The nonprofit he founded has been responsible for laughter, tears, applause, lots of questions and for packing the Bushnell four times per year.
Richard Sugarman, a one time curb boy who collected dirty laundry street-side for a dry cleaner in his Richmond, Va., hometown before school, later founded the Connecticut Forum.
The Forum conducts live, issue-driven panel discussions among renowned experts and celebrities four times a year. It has expanded to include a youth program as well.
Sugarman considered the curb boy job a step up from his earlier gigs as a babysitter and helping his father at the family’s auto-parts store and warehouse.
As a curb boy for the dry cleaner, when customers pulled up with their car, he collected their laundry and handed them a tag, then carried it inside where it was sorted.
He pocketed $1.25 per hour to collect the dirty laundry, and his earnings made him think he was on top of the world. “I thought I was in the chips,” he recalled. “I was a sophomore in high school, 14 years old. … I wasn’t in the warehouse. I felt that I had really moved up, wearing a clean shirt, school clothes. I felt like I was an executive.”
He saved his money, and with some help from his father, bought a used Chevrolet Corvair for what he thinks may have cost a few hundred dollars. “It was a complete mess,” he said of the car. “But I was just happy to be able to have a car.”
Sugarman said that his early jobs taught him a lot about human nature, both the good and bad. “Those earlier experiences were a real thread,” he said
While growing up in the south during the early 1960s, he was exposed to prejudice and bigotry. “It probably made me very sensitive to civil rights, social justice and the underdog,” Sugarman said.
It also taught him something about the varying temperaments of others. “Some people are pleasant, and some are really angry. There are all kinds of different people out there. I had to figure out how to take care of them and move on,” he said.
His interest in people led to an education in psychology. Early in his career he worked as a therapist and ran a mental health center in New Jersey.
He later went into the investment business, and remained in that field for 20 years, until retiring from Advest in 2000 to dedicate him-self full time to the Connecticut Forum.
“I really just decided this is great fun and growing so much that I retired from investment.”
