Leroy Anthony: Weatherization Expert, CEC Historian

Monday, May 24th, 2010

Leroy is an original member of CEC, and has been working here since 1994.

“I think single houses are more challenging than multistory buildings,” says Leroy Anthony of CEC. “Because we go into closets, we go behind walls. We go into attics and crawl spaces. It’s more demanding all around.”

Leroy should know. He manages the crews that roll out of CEC every morning, to bring energy efficiency to 1-to-4 family homes and multifamily apartment buildings. And he has been insulating attics and sliding along crawl spaces since before CEC was born — back at the New York Urban Coalition.

Leroy himself was born in Port-of-Spain, the capital of the Caribbean island of Trinidad. He grew up not far away, in the oddly named town of Tunapuna (Leroy thinks it’s an Indian word), a place known, among other things, for its extraordinary produce, for being the birthplace of the Afro-Trinidadian historian C.L.R. James, and for figuring in a Petula Clark song.

“It was a nice place to grow up in,” says Leroy, talking one busy morning in his office, while the phone rang, and people darted in and out to ask about the day’s work. “Lots of streams. Fishing, swimming. Breezy and always hot. It was good.”

But although he still has family in Trinidad, he does not return there often. He came to the United States in 1989, when he was in his late twenties and “looking for work.” He has been working ever since.

Shortly after he arrived in New York, in fact, an employment agency sent Leroy to interview at the Urban Coalition. He knew carpentry (he’d done construction back in Trinidad) and possessed strong academic skills, and he was hired. Soon he was managing the whole weatherization operation there.

“We used to do the audit calculations by hand,” he recalls fondly. “None of this automated stuff that we take for granted now.” It was a job that he relished. “I could use my hands and I could use my brains. I don’t think anything is too hard once you have the experience. You can’t be afraid to tackle new things and experiment, especially with this type of work.”

At the Urban Coalition Leroy met Richard Cherry, and when Cherry was starting Community Environmental Center in 1994, he asked Leroy to join as a manager.

Leroy shakes hands with a representitive of LIUNA

Much has altered within CEC’s weatherization division since those early years. “Techniques have changed,” says Leroy, speaking quickly in his low voice, rich with the lyrical accents of Trinidad. “Caulking. That used to be the main sealant. It would go along the walls, along the windows. And we were still using fiberglass insulation back then. But we started to use cellulose insulation more and more, and weed out the fiberglass. Now we do much more cellulose insulation, in walls, in attics.”

“We used to be chasing the industry,” says Leroy. “Now we drive the industry to us.”

If there have been changes in the weatherization techniques CEC employs, there have also been radical shifts in the size of the crews and the kinds of work they handle.

“When I started,” Leroy remembers, “we had, oh, about four or five people. And one truck. Now we have 25 to 28 crew members, auditors, crew chiefs, construction managers, an operations manager. And five trucks.”

“We used to bid out the insulation,” he adds. “Then we found that the contractors weren’t putting in the amount of insulation they said they were putting into the walls. So we started doing it ourselves. We started doing cleans and tunes, because, again, we found the contractors weren’t doing them properly. So now we ourselves scrape boilers down, get in there and vacuum and scrub. We weren’t doing that before.”

Beginning in March 2009 CEC’s crews also started learning to install solar thermal systems, and they are in the middle of installing New York City’s largest solar thermal system right now, at Wadsworth Terrace, in the upper reaches of Manhattan.

Leroy would like to add a roofing crew as well, to lay shingles on a sloping roof or put down rubber, even, on a flat one.

CEC's weatherization crew poses with their first installation of solar thermal panels, in South East Brooklyn. Leroy is at the front, in the blue shirt.

“What we’re finding when we go and do the audits,” says Leroy, “is that a lot of the homes have roofing problems. But we can’t do the weatherization until the owner fixes the roof. So we go into a home where people really need help, and because the roof is leaking, we can’t begin to help them. Lots of these people have had their homes for many years and don’t have the money to fix the roof.”

Ask what Leroy does in his “free” time, when he is at home in the Poconos with his wife, his son, Zafir, and his daughter, Raiysa, and he looks at you as though the concept of “free time” were non-existent. It was taking him so long to commute to CEC in fact—sometimes as long as four hours one way—that he now rents an apartment in Brooklyn and remains in town four nights a week, in order to get to CEC early in the morning.

On the weekends, he says, “I do some work around the house, mow the lawn.” And “mostly just rest.”

“This job here has taken a lot,” he admits. “I’ve tried to go back to school, but this job is just too much. What I really always wanted to do was civil engineering. But I needed to work, needed the money. So here I am. One day I still want to fulfill that.”

Meanwhile, he is proud that his daughter, who wants to be a doctor, has won a full scholarship to Pennsylvania State University and its pre-med program.

And he still relishes the work, particularly stand-alone homes. And, very importantly, “I like helping people,” he says. “When we leave a home, people can feel the effects right away. They don’t’ have to wait for a year or two. They get instant savings, instant benefits. And we are helping the environment. I get a feeling of goodness from doing all that.”

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