NORTHAMPTON — Zachariah Vaughan said his painting company is offering an “amalgamation of community service,” as he oversaw the repainting of the Florence Civic Center by a crew that includes six Afghan refugees.
Vaughan, who owns Grace Paint & Tile Inc., said he donated the exterior paint job, worth an estimated $18,000, because of his love for the civic center and its arts programming like the summer concert series. The project broke ground on Thursday.
Four recent Northampton High School graduates who work for company make up the remainder of the crew. Work pauses periodically while the Muslim painters bow in prayer.
The company hired eight Afghan refugees in March and “six of them just celebrated their 90 days of full employment,” Vaughan said. He has nicknamed these employees “the consortium” because he had been involved in an employment and training consortium in his youth and he felt this effort was a way to carry that torch forward.
The men in the consortium live in Hampshire, Franklin and Hampden counties. Vaughan said it was “absolutely crucial” that Cosmic Cab owner Jeff Miller agreed to give them rides to the job site every day from a central location that is outside the company’s normal pickup area.
“These guys’ resumés, some of them read, ‘Record store, dry waller, Special Ops infantry,’” Vaughan said. Several were “in a cooperative position to help the U.S. military” during the war in Afghanistan.
After the U.S. withdrew armed forces from Afghanistan last year and the Taliban took control of the country, more than 76,000 Afghan civilians were resettled in the United States. Catholic Charities, based in Springfield, is one of the agencies working to resettle refugees throughout the Pioneer Valley and the nonprofit manages the cases of the consortium.
One of the evacuees interviewed at the job site said he and others came to Massachusetts about eight months ago and eventually began working for Vaughan.
The newly hired painter said he’s glad to work on a donated project that benefits his adopted community.
“We are human, right? We have to help each other. It doesn’t matter. I am from Afghanistan, now I’m in the United States. We have to be nice with each other,” said the employee who did not want to be identified for security reasons.
“This is a nice place, a good place. We searched about the crime and it’s low. It’s a nice place. Nice weather, nice people,” he said.
At first, the company was “bending over backwards and hemorrhaging money” to get the crew trained and properly certified while also working behind the scenes to secure U.S. government documents for them, Vaughan said. Whalen Insurance, he said, “somehow procured a driving record from a war-torn country” and helped two of the consortium members get their Massachusetts driver’s licenses.
“Maybe we’ll recoup our losses somewhere down the road, but right now, it’s just karmically rewarding,” Vaughan said. “They really hit the ground running.”
In order to get state certification to work with lead, like that found in decades-old paint, a person must prove to a doctor that they can wear a well-fitting respirator. But thick beards are a cultural and religious norm among the consortium, Vaughan said, so they each had to decide whether they were willing to trim or shave.
“A couple of them were not happy, but the rest of the guys that were happy, and had been there first, explained to them who I was, what my intentions were and that it would behoove them to do this,” Vaughan said. “They all got on board” and received certifications in hazardous materials and safety, as well, which they can carry with them to future jobs.
He said there have been a few misunderstandings that needed to be addressed, but local vendors have shown kindness. Some in the consortium went to Valley Recycling to drop off waste and left without paying; Vaughan said he went there to smooth things over and the company donated a hydraulic lift that the crew is using on the civic center job.
Working alongside the consortium provides his younger employees with “cultural education at its finest,” he said.
“We don’t have a lot of exposure to other cultures in Northampton,” he said. But when the young athletes who have joined his company over the last four years learned that their newest colleagues would take time to bow toward Mecca, they had “an amazing response. It was, ‘Hey guys, it’s almost 2 o’clock! Get your prayer on!”
Brian Steele can be reached at bsteele@gazettenet.com.