $5 million fund established at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving by Simsbury philanthropists Robert and Margaret Patricelli is dedicated to granting projects that lift up communities in the Hartford area. The fund’s first grant recognizes someone who has dedicated his life to the city’s communities: Brother Carl Hardrick.
The foundation announced that the Patricelli Family Fund has granted $50,000 over the next two years to The Brother Carl Hardrick Institute for Violence Prevention. The institute, based at Wilson-Gray YMCA on Albany Avenue, trains young community members on how to engage the people of their neighborhoods with the goal of stopping gun and street violence before it starts.
“The institute goes back to work I’ve been doing for years. The question is, who’s going to replace me? What happens if something happens to me?” Hardrick said in an interview. “Like the UConn basketball team, we have to have great people coming in. The older ones are not going to be there forever.”
Hardrick is a legend in the Hartford community. He became famous in the city and the region while he was working at South Arsenal Neighborhood Development Corp. in the ‘80s, when he got out into the community and became known by everyone. He was a respected and trusted figure when he heard about plans for a gang war.
“I found who was in charge. I said, ‘What are you doing? ... I understand you have a group of young men in a gang. How strong is it?’ ” Hardrick said. “He said 900. They came from Bellevue Square, from the Avenue, from Dutch Point.
“The kids’ average age was 17. The youngest was 12. They got in a beef with the other gang in Stowe Village and they said they were going to war.”
To avert the violence, Hardrick got the leaders of the two gangs to meet.
“There was 25 of the one and 25 of the other and we sat at a table. They agreed to mend their difficulties with one another,” he said. “That was the beginning of my work with gangs.”
His success made him well-known outside the city, too. He traveled nationwide to work with civic leaders on how to prevent violence.
Hardrick said the mission of violence prevention doesn’t start with showy successes like his war intervention. It starts with years of day-to-day community interaction.
“First you have to earn respect by engaging people, having conversations with them, or else they’ll say, ‘I don’t know who you are, I don’t want to talk to you,’ ” he said. “People don’t care about how much you know, they care about how much you care. Sometimes that means taking them to school, spending time with them, taking them to court, mediating a fight, doing the things most people won’t do.”
The institute
Joanne Price, co-managing partner and founder of Fairview Capital, founded the Brother Carl Hardrick Institute in 2021 with Hardrick and Stephen Bayer, senior vice president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford.
“When you meet Brother Carl, you are meeting a person who is absolutely committed to a cause and a community. He does not need a pat on the back or awards or any of that. He does all his work form the heart and from care,” Price said. “It doesn’t get any better than that.”
Tragically, Hardrick’s own family became the victim of gun violence last year, when his 19-year-old grandson, Makhi Buckly, died from a shooting on Memorial Day. A Hartford teen has been charged with his murder.
The institute’s purposes and goals, as stated on its website, are “mobilizing the community to change social norms through a community-wide, public health and social development approach; identifying and supporting the highest risk groups of youth; detecting and interrupting potentially violent conflicts of known perpetrators; and establishing positive youth development programs to empower and support young men and women.” It works with a variety of local institutions such as Trinity Health of New England, Connecticut Health Foundation, Hartford HealthCare, Blue Hills Civic Association, Mothers United Against Violence, Nutmeg Big Brothers Big Sisters, the city and state government and corporate and religious leaders.
The $50,000 grant from the Patricelli Fund will “create more Brother Carls,” said institute spokeswoman Francine Austin.
The fund
The Patricellis are not newcomers to philanthropy. They founded Robert & Margaret Patricelli Family Foundation in 1997. Among that foundation’s grantees are Dance CT ballet company, the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship and the Patricelli ‘92 Theater restoration project at Wesleyan University, the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, Hartford Gospel Fest, CT Public, CT Rising, EngageCT, the Hartford Courant’s Meeting Ground project, CT Mirror Hartford Promise and Hartford Public Library.
The Patricelli Foundation’s latest funding project is $600,000 to restore three greenhouses in Elizabeth Park that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. That grant was offered in honor of the couple’s mothers — Lydia Patricelli and Carolyn Sweetland — who both were nature lovers.
The Patricelli Family Fund, at the Hartford Foundation, will fund projects that are exclusively based in the city and region.
Robert Patricelli met Hardrick back when Hardrick worked with SAND.
“Carl thankfully is still with us. I am delighted to be able to support him,” Patricelli said. “I have cherished those relationships that go back to the ‘70s.”
Susan Dunne can be reached at sdunne@courant.com.
