Meet Rich Dwyer, Jr.

Interview with Rich Dwyer, Jr.

Q: How did you first hear about us? What was your introduction to Team Wilderness?

Rich: I found out about Team Wilderness through my community outreach in Jersey City and Hudson County. They were doing things I wish I had done as a kid—taking people from our area and showing them there’s a bigger world out there. That hit home for me because I remember learning in school that Hudson County is a peninsula, surrounded by waterways, but we couldn’t swim in them. We had to wait for our parents to take us to the Jersey Shore, sitting in traffic and adding to the pollution. It just felt wrong. So when I had the opportunity to work with Team Wilderness, I was very happy to do that because they were doing something, living a mission of something that was important to me, getting kids out and showing them that there's not only a bigger world that exists, but there's a bigger world out there that they can actually contribute to. 

It goes back to the whole notion of ‘ think globally, act locally’. You can't solve all the world's problems but you can make the world a little bit better. And actually it's interesting that your headquarters is right here at 503 Communipaw Avenue because I grew up down the street on Arlington Avenue for the first few years of my life. And two of the biggest life lessons I've ever had was my mother used to always say make sure that the world is a little bit better because you lived. And so she would even say even if it's just picking up a piece of litter, that part of the world now is better than it was before. And the other big life lesson was not even half a block from here is the old Harman Street pool. And I was on the swim team when I was a little kid. I wasn't a very big swimmer, but it was a big race. And my father was a championship swimmer. He swam for the US Navy.

I was dead last, and everybody was outside the pool cooling off, drying off, and I was still swimming. Oh no! My father was at the end of the pool, he was slapping the water, saying do your best, just finish, just finish. Coming in first, second, and third, didn't matter to him, all he wanted was you just do your best, and just finish. And you know what, those are two great life lessons I've had from my mother and father that I've carried with me to this day.

Q: What’s been your favorite Team Wilderness experience so far?

One of my favorite experiences was bringing my Irish Setter, Seamus, on trips with the students. He’s not the kind of dog you see in urban areas—big, needs a lot of exercise, and very smart. He knows over 100 tricks, and the kids loved it when he’d do things like walk backwards when I said, “What’s a truck sound like when it backs up?” They were amazed. It’s those little things that connect you, and it becomes about more than just the trip—it’s an experience they’ll remember.

If you can try to find a purpose for you and the other people that are involved with you, it really does make all the difference in the world. So Seamus has this advanced therapy dog title, and we've made over 200 visits, mostly including PTSD veterans, people in substance use recovery, and adults with special needs. So he made, and then of course, when we walk around the street and people wanna meet him, and they run some tricks with him, people have never seen these kinds of tricks before, so it just brightens their day, we laugh a little bit, we chat a little bit, but if you can give yourself a sense of purpose, that makes all the difference in the world. 

Q: What motivates you in your life & in your work?

I think some of the primary reasons that I'm motivated to be engaged in the community is because I was also very fortunate to have great parents and great teachers, whether it was in Grammar School at St. Paul's in Greenville, or at St. Peter's Prep where the motto is, you know, a man for others, and they try to get people to live that, and also I had lots of terrific coaches who guided me, like– don't quit, don't give 50. Lose the victim mentality, and to make sure that no matter what happens in life, you can just keep believing in yourself and try to surround yourself with good people who are helping to build you up and add value to your life where you are appreciated, you can move along. 

But more importantly than that, probably, is that also in my life I got a lot of second chances, and people saw things in me that I didn't always see in me. So if I was going astray one way or another, you know, I was lucky, people would sit me down and talk to me, and help me see the world with a bigger view. For instance, when I was in college, I had a professor who, and I went to a small school at a university, so the class sizes were very small, and you could socialize with your professors, and I had one of the most impactful lessons I learned was from that professor He challenged me to defend a viewpoint I was completely against in front of the class. His point was, “You can’t fully understand an issue until you see all sides.” That’s stuck with me ever since.

If we can understand why, then we can find out what your real needs are. And if we can find out what your real needs are, then we can work together to move ahead, to move the ball forward.

Q: What’s something people don’t know about you that you wish they did?

When I was a kid, my father worked as a firefighter in Jersey City. After his shifts, he would relax in his chair and watch shows like The Dean Martin Show and other classics. I would look at him and think how cool and fun it all seemed, sparking my interest in theater and acting. However, as I got older, I had jobs and responsibilities during high school and college, which made it hard to pursue that dream. After graduating, I took acting lessons at HP Studios in New York and began performing in theater. Life got busier with family and work commitments, so I had to step back for a while. But now that the kids are older and my job has changed, I’ve returned to acting, and I just completed my 80th play!

