LAST WORD

Dick ingram will retire from his position as president of the Greater Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce. Amy Root-Donle photo

My first week as business editor of the Portsmouth Herald in late September 2004 was also Dick Ingram's first week as president of the Greater Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce. He was also the first of about 100 interviews with Seacoast-region business movers, shakers and interesting personalities I did for the Herald. When I reminded Ingram of that shortly after it was announced that he would leave his chamber post to lead The Housing Partnership, he said with his customary dry wit, "I hope I set a good precedent."

Let the record state that Dick Ingram, a Seacoast resident for more than four decades, set a good precedent not only for me, who talked to Ingram frequently on a wide range of subjects over the past three years, but for the region's business community, which benefited from Ingram's unique combination of tireless work, vision and stealthy consensus-building skills. With his trusted and worn Blackberry at hand and his ability to seemingly be at two events simultaneously (no, he assures me, he wasn't cloned), Ingram captured the diverse nature of the business community with ease "" if anyone were destined to be a strong chamber leader of some 1,000 business members, it was Dick Ingram. He was a natural.

I'll leave it to the chamber members to assess Ingram's legacy as chamber president. When I asked him for his assessment of his own efforts, he talked about "the team" that had done a very good job of "raising the profile and improving the stature" of the Portsmouth chamber.

"We worked hard for the members and we talked about the right issues," Ingram said. "We've done a good job. What has struck me is how people care so much, are so passionate about this area."

Saving the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in 2005 and pushing the agenda of affordable housing are two of those "right issues" that reflect the best aspects of Ingram's time at the chamber. One was very public and the other less so, but of equal importance for the future. Ingram, who had extensive experience in both the nonprofit and private sectors, had his eye on both issues from the beginning. Even before the shipyard was put on the base closure list, the Portsmouth chamber was taking business delegations to Washington, D.C., to lobby politicians (including potential 2008 presidential candidates of both parties) and Pentagon officials. When the shipyard was on the base closure list, the mobilization of political, business community and local support was in place to unleash a coordinated grass roots lobbyist corps of tens of thousands who publicly rallied in the streets of Kittery, Maine, and at a vital hearing in Boston.

"It was one of the chamber's shining moments," Ingram said about the summer of the yellow "Save Our Shipyard" T-shirt. "I've said it before but it proved how much can be accomplished when you don't worry about who gets credit."

Creating the amount of affordable housing in the region is a different type of battle with equally high stakes for the region's economy. Peter Francese, a nationally respected demographer based in Exeter, has been sounding the alarm for years and recently told the Herald, "Without the ability to house workers from all economic brackets in our region, we all suffer. It is very important that our teachers, police officers, health care employees and other �ordinary, middle-class workers' be able to live in the communities they serve. When local workers cannot afford housing in the areas they work in, the costs for their services must rise, impacting all of us."

For Ingram, he considers affordable housing a personal issue and a calling. "My son, who's a senior in college, wants to come home and teach. I just don't want him to live in our house," he said with a laugh. On a more serious note, he said we should be considering this point: "Can our children afford to buy the house they grew up in?" If not, we are in trouble because, Ingram believes, "this is an issue that tells us who we are as a people, who we are as a community." He's looking forward to the "thrill of new housing units being built that don't exist now."

When I asked him about his sense of humor, especially of the self-deprecating variety, he told me it's vital "to keep perspective and have a sense of joy into what we do." He said he's seen too many grim folks in work and life who don't know how to lighten up.

"I sometimes think some of these people need to get a life."

It's unlikely anyone will ever say that about Dick Ingram.