Blue-Collar Worker Reclaims His Neighborhood

Helps ‘Main South’ Area of Worcester 

By Susan Greenleaf
May 2001

Bill Breault looks back fondly on growing up in the area of Worcester known as “Main South.”

His father had a TV repair business on the corner of Wyman and South Main, next to the Brown Shoe Company which packed up and left a long time ago. Breault hung out at the Wyman Spa, a place where, “You could go and have a coke, maybe breakfast and meet your friends.”

It was predominantly an Irish-French Catholic neighborhood. But slowly it changed and people left when industries such as Standard Foundry, Thom McAnn and Crompton and Knowles either moved south “or just plain folded.”

Breault has seen his neighborhood change dramatically from a good strong business area to one of blight and decline, starting about 25 years ago. Then 10 years ago, it got “pretty bad’ with crime, prostitution and drugs.

“We were way ahead of Lawrence and Bridgeport in the crime ratings at one time. Basically, it was a blue collar neighborhood in transition. I had to decide along with my father, it’s either ‘fight or move.’ And we weren’t going to move!”

A big problem for over twenty years has been prostitution. “Hookers were working the Main South corridor. So we got four video teams with cameras to videotape and expose the problem and the press had a heyday with it. It helped to lessen the impact of prostitution, although it’s still here. Maybe in five years, we’ll have it down to zero. Maybe not, but it’s a lot better than it was at five to eight years ago.”

Another serious problem is the Needle Exchange program. “We had two rooming houses closed in 1990 because of the drugs-crime-prostitution deaths in them. Just as we got nine of those rooming houses boarded up, the ‘Aids Brigade’ in Boston came along and started passing out syringes to drug addicts. They set up shop on the corner of King and Main. On the second night, they were arrested by the Vice Squad and charged with illegal possession of needles and syringes. This impacted me to help my community more with this problem. We’ve worked not only here but throughout the Commonwealth to get these needle exchange programs shut down. So my educational component concerning needle exchange goes back eleven years.”

Breault was actively involved on a grass roots level with others to defeat Ballot Question Eight last year which would have allowed the medical use of marijuana. “It would have had a definite effect on the neighborhood if it passed.” He personally traveled to fourteen different cities meeting with mayors and the chiefs of police and crime watch groups, speaking out on editorial boards and radio talk shows to have it defeated. He has worked closely for many years with groups such as “Concerned Citizens for Drug Prevention,” testifying with them at the Statehouse.

“Was it worth taking a stand and making a fight to try to change things for the better? The answer is yes,” says Breault. “Worcester was ranked the safest city per 100,000 in the Northeast, statistically this year by the Department of Public Health. I think we’re a safer city for a multitude of reasons, from the multi-layered agencies to a grass roots, blue-collar effort by the people who live here, who never forgot who we are. I think we helped at least put a finger in the dike, helped stem some of that abandonment blight and help maybe spark a little bit of revitalization in the area. It’s getting better and in the next two to five years, it’s going to look a lot different on Main Street.”

Breault has worked at Holy Cross College as a laborer for 25 years. He works full-time on the night shift but has another full-time job as Chairman of the Main South Alliance for Public Safety, a non-profit organization which he founded fifteen years ago. He puts in anywhere from 60 to 70 hours a week. As far back as the seventies, Breault believed the Main South area needed a public safety forum dedicated solely to the problems of the area.

The Alliance has an office at 1020 Main St. in the same building as the Community Development Corporation and other civic groups. All of them work hand-in-hand as they zero in on different sections of the area.

The Alliance has a board and a steering committee of about twenty-five. They have a network of people that number in the hundreds who are willing to volunteer and help in any way they can.

“There are still a lot of old-timers, ‘the gray population,’ who still own and haven’t left. They’re a big part of our base and our strength,” says Breault. “With the loss of industry and the loss of business, the perception is that everyone left but it isn’t so. The area has changed. There are third generation Latinos living here and it is a melting pot. But that diversity is a healthy mix, a positive mix and everyone wants the same thing: a safe environment.” 

To contact Bill Breault and the Main South Alliance for Public Safety, call 508 795-7197 or write Bill Breault at 4 Hathaway St., Worcester, MA 01610

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