He was one of a kind. A man who lived to care for others and gave a lifetime of service to his community and its children. We will surely never see his like again.
And that is the sad reality today as tears cover Lebanon as word of Jim Vanier’s death reaches the Upper Valley.
Vanier, true Lebanon royalty, died Saturday night, struck down by an apparent heart attack in Boston, a few hours after getting off a flight from Florida, where he’d been on vacation.
Vanier was 73.
If you ever sent your kid to the small, brick Carter Community Building, known simply as the CCB, in downtown Lebanon, then you knew Jim Vanier.
Vanier was a local treasure. And the gold that he trafficked in for more than 50 years was the safety and growth of local children.
Vanier grew up in a well-known Lebanon family with nine children. To this day, he remains one of the best high school basketball players the small city has ever seen, honing his skills as a CCB gym rat.
He started working at the CCB as a teenager, becoming its youth center coordinator in 1987. He followed in the footsteps of community giants like Tommy Keane, Pat Walsh, Jim Wechsler, Frank Canillas and Linda Preston.
Located on Campbell Street, the CCB was built in the late 1910s with money from William S. Carter, a Lebanon businessman, and his wife, Theodora. Shortly thereafter, the nonprofit Carter Community Building Association, or CCBA for short, was formed for the “purpose of furnishing young people of Lebanon (New Hampshire) a healthful and uplifting club life.”
For more than 50 years, Vanier opened the CCB ‘s doors and his heart to multitudes of Lebanon youth — for no charge. “Kids shouldn’t have to pay to be kids,” he’d say.
Yes, your children, your neighbor’s children, Lebanon children. Kids with nowhere to go after school found a safe haven at the CCB. They were greeted with a smile, a hug, perhaps a snack, and a quiet room where they could do homework.
Kids came away from their CCB experience polite, caring and respectful. No one was turned away. If a child showed up without sneakers, Jimmy worked magically to discover a pair, all free of charge.
In the small gym, he taught proper procedure for jump shots; in the foyer he taught proper decorum — clean up, sweep up, and be courteous when answering the phone. When kids came into the building, they learned to hang up their jackets and in the winter, leave their snow boots in a neat row at the entrance. It was all part of Vanier’s manners program which he perfected over the years.
Vanier never raised his voice, never raised his hands. Instead, he raised generations of Lebanon kids to become civic-minded Lebanon adults.
But while Vanier didn’t change, the people running the CCBA did. In May 2024, the CCBA announced that the “Youth Drop-in Center,” which Vanier had run for decades, was undergoing drastic changes. Starting in the fall of 2024, the CCBA would start charging families almost $100 a week to use the building after school.
Vanier refused to go along. He turned in his keys. “It goes against what the philosophy of the CCB is supposed to be,” Vanier said in a May 2024 interview with then-Valley News columnist Jim Kenyon. “This place has always been about putting children first. Now it’s all about dollar signs.”
I hadn’t seen Jimmy since the summer. Typically, he was calling around hoping to find someone in town to help out a family down on their financial luck and needing help to pay the new CCB participation dues.
Jim was furious. “It never was like this before,” he declared. “People took care of each other. Now it’s all about money.”
That was not the world where Jim Vanier was comfortable. Not the world about which he taught his young charges.
We spoke a little longer and then each of us had places to go. But not before he turned and gave me a teeth-rattling bear hug. And then, “I love you, man. I’ll see you again.”
I wish I could have hugged him one more time.
Don Mahler, longtime sports editor at the Valley News, is now retired and lives in Bradenton, Fla.