Fifty Years On, Still Going Strong: Vanessa Barry’s Remarkable NYCHA Career
When Vanessa Barry began her career at NYCHA in 1976, the United States was celebrating its bicentennial, New York City was emerging from a historic fiscal crisis, and Gerald R. Ford was president.
Half a century later, Ms. Barry remains at her post. While everything around her may have changed, Ms. Barry is still going strong and not even sure she seeks a pause.
“I started the retirement process once,” she said. “But then I had to come back. I said to myself, ‘No, no! I’m just not ready yet!’”
That decision opened one more chapter in what was on its way to becoming an extraordinary NYCHA career. In the course of her now five decades of service, Ms. Barry worked at individual developments and at the Authority’s central offices, raised two sons to adulthood as a single mom – one who took full advantage of NYCHA’s daycare resources to do so – and through all that time made NYCHA an essential, enduring part of her family’s life.
Ms. Barry began her career as a civil servant in the Bronx, working first at Bailey Avenue – West 193rd Street, and then at Fort Independence over the course of her first 10 years with the Authority. For the next major chapter of her career, she joined NYCHA’s Accounts Payable team, first at 250 Broadway, then at 90 Church Street – nearly 40 years ago.
Her transition to the central offices introduced Ms. Barry to the broad network of colleagues and departments she has had the chance to get to know and work with throughout the balance of her career. Wherever she was assigned to work, Ms. Barry said, it has always been the kind and humane colleagues she had who made the difference.
“What I love most about NYCHA is the people,” she said. “There have always been dear people I could turn to when I had a problem, no matter what it was. I’ve been treated very kindly and very respectfully by so many people throughout my time at NYCHA. I have been blessed, to tell the truth.”
From her early years at NYCHA, Ms. Barry fondly remembers plenty of more-experienced colleagues encouraging her, a new employee, to help her find her footing.
NYCHA’s importance in Ms. Barry’s life story extends well beyond employment; she has also been a resident of the Bronx’s Gun Hill Houses since 1983. For over four decades, she has thus seen NYCHA from multiple sides: as an employee, working to help the organization pursue its mission, and as a resident, who built a home and raised a family here.
When asked about her possible retirement, Ms. Barry said she has not yet made up her mind. After reaching a milestone few employees ever do, she is permitting herself a bit of flexibility and intends to make that decision when the time is right.
“I’ll have to see,” she said. “I’m not quite ready yet!”For now, Ms. Barry’s remarkable NYCHA career continues, with no set end in sight. Until then, congratulations and thank you, Vanessa Barry, for what you have built and accomplished, day by day and year by year: a rare and remarkable record of service.