That's the one thing I think a lot of people don't realize. They see me doing all my community involvement piece and the work in my PSE&G career, but they don’t know much about my passion for acting.I really love theater, especially the character development aspect. It’s all about exploring the character's journey, asking questions, and building relationships.

And the thing that I really love about theater, even more than the performances, is that if you're doing a scene with somebody and it's not working, or you think it can be done better, there's no problem saying to the director and the playwright and other actors, look, can we talk about this and to see what we can do to make it better? Because it's never about the individual. It's always about the ensemble. It's always about the group. How can we make this better? Or somebody can criticize me, but constructive criticism,

You get to ask yourself a lot of questions and it becomes a different kind of journey.

Q: What would you say is your greatest accomplishment in life and/or work?

I think my greatest accomplishment is learning how to learn and learning how to listen. Because when we come into a situation, you know, based on our body of experiences, sometimes we want to kind of tell people what they should do, what's best for them.

 But that may be true based on what you see right before you. But again, they've had a journey to this point too. So if you just spend time and listen, you’ll understand better. I'll give you an example. Many years ago, I did book drives, toy drives, clothes drives– all kinds of drives. And I was talking to a friend of mine who was one of the community leaders at the Curries Woods Housing Project in South Greenville. And I asked him what he needed, you know, for the community center. He said, well, we really need books–we don't have any books. So I did this book drive. 

And then this bookstore was going out of business in Burlington County. And they actually sent a van full of books up here, brand new books. There were no formal programs going on. And we really didn't think anybody was gonna be in there, maybe just a few kids. The room turned out to be full of people reading books. 

It was just like an onsite library, you know? And then Sally asked one of the kids, ‘What's your favorite book?’ And there was this girl, she was so thoughtful and she just kind of looked around and it was like she understood the power of the moment. She looked at the books and then she walked over to the bookcase and she was looking around and she said, ‘This book here’. And someone said, ‘What book is that?’ The girl replied, ‘Great Expectations because that's what we have.’

So ,because we listened, we were able to give these kids the gift of learning.

Q: Do you have any opinions or thoughts on the importance of  youth programs in urban areas?

One of the things that we talked about was taking the young people out into the wilderness you know to show them that it's a much bigger world, but one of the other things too is that whenever I was working with young people and it's what you do too, whether you think about it consciously or not is that try to you know inject a sense of in that thought process, you know, if this then that. If I do this then that will happen. If I do something good for the environment, something better is going to happen because of it. So just taking the kids out into the field and showing them you know the value of the littlest critters, you know, and how you know, if you take care of the forest where you take a lot of these young people, if you take care of the waterways then little things can live. You can be a part of something even small, try to get out and do it you know, try to get out and do it because the young people, they're the ones who are going to be the stewards of the future.

One of the reasons I think that Team Wilderness, is so important regarding youth development and empowerment is that when I was a kid growing up, when you were a kid growing up, kids played in the street, they played in the schoolyard, they had conflicts, but you learned how to resolve that, right?

So one of the great things that you do is when you take the kids out into the forest, whether they're climbing rocks or hiking on trails or going over streams or building stuff, even building a campfire, right? Is that they're getting exposed to new situations, new challenges, new problems, and if they have some kind of a conflict, they're also doing team building, maybe without even realizing it. So they're solving problems together, exchanging ideas and making something work, right? 

That's a lot different than an iPhone culture where you're watching everybody else do stuff and you're not. And you're out here, you know, besides all the health benefits of exercise and clean air, they're learning how to get along with each other and you have different groups of kids, different ethnic groups of kids, different cultures, and they all are now in a situation where they're out in the woods. 

Just growing up in an urban environment, I think, can make you more tenacious in growing up in other places. So by exposing the young people to these great and positive experiences, you're actually showing them ways where they can channel their tenacious part of their personality and their persistence into something that's very good, very beneficial, and actually can help into the future.

In closing, I want to offer a quote from George Bernard Shaw, who was an Irish playwright and an activist that actually means a lot to me. He says,

“My life belongs to the whole community. And as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. It is a sort of a splendid torch, which I have got hold of for the moment. And I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

That is what I think you do at Team Wilderness.