Beyond the Apron:

Valentine and Riverside Industries join forces to employ community members

Why is everyone so slow on Fridays?” The question comes from Valentine Dining Hall worker Tony Kaniecki, as he idly waits for the lunch rush.

It is still early, so most students have yet to arrive at the dining hall, let alone finish their meals. Soon the conveyer belt will fill with salmon-colored trays loaded with dirty dishes, and Kaniecki and the rest of the lunch staff will come to life. Their training has prepared them to efficiently perform a variety of tasks in the Valentine dishwashing room.

The training did not come from the Valentine Dining Hall supervisors, but from Riverside Industries Inc., an organization whose mission is “to serve adults with perceived limitations and typical ambitions.”

Kaniecki and four of his co-workers at Valentine have developmental disabilities. Vocational Services and the Jobs Program at Riverside trained and placed Kaniecki, Peter Lamontagne, Betty Larrabee, Mike Reddy and Allyn Root at Valentine as part of the lunch staff, working the conveyer belt.

Riverside Reaches Out

These four individuals are but a few of the people Riverside has helped during its 30 years of existence. Riverside offers three main services: vocational services, day habilitation, and elder services, all aiding a multitude of people with disabilities in Hampshire, Hampden and Franklin Counties. According to Riverside President Ron Bittel, the most visible result of Riverside’s programs has been placing people in jobs outside the Riverside facility.

“We train people with developmental disabilities to get jobs and maintain them, achieving maximum independence for individual people and continuing to support them whenever and however they want,” said Bittel.

Bittel said that the idea of “individual people” is what initially engaged him while he was working his first job at Riverside. He was a house manager for one of the community residences. “I got to understand that the eight people [in the community residence] were eight individuals with different personalities,” he said. “I was able to assist and really liberate them.”

Up Close And Personal

In his free time, Kaniecki likes to go to the movies, watch “Star Trek,” and swim in the ocean. He moves quickly on the job because he used to work in packaging at Riverside, where more work meant more pay. Valentine Manager Bob Campbell explains that Kaniecki is “still in the mindset of piece-work because he feels the more trays he puts up, the more money he gets.”

Lamontagne, who works both breakfast and lunch, enjoys going to the movies. At Valentine, he is infamous for jokingly threatening to put people in the dumpsters. “If he tells you that, you know you’ve been accepted [by the group],” Campbell said.

Larrabee enjoys reading romance novels, camping and playing golf and pool. “I keep myself pretty busy,” she said. She is also busy on the job, being the only Riverside worker who works “the clean side” where workers stack washed dishes and sort clean silverware.

Root’s specialty is dealing with the cups, according to David Peake-Jones, a temporary coach filling in for Michelle Riordan, the usual supervisor. “[Root] is quite something; he’s really quite good at pulling and stacking the cups,” Peake-Jones said. Root is thrifty with the pay he earns from his Valentine labors. “I save it, put it in the bank,” he said.

Riverside Finds A Valentine

Kaniecki, Root, Larrabee, and Lamontagne form what Riverside calls an “enclave,” which Peake-Jones described as “a group of people working cooperatively with a permanent staff member.”

Campbell said that working with an enclave of Riverside-directed employees has its advantages. “We know that everyday we can count on our crew from Riverside to be there and take care of the front end of our dish machine, which is the dirty side. That’s a big weight off our shoulders,” he said.

This partnership between Valentine Dining Commons and Riverside began in January 1997 and led Riverside to honor Amherst’s dining services with an award presented at Riverside’s 30th anniversary celebration several weeks ago.

The real reward for Valentine managers is not being recognized, but knowing they have helped people. “We’ve put people who traditionally have been looked upon as handicapped and unable to contribute into a position where they’re working everyday and they’re making a major difference for us,” said Campbell.

Bittel enjoys aiding people in becoming independent. “Seeing someone who was dependent on [welfare] or on other people for their livelihood or even enjoyment get to the point in their lives where they can do those things all on their own, it’s very exciting,” he said.

And it seems to be working. The members of the Valentine Dining Commons “enclave” certainly don’t depend on others for their livelihood or enjoyment. Root, Kaniecki, Larabbee, and Lamontagne are a four-person team made up of workers acting cooperatively, but they are, above all, individuals. As Kaniecki points out, “Everybody’s different.”