Shout out: David Villiotti

Shout Out: David Villiotti

Not all heroes wear capes or swing from tall buildings on a spider web. Some just stick with the same hard — often thankless — job for nearly half a century; one where daily struggles are the norm and glory comes in small portions.

For David Villiotti, executive director of the Nashua Children’s Home, it’s not fame nor fortune that motivates him, but a different reward: the words of thanks he gets from young residents who were helped or even saved by the simple grace of someone caring about them as more than a statistic or mental health label.

“When I talk to community groups about Nashua Children’s Home,” says Villiotti, “I’m often asked, ‘Isn’t it such rewarding work?’ And my response is that sometimes it is, sometimes we encounter profound disappointments, but one needs to stick around long enough doing this work to realize its most compelling rewards.”

The Nashua Children’s Home is what people once called an orphanage. It’s a place where kids (boys and girls ages 7 to 18) wind up because for one reason or another they cannot live at home. Sometimes it’s a behavior problem in the child, but it could be a result of domestic violence, substance abuse, parental neglect or simply because the family can’t afford to keep up with basic needs. The Nashua Children’s Home, known to insiders as the “home on the hill” because of its elevated location near Nashua’s Edgewood Cemetery, has seen the worst of it but keeps on keeping on.

“We often need to see kids leave here, fall flat on their faces, pick themselves back up, and then become productive adults,” he says. It’s a pattern that Villiotti has had lots of time to observe. He just celebrated 45 years in the same line of work this last December — 36 of those years spent in his current position. And after all that time, he’s still optimistic about the chances for those young people who the rest of the world has seemingly rejected.

“Some of the same kids who seemed to ignore our counseling, reject our warnings and admonitions, stop by as young adults and clearly remember the commitment of our staff, the lessons that they learned at Nashua Children’s Home.”

Note: One of the many kids that David Villiotti has mentored and helped at Nashua Children’s Home is Oscar Villacis, who appears on the cover of this issue of 603 Diversity.