NORTHAMPTON — Daniel Nye doesn’t have big shoes to fill. He has clown-sized ones to step into.
As the city’s new veterans’ services director, pending City Council confirmation Thursday following his nomination by Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra, Nye will succeed Steve Connor, who retired last month after 22 years in the role. Before taking the job in 2004, Connor worked a variety of jobs, including as a clown at birthday parties and picnics.
Little did Nye know that he and Connor had crossed paths years before they became colleagues. Later in life, Nye realized a photograph of himself at age 7 showed Connor making a balloon animal. By coincidence, the two eventually worked side by side, and now Nye is preparing to take over Connor’s office in what he called a full-circle moment.
“I made the joke that with his legacy here, I don’t just have big shoes to fill, I have clown shoes to fill,” said Nye.
Nye has worked alongside Connor as a veterans service officer for the past four years, and he doesn’t intend to reinvent the wheel. Nye said that despite the numerous positives of serving in the military, negatives include a bureaucratic approach. But that is the opposite approach that Connor brought to the job, he said.
“It is the opposite of bureaucratic — it is profoundly people-focused,” he said. “I’m far less concerned with building my own legacy in this as I am with just continuing this culture of service that we have here. I think we do a lot of great work here — I think we have a good reputation for a reason, and it’s because it’s about the people.”
As director of veterans’ services for Northampton, Nye oversees the Central Hampshire Veterans’ Services, which provides support services to veterans in 14 communities. The district oversees some 70% of Hampshire County with about 4,500 veterans.
The primary role of his position will be to orchestrate a four-person team to connect veterans with federal, state and local resources, including low-income benefits, counseling, medical help, employment searches, among other services.
While these are the routine aspects of his role, Nye also takes on the role during a transitional time for the veterans community. As local American Legions and Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States (VFWs) shutter due to declining membership, his role will involve strategizing how to bring veterans together.
“What does the veterans’ community look like going forward?” he asked, posing it as a central question for his office to ponder. “Over half the veterans in this area are Vietnam-era veterans, and so when that era is gone, when that generation is gone, the numbers will be so small you won’t have what there once was.”
Thinking outside of the box will be key, he said. In addition to holding monthly breakfasts or lunches, he also thinks that newer ideas, such as video game nights, may unlock a way to build community for the younger generations of those who have served.
Nye, who entered the National Guard in 2008, is part of this younger generation of veterans. He started out as a military intelligence officer and later served in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2012 as battalion intelligence officer for the Massachusetts National Guard Infantry Division. He is still an Army reservist, with four years left until retirement.
Aside from his time deployed, Nye has spent his entire life in Hampshire County, growing up in Chesterfield and Williamsburg, where he now lives with his wife and two children. He is a member of the American Legion in Haydenville.
Around Nye’s new office is memorabilia of family members who have served. Despite growing up riveted by the stories that his grandparents and uncles who served would share, his father didn’t recommend Nye enter the military.
“I came from a military family, though my father never encouraged it,” said Nye, adding that his father advised him to at least attend college first.
So that’s what he did, majoring in history with a focus on early American history and the modern Middle East. His experience included studying abroad in Cairo, Egypt.
Since childhood, Nye has had a burning enthusiasm for history, particularly military history. He has used this passion over the past five years to uncover the stories of some 30 local veterans who have died in combat. Each of them has been remembered with Medals of Liberty, an award from the governor given to families of those who have died while serving.
Quoting Joseph Stalin who said, “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic,” Nye made the case for why remembering the individuals who gave their lives is so important.
“The point on his [Stalin’s] end was to justify atrocities, but it’s true that inevitably you’ll get somebody who talks about the 600,000 who died in the Civil War and the 125,000 [Americans] in World War I,” said Nye. “We can’t process that — it doesn’t mean anything to us. But when you can tell the story of one individual whose family is still there in town and tell their story, it connects people and personalizes them in a way.”
Sciarra said she was excited to promote Nye to the position.
“Dan has four years of municipal experience supporting the communities and veterans of the Central Hampshire Veterans’ Services District,” she said. “With an additional 18 years of military leadership, Dan is the right person to step into this role.”
