When Cathy Demeroto left her 18-year-long home in Maryland and career as an attorney and non-profit manager to become the director of CAST in 2017, the community service organization was serving about 40,000 meals a year to the community out of a small rented house on Front Street in Greenport.
Seven years later, through a global pandemic, record-high inflation, an ongoing affordable housing crisis and a move into a much bigger home on the Main Road in Southold, Ms. Demeroto stepped down on Oct. 18 to devote herself to taking care of her family’s needs.
It couldn’t be more fitting this year that Ms. Demeroto was awarded the Southold Town Anti-Bias Task Force’s Helen Wright Prince Award, given each October to a community leader who has devoted their life to the most vulnerable in our community.
Ms. Demeroto accepted the award at an Oct. 10 ceremony at Peconic Landing in Greenport filled with community leaders, including the staff and board at CAST.
Helen Wright Prince was a schoolteacher in Southold Town who spent the most fulfilling years of her career at a small school set up for the children of workers in a migrant labor camp in Cutchogue from 1949 to 1961.
“It might have been the most successful time in her long teaching career,” Ms. Prince’s son, Barry Prince, said in a letter read by Anti-Bias Task Force Member Leroy Heyliger, who has organized the awards ceremony for the past eight years.
The idea of a “Beloved Community,” carried by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., dates back to 19th Century religious philosopher Josiah Royce. Mr. Heyliger read aloud Royce’s most famous teaching, studied by Dr. King when he was a graduate theology student at Boston College, that “Every proposed reform, every moral deed, is to be tested by whether and to what extent it contributes to the realization of the Beloved Community…When one cannot find the ‘beloved community,’ she needs to take steps to create it and if there is not evidence of the existence of such a community then the rule to live by is To Act So As To Hasten Its Coming.”
These principles underly much of Ms. Demeroto’s work too.
She is also an alumnus of Boston College, a school she chose guided by her strong faith in Catholic social teaching.
“At the core of Catholic social teaching is the common good, human dignity and solidarity,” she said. “Advocating for the common good begins with the protection of human dignity and includes society fulfilling its responsibilities towards one another. People have a right to food, shelter, education, health care and employment.”
These teachings have guided her throughout her career to “have the courage to do what’s right when you see unfairness or injustice,” she said as she accepted the award.
“Courage is defined as the mental or moral strength to venture, persevere and withstand danger, fear or difficulty,” she added. “Helen Wright Prince had great courage in 1949 when she took the teaching job at the first migrant labor camp school in New York….She had to face many obstacles and persevere in the face of difficult, and in some case dangerous situations to ensure migrant children received an education. Her courage changed countless lives.”
Ms. Demeroto reflected on the times in her career that she had to draw on her inner courage to do what’s right in the face of her fear, which guided her path led her from Boston College to Washington DC, where she spent a life-altering ‘justice semester’ at American University, learning firsthand about the work of lawmakers and the lives of convicted criminals, people in mental hospitals, clients of food pantries and law enforcement.
That experience led her to decide to work to promote equity and justice, work that became “the song in my heart,” she said.
She went to law school in Washington, D.C., got married, and had two children who both had learning differences.
“Early support made a difference and they both graduated college with honors this past May,” she said.
Her experience at home led her to pitch the idea of starting a special education practice in her small law firm.
“I knew children with special needs and their families needed a voice,” she said, adding that the work often involved negotiating and suing school districts.
“Was I scared? Of course I was,” she said. “I was a newly practicing young lawyer but I garnered the courage to go up against major school districts because I knew these children with special needs and their families needed a voice.”
She went on to work in public policy at Catholic Charities in Baltimore, and was asked to start a statewide coalition called Energy Advocates, which advocated on behalf of people having trouble paying their utility bills.
While she was initially reluctant to do the work because she knew little about energy regulation, “I did know that vulnerable people in Baltimore were dying during extreme temperatures when their heat or electric was turned off for non-payment,” she said, adding that she was terrified to argue in court against major utility companies, but “it was the right thing to do…. Now there is a regulation which prohibits utility companies from turning off heat and electric during periods of extreme heat or cold, and lives are being saved.”
