Meet Dick Chady - by Beth Timson
Dick Chady
February 2018
“Lifelong learning keeps your mind active and keeps you living,” says Dick Chady—so it’s no wonder that he and OLLI at Duke have proven to be such a good match. He brings more than 40 years’ worth of experience in news and public relations in Albany, New York, to OLLI and serves as both a volunteer and an instructor.
When he’s asked where he originally calls home, he laughs. “Well, I was born in Houston,” he says, but notes that as the child of an Air Force officer, he really grew up all over the world. Because his father taught ROTC at Grinnell College in Iowa when Dick was in junior high, he later earned his B.A. degree from Grinnell—followed by an M.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University and another Masters in Library Science from the State University of New York at Albany. In his career, he worked as an editor at different times for both the UPI and AP press services, as a public relations manager for a Catholic Health Care Service in Albany, and as a Director of Communications for several New York State agencies.
After being retired for a few years, in 2012 Dick wanted to move out of the cold and snow; he was looking for a college town somewhere in the mid-South, and he had friends in the Triangle area. “I was sold on this place by the second day,” he recalls; “it has all of the advantages of a big city and not many of the disadvantages.” He knew about OLLI, and it was one of the features that drew him here. “There’s no equivalent in Albany,” he reports. He loves the classes, and the OLLI members are “a great group of people.”
One of his major volunteer/instructor contributions has been the creation of the “New Lens” class—what he describes as a “magazine format.” The class recognizes that there are different ways that OLLI members like to learn: some want to be introduced to a lot of different, interesting topics rather than spend ten weeks going into detail on one topic. That’s the way he likes to learn now, Dick says, and for him learning about a topic and putting it together for a class presentation is a great delight. He pauses, speculating a bit—Dick is also on the OLLI Board, and he wants to expand the idea of class diversity, with perhaps more different kinds of classes and differing lengths of class terms, maybe playing with the idea of a class with “active learning” and effective Internet instruction.
He also keeps his public relations skills in good use, contributing to a message board for the OLLI retirement discussion group organized by Corinne and Scott Schillin, helping his Unitarian Church with activity press releases, working on Medicaid expansion with the League of Women Voters, and assisting the Orange County Democratic Party with publicity needs. He likes to think about ways OLLI members can potentially get more involved in the Duke community and other communities in the Triangle. After all, he says, “OLLI’s enrollment makes it the fifth largest college in the Triangle...and a premier Third Age Community.”
“Lifelong learning keeps your mind active and keeps you living,” says Dick Chady—so it’s no wonder that he and OLLI at Duke have proven to be such a good match. He brings more than 40 years’ worth of experience in news and public relations in Albany, New York, to OLLI and serves as both a volunteer and an instructor.
When he’s asked where he originally calls home, he laughs. “Well, I was born in Houston,” he says, but notes that as the child of an Air Force officer, he really grew up all over the world. Because his father taught ROTC at Grinnell College in Iowa when Dick was in junior high, he later earned his B.A. degree from Grinnell—followed by an M.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University and another Masters in Library Science from the State University of New York at Albany. In his career, he worked as an editor at different times for both the UPI and AP press services, as a public relations manager for a Catholic Health Care Service in Albany, and as a Director of Communications for several New York State agencies.
After being retired for a few years, in 2012 Dick wanted to move out of the cold and snow; he was looking for a college town somewhere in the mid-South, and he had friends in the Triangle area. “I was sold on this place by the second day,” he recalls; “it has all of the advantages of a big city and not many of the disadvantages.” He knew about OLLI, and it was one of the features that drew him here. “There’s no equivalent in Albany,” he reports. He loves the classes, and the OLLI members are “a great group of people.”
One of his major volunteer/instructor contributions has been the creation of the “New Lens” class—what he describes as a “magazine format.” The class recognizes that there are different ways that OLLI members like to learn: some want to be introduced to a lot of different, interesting topics rather than spend ten weeks going into detail on one topic. That’s the way he likes to learn now, Dick says, and for him learning about a topic and putting it together for a class presentation is a great delight. He pauses, speculating a bit—Dick is also on the OLLI Board, and he wants to expand the idea of class diversity, with perhaps more different kinds of classes and differing lengths of class terms, maybe playing with the idea of a class with “active learning” and effective Internet instruction.
He also keeps his public relations skills in good use, contributing to a message board for the OLLI retirement discussion group organized by Corinne and Scott Schillin, helping his Unitarian Church with activity press releases, working on Medicaid expansion with the League of Women Voters, and assisting the Orange County Democratic Party with publicity needs. He likes to think about ways OLLI members can potentially get more involved in the Duke community and other communities in the Triangle. After all, he says, “OLLI’s enrollment makes it the fifth largest college in the Triangle...and a premier Third Age Community.”
Editor's Note : If you would like to show appreciation to the profiled volunteer, you can email to communications@olliatduke.org