Photographs by William Taufic.
About ten years ago, Jim Cole and Nancy Upton gave up the harried pace of Wall Street and settled into a more meaningful—if not less frenetic—job at home in New Canaan. The couple trained to be a part of the town’s first Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) and spearheaded an emergency preparedness plan that knit together all of New Canaan’s emergency services and provided training to citizens.
“My real life started when I retired,” says Jim. When asked how much he “works,” he responds, “It was pretty constant from the start—easily sixty hours a week.” He became chairman of the Fire Commission just before 9/11 and took on the job of emergency management director soon after. “I began pulling people together from different areas of town and discussing what we should do to be ready,” explains Jim. “We developed what became a template for fourteen nearby towns.”
Jim spent his professional career at GE, Phillips and Morgan Stanley—a different world from the one he blazed into in 2001, but he found some crossover. “Organization dynamics was an acquired skill of mine. I brought a sense of how you create a model, a charter, how you get buy-in. I was light in skills from a law enforcement and fire department perspective. I had to work really hard to get those, but I did.”
Jim’s résumé of volunteer positions is testament to how effectively he has segued from working on Wall Street to protecting Main Street. His titles include Associate Member of Fire Company #1, Director of New Canaan CERT, Deputy DEM, Chairman of the Police Commission, and American Red Cross board member. One of his most notable accomplishments is the implementation of an emergency outcall system to swiftly reach all of New Canaan’s citizens.
Jim’s wife, Nancy, was only forty-six when she left Morgan Stanley, shortly after 9/11. “It was such a high-pressure career,” she says. “I wanted to do something less focused on money and promotion. I was hoping to retire and work with animals.”
After joining Jim in CERT training, Nancy found herself “swamped with volunteer activities.” By 2005 Nancy was a trainer for CERT and executive director of the New Canaan branch. She held the position of Public Information Officer for Fire Company #1 for three years and is an associate member now. She got her advanced EMT license. As part of New Canaan’s Volunteer Ambulance Corps, she rides a twelve-hour shift each week and a twelve-hour weekend shift every four weeks.
Although Nancy acknowledges “the quality of people at a place like Morgan Stanley is extraordinary,” she says, “It’s nice to back away from that and enjoy people from all walks of life. It’s also good to come back to the community and know that there are a lot of people who need to run a town and don’t disappear Monday through Friday.”
Amy Wilkinson, a friend of the couple, comments, “New Canaan is a safer place to live as result of Jim and Nancy’s gift of ten years’ dedicated volunteer service. Neither seeks attention for their work, making them even more deserving of recognition.”