She then worked to lead Maryland Hunger Solutions, and then worked for Paws for People, a non-profit training service dogs for veterans and children, and became a breeder of golden retrievers to become service dogs.
“This was definitely a bold move, and probably one of my craziest ideas,” she said, but seeing veterans and children with the dogs she trained helped her realize it was the right thing to do.
In January of 2017, Ms. Demeroto was still living in Maryland when she took her two kids on a quick trip to the North Fork, where she had spent time with her family since 1970.
While having a meal at Jeni’s Main Street Grill in Southold, she saw an ad in a local newspaper for the director position at CAST. She was intrigued by the posting and sent in her resume, and was encouraged by the fact that her kids, then in high school, were enthusiastic about the move.
“I was scared to uproot my family, but I knew there was great need in the community and I had a clear vision for CAST,” she said.
When she first came to CAST, she said she was told once, early in her tenure, to “mind her own business when attempting to solve an injustice involving a client.
“In short, I didn’t mind my own business,” she said, adding that she was given strength by the encouragement of her courageous daughter.
“Most human service agencies in the community shut down during the pandemic, but at CAST we knew that was not an option,” she said. “We decided not only to stay open but expand our critical programs and services…. We worked on the front lines to help the most vulnerable in our community— people of color and low income communities that were disproportionately impacted by Covid.”
Among the transformations at CAST during her tenure are a Client Choice Pantry, which gives clients a chance to choose their own meals, with dignity and respect.
CAST also launched a Mobile Food Pantry just the pandemic, built a culinary workforce training program, expanded essential services to Shelter Island, launched an Arts & Culture program, and started a summer and afterschool program for underserved low-income families.
A big part of CAST’s journey during Ms. Demeroto’s tenure is the move into its permanent home on the Main Road in Southold, a former Methodist church and opera house that has been reenvisioned as a community hub. During the move, CAST changed its full name from Community Action Southold Town to the Center for Advocacy, Support & Transformation, and with the help of increased partners and sponsorship, paid off its mortgage in less than a year.
Ms. Demeroto’s work has left a lasting impression on her board and staff, including CAST Client Support Services Coordinator Daniella Menjivar, who first met Ms. Demeroto when interning at CAST in 2017.
“She’s been a mentor to me since day one,” she said. “She taught me to be the best person I could be, and was determined to do what’s right.”
She added that Ms. Demeroto reminds her of the intended rebuke of Senator Elizabeth Warren, “Nevertheless she persisted,” which has been taken up as a feminist rallying cry.
“Cathy has persisted,” she said.
“It’s clear she could be living and working anywhere. we are really lucky to have her here in Southold Town,” said CAST Board Member Bridget Elkin. “When Cathy took the helm, CAST was small. It’s difficult to overstate her impact. Before she became executive director, we were serving 40,000 meals a year. We’re on track to serve 400,000 meals in 2024.”
“She did all this with grace and determination,” she added. Everyone benefits from a more secure community. The motto she lives and leads by, said Ms. Elkin, is “how seldom we weigh or neighbor in the same balance as ourself,” a quote from the mystic Thomas à Kempis.
CAST Board President Marc Sokol said that when he first received Ms. Demeroto’s resume, he thought “this is fantastic. There’s no way we could ever hire this person. We doubled the salary but were convinced she could raise the money.”
Mr. Sokol said that, before Ms. Demeroto became Executive Director, CAST couldn’t pay its staff a living wage, and staff members were often clients of CAST’s services.
‘It wasn’t a profession before she started,” he said. “We had a $280,000 budget, and this year it will be over $3 million. I don’t think anyone else could have done as much as she did with as little.”
Ms. Demeroto will stay on as a consultant to CAST during the transition as she takes care of her family over the next several months.
“I’ve seen seen more and more working families struggling to find safe and affordable housing,” she said in closing her remarks. “I implore the community to have the courage to address the affordable housing crisis in a fair and equitable way.”
“Have courage. Take risks. Make hard decisions. Be disliked,” she said in her closing remarks. “And even step away when the time is right. It will not always be perfect, but it will be good, and that’s enough.”
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