Let us now praise him
He’s a brilliant politician whose name has never appeared on a ballot. He’s a phenomenally successful CEO for an outfit that never turned a cent of profit. He’s the center of the universe for tens of thousands in a city where most people have never heard of him.
For more than 40 years, Bob Coard has led an organization called Action for Boston Community Development. If you’re poor, elderly, an immigrant, or down on your luck, chances are Coard’s ABCD has changed your life.
When he came to the nonprofit in the 1960s, philanthropy meant ladling soup and providing beds for a night. The needy always came back the next day. Coard’s aim has always been to lose those clients forever - to set up people with educations, child care, and other tools so they can go out and get jobs. He wasn’t just in the fish-dispensing business: He has always believed every person should have his own rod.
That way of thinking is widespread now, but it was revolutionary 40 years ago.
Pretty much everything about Coard and his ABCD was revolutionary back then. The war on poverty competed with the war in Vietnam. Urban renewal programs razed neighborhoods. Racial tensions exploded amid court-ordered school busing.
And here was Coard, a black civic leader in a city with precious few of them, recruiting an army of people from all backgrounds and from every neighborhood to work together on the city’s problems.
He was always a hard guy to resist. His is an imposing manner - his longtime lieutenant John Drew compares him to James Earl Jones - and he has a way of making his battles your battles. He has been a fixture on Beacon Hill and in Washington, rallying politicians on both sides of the aisle to his causes. He’s tough, as fanatical about typos as about ending poverty, and a history buff who has read everything, a walking Wikipedia, his staff members call him. A lot of the people who work for him could make much better money elsewhere, but they’ve stayed with ABCD, some for decades.
The thing is, Coard was always so willing to put himself on the line for the things he cared about that it was hard to leave him. In 1973, Coard, a Grenadian immigrant, joined several other community programs in suing President Richard Nixon for abolishing funding for ABCD. They won.
“It is unconscionable!’’ his fiery speeches often began, unconscionable that there was no money for fuel assistance or that T fares were going up again or that food funding was cut.
And here are some of the unconscionable things the charismatic Coard and his ABCD changed: Tens of thousands of mothers who couldn’t pay for child care now had someone to care for their kids so they could work; people who couldn’t afford lawyers got free representation; the sick and the injured without health insurance found help at health care centers in their own neighborhoods.
Because of Coard, elderly residents in gentrified neighborhoods got cheap housing; needy youth got summer jobs; Boston got the two-year Urban College and two ABCD alternative high schools.
Today, Coard presides over a $132 million operation. His 1,000 staff members and legions of community volunteers serve 100,000 people every year. A lot of people find it hard to imagine the place without him.
But Coard is 82 now, and he’s ill, recovering from some serious heart problems at Hebrew Rehab.
His longtime friends and co-workers are coming up with ways to honor him. This year’s annual ABCD dinner, on Oct. 30, will be a tribute to Coard. And they’re thinking of renaming ABCD’s headquarters on Tremont Street after him.
But there are already thousands of tributes to Coard all over the city, people with educations and jobs and full lives that they would never have had if not for him.
Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at abraham@globe.com. 
