Modest, but still outspoken, Ron Coun steps down as JVS exec

by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

One week before ending 41 years of service at the Jewish Vocational Service of MetroWest New Jersey, Ron Coun contemplated June 30, his last day at his East Orange office.

“I know that it’s happening,” he said, “but I haven’t taken one picture off the wall yet. I’m just so busy all the time.”

Since the day in 1965 when he began working as a job counselor at JVS, then located in Newark, Coun has barely slowed down.

In fact, just days before heading toward retirement, he complained to NJ Jewish News about potential budget cuts that could endanger one of his many pet projects, a program called Maturity Works.

It is designed to help people ages 40-70 return to the job market by stressing their value as experienced workers, using local synagogues as clearinghouses for possible employers.

“I’m hoping we’ll have some extra dollars so we don’t have to cut back,” he said. “We’re not going to stop that program, but there is no question the cuts will hurt it pretty badly.”

As he steps down, Coun said he will embark on a more personal battle, intensifying his fight against the cancer he has been living with for more than a decade.

“I’m finishing up my medication round for another month. It’s moving in a good direction, but it has to be looked at as a chronic disease — something that has to be attended to. I think you have to take the attitude that ‘you’ve got to fight this thing’ — whatever that means,” he said.

“I’m going to put my energies into getting through this next period. I have not done that in the 10-and-a-half years I’ve carried this damn thing. I have made sure my energies are directed at curing this damn thing or at least stopping it. But I ain’t going to be sitting around in a bathrobe, that’s for sure.

“There are a lot of things I have to do and a lot I’d like to explore, so I’ll let it happen,” the Livingston resident said. “I’ve got two grandchildren — one in Brooklyn, one in Bergen County — that I want to get to know better. I owe my wife time. You tend to neglect the most important people in your life because you say, ‘Well, they’re there.’ You take them for granted. Work becomes everything. The truth is, life is what should become everything. I’m going to try to learn that.”

Coun will turn the JVS reins over to Leonard Schneider, the agency’s associate executive director, whom he calls “extremely capable,” along with a board and an executive committee that, he said, are among “the finest we’ve had in years.”

But as he reflected on his agency’s role as a champion of the poor, the elderly, the unemployed, and the mentally and physically challenged, Coun said he has no intention of stifling his opinions in an era he views as one of increasing social needs and diminishing budgets.

“I came in in the early ’60s, when things like social justice and altruism were preferred values in this country. We looked at them as compatible with being a healthy nation,” he recalled. “To me, that has fallen by the side and that’s sad. It’s something I hate to see at this stage of the game. So you’ve got to work harder at it. That’s all. That’s the job of the next generation, and don’t cry in your milk, because nobody really gives a damn.”

What was once a “war on poverty” has become what he called “social entrepreneurism,” leaving agencies like his to piece together decreasing foundation grants, government aid, and corporate sponsorship as funding devices.

“A lot of the programs were funded by government and foundation grants, and now that’s a toughie. When you would get two or three grants, you knew you were set. Now you have a patchwork that has to be sewn together.”

Coun has fought hard for the budget line of JVS as a beneficiary agency of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. But as he looked back on budget battles he’s fought in and outside the Jewish community, Coun became conciliatory.

“One has to look at the business end of what we do and not confuse it with the personal end,” he said. “Once we do that, we’re really screwing up badly. I don’t see it as personal. I never have. It doesn’t mean I have to like it. I let them know when I don’t like it. But it’s still not personal.”

He also acknowledged that “these are very tough times.”

Those determining the budgets “have to do what they have to do, and I have to do what I have to do. If you keep those lines clear, you can negotiate and have relationships and get things done,” said Coun.

“The exec of an agency owes it to the agency to advocate and try anything they can do to improve the position of the agency, and Ron has been a steadfast champion of the JVS cause and represented it well,” said Arthur Sandman, associate executive vice president for program services at the UJC MetroWest. “We have not always been able to meet his expectations or even our own for what we’d like to be able to accomplish for his agency, but he’s pushed back at us.”

Coun said he is “very worried about the folks over 40 who are not seen by government or anybody else as important except as taxpayers. The fact of the matter is, they’re out of work; they ain’t paying taxes either.”

Since the fall of 2005, the JVS has been collaborating with Karen Alexander, the federation’s director of eldercare services, whose Parsippany Live program in a Naturally Occurring Retirement Community is funded in part by UJC MetroWest and in part by federal funds that are now running out. Parsippany Live has provided job preparation and placement for some of the town’s senior citizens.

Under Coun, the MetroWest JVS has become influential far outside the area’s borders. This summer, its staff will consult with their counterparts in other areas of the country on the techniques they use to prepare and place older workers in the job market.

In recognition of such accomplishments, the Fall 2007 issue of the quarterly Journal of Jewish Communal Service will be dedicated to Coun.

With typical modesty, he told NJJN, “It wasn’t necessary to do that.”

But Gerrie Cohen, the Jewish Communal Service Association’s executive director, naturally disagreed.

“He was a great leader in the JVS field. He dedicated his life to it,” she said. “He has been a real spokesperson for Jewish vocational services, and he’s been a major player and a wonderful human being.”