Leading up to our anniversary, we'll be posting pictures from various points in our history. You can visit this page every Thursday to see the latest throwback photo, or you can follow NCHH on
Twitter or
Instagram.
Our Throwback Thursday photo for April 6, 2017
There's no better throwback photo to start with than that of Nick Farr, the man who founded the National Center for Healthy Housing back in September of 1992 (as the National Center for Lead-Safe Housing) and who led our fledgling organization to greatness in his decade as Executive Director.
NCHH's Chief Scientist, Dr. David Jacobs, first joined NCHH in 1992, when Nick Farr recruited him to be our first Deputy Director. He eulogized Nick on our website after Farr passed away on May 27, 2014:
"Nick embodied all the values and aspirations that make the Center so important in the life of the nation. He had an insistence on rigor, a demand to base what should be done to solve a problem on fact. He never stopped moving forward. He was a student of life, devouring every book and paper put in front of him. He had leading positions in government, finance, advocacy, academia, nonprofit housing, health, foreign policy, and so much more. He meddled in science and invited others like me to meddle in his own field of law, and out of all that meddling came products that truly mattered. He devoted much of his life to the poor, to making government serve them, and to an unwavering sense of justice. He meant so much to me, someone who took me in at a low point (the famous basement times), who demonstrated love, who valued nature (we did more than a few hikes and bike trips together), who treasured knowledge—he was a voracious reader (he read one of Sherry Dixon’s statistics textbooks in a single night, although he admitted that he did not quite understand it all). He always said what he thought and spoke truth to power. He was the master of the nonoperational hearing aid, a weakness he turned to strength. He took chances and learned from failure. He was a husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and most of all a friend who will be missed but never forgotten. A life well lived and to be celebrated."
We snapped this photo of Nick at his retirement party in 2002.
Our Throwback Thursday photo for April 13, 2017For this week's throwback, we revisited this photo of Jill Breysse, Laura Titus, and Amanda Reddy at a
Rebuilding Together Arlington-Fairfax-Falls Church event in northern Virginia back in 2013. Both NCHH and its for-profit subsidiary, Healthy Housing Solutions, worked on both the inside and outside of a house selected by founding board member Don Ryan and Rebuilding Together Alexandria. It was hard work but very rewarding and even a lot of fun. We look forward to ding it again soon. The ladies were sanding rails on the ramp leading up to the front porch when we snapped this picture. We'll post more from this event in the coming weeks.
Our Throwback Thursday photo for April 20, 2017: Coming Soon