St. Jean breaks multiple gender barriers to serve kids

By John Howell
Posted 4/5/18

By JOHN HOWELL -- Flo St. Jean says she has three passions in her life: music, words and helping people. They have taken her far...

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St. Jean breaks multiple gender barriers to serve kids

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Flo St. Jean says she has three passions in her life: music, words and helping people. They have taken her far.

St. Jean was a pioneer at a time when the good old boys ran Boys Clubs – now the Boys and Girls Clubs – and when only men were members of the Rotary Club of Warwick. In 1982, at the age of 25, St. Jean was named the first female director of a Boys Club in the state and one of the few, if not the only one, in the country. In 1987 she broke another gender barrier to become the first female member of the Warwick Rotary Club.

She didn’t set out to do either.

St. Jean grew up in Oakland Beach, a member of a family that didn’t have much. The Warwick Boys Club was a gathering place for neighborhood children, and St. Jean found it a place to have fun. She believes that is important for children and, in an interview Tuesday, named fun as essential in this digital age.

“When kids go to the Boys and Girls Clubs they have a chance to interact with another human being one-on-one,” she said. St. Jean sees the club as a safe place for kids and an environment in which to grow and learn.

“We tend to be so structured in this day and age that we forget about the benefits of fun,” she said. “It’s important for children to laugh to get together; to see a child laugh with unbridled enthusiasm is the most incredible gift.”

This Saturday, St. Jean will be inducted into the Warwick Boys and Girls Club’s hall of fame in a ceremony that is part of the Great Futures Gala at the Warwick Country Club. Tickets are still available for the evening that includes a $10,000 cash raffle.

“Honestly, I didn’t even know there was a hall of fame,” she confided.

Lara D’Antuono, who followed in St. Jean’s footsteps to become the club’s executive director, founded the hall several years ago. D’Antuono said the hall is one of a select few. Warren Galkin, one of the club’s biggest benefactors, was its first inductee.

Reflecting on her early days as a part time staff member and then later as full time development director, D’Antuono said St. Jean was a mentor. She said two pieces of St. Jean advice have served her well: to do the right thing even though that may not be the easiest and, as an administrator, recognize your limitations and teach and support others to help achieve the goal.

D’Antuono said St. Jean had a unique ability of developing a staff that was accountable and responsible for their actions. She said St. Jean has “affected tens of thousands of lives and brought us to where we are.”

Former club president James Hagerty in prepared remarks remembers St. Jean as “a presence in the room; always in control, a great communicator. I saw her leadership and influence in board meetings, with Boys & Girls Clubs of America, United Way and local government.”

St. Jean’s passion for music had her leaving the club in 1996 to become the Choral Director at Bryant University, a position she still holds in addition to working with the University’s contemporary collegiate a cappella group, The Bottom Line. She broadened her work in music joining the music, theatre and dance faculty at Rhode Island College in 1998 and then, in 2001, the voice faculty at the Boston Conservatory as a Musical Theatre specialist. It’s a job she left in 2007 due to a genetic heart issue.

She carried on with her work in Rhode Island despite a worsening heart condition. Then, in 2014, with her health declining, St. Jean was hospitalized at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. She received a mechanical heart pump, which kept her alive for five months before receiving a heart transplant in August 2014. Not even six months later in January 2015, St. Jean returned to teaching at RIC and to lead the vocal music groups at Bryant.

It was St. Jean’s passion for helping others that held her focus as the director of The Boys Club.

“Boys Clubs at that time were pretty much an all-male domain,” she said.

“It was highly unusual to be a female executive director,” St. Jean recalls. During her role as executive director, the club board elected Sandra Cooney as chair, making them the only female top Boys and Girls Club administrative team in the country.

St. Jean said she had so much support. She mentions Charles Hacadorian, Jack Wallace, Peter Buckley, Gene Nadeau and Bill Sprague. She pauses to reflect, observing there are so many more.

“They didn’t make a thing of it [being the first female director]. They just supported me as a person,” she said

St. Jean was involved in the organization well beyond Warwick and the state. She was a presenter and facilitator at the Boys and Girls Clubs of America national conferences in Boston, Washington D.C., San Diego and San Juan.

In 1990 she was named the Boys and Girls Clubs National Professional Administrator of the Year.

St. Jean, whose work with the Boys and Girls Club started as a summer camp counselor in 1977, is looking forward to Saturday’s event and seeing many of the people who played a role in her career. She and her husband Don, who will celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary this year, are the parents of a daughter, Mary.

St. Jean and D’Antuono still get together occasionally, just to check in. St. Jean’s roots are deep into Warwick and the organization that she nurtured for so many years.

As for St. Jean’s passion for words, Hagerty captured them in a quote from a Beacon story reporting her decision to leave the club.

“As I go forward into this new phase of my life, it is with greater understanding of some essential truths that true riches aren’t measured in money, that working for the good of others has tremendous power, and that listening honestly to the voice within always takes us in the right direction,” she said.

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