Mogielnicki moving on from social service career

LYNN – John “Jack” Mogielnicki is renovating his home and keeping tabs on his three sons, but he is no longer running the Lynn social service agency where he worked for 33 years, including 17 as director.Lynn Economic Opportunity?s former executive director said he parted ways on friendly terms about a month ago with the Broad Street agency in order, at the age of 63, to pursue other interests.His successor has yet to be picked but current and former LEO board of directors members said there is no mistaking the accomplishments Mogielnicki left for the agency?s next director to build on.Born out of the 1960s national anti-poverty movement, LEO?s mission, according to its website, is to move low-income people into situations providing “consistent and stable economic mobility.”Under Mogielnicki?s leadership, that mandate translated into providing local residents with heating fuel assistance, housing help and child care.?Jack had a strong vision of reaching out on behalf of those who need help. LEO has grown in terms of the number of families it serves,” said board member Mary Magner.LEO opened three child care centers affiliated with the federal Head Start program under Mogielnicki?s leadership, including one in a former church on Waitt Avenue.Mogielnicki said he left the organization “in a very good financial state,” and former board member John Coleman Walsh said Mogielnicki combined social service commitment with a strong ability to manage money.?He had tremendous business acumen. He enabled LEO to establish low-income housing and extend the Head Start program,” Walsh said.Magner referred questions about Mogielnicki?s successor?s selection to the board of director?s selection committee.Mogielnicki grew up in Hartford, Conn., son of an electric company foreman who died from mercury exposure when Mogielnicki was 10. His mother went to work in a variety of jobs, eventually getting hired as residential administrator at the University of Hartford, where Mogielnicki said his mother became a combination social worker, counselor and den mother to college students.?I spent a lot of time in an apartment in a girls? dormitory,” he recalled.Mogielnicki was not hired by LEO in any traditional sense of the word. By his account, he stopped into the agency in 1979 to borrow a spark plug wrench from a friend who worked for LEO. He ended up having lunch with the friend and another LEO worker. By the time the meal had ended, Mogielnicki had volunteered to help part-time in the agency?s fuel assistance department.?I was fascinated. It?s a job that responds to incredible need and incredible inequity,” he said.Mogielnicki said working for LEO transformed him.?I?m a different person. I didn?t anticipate a career when I walked in that day in 1979,” he said.Magner said the Jack Mogielnicki she knows advocated for tax dollars to help poor people “in good times and bad.”?He?s never been shy about sharing the needs of the people we serve with others,” she said.Mogielnicki said the years he spent working for LEO turned into decades because he discovered he could not turn his back on inequality and poverty – even if some of the stories LEO clients told him broke his heart.?Walk by our fuel assistance department and you realize people need so much. It?s the saddest room in the city,” he said.