The Power of Work—and Working to Help People
Ted Hebert ’74 started as a gopher at a swimming pool company at age 14. Today, he owns his own pool company and is a respected community philanthropist.
By Alyssa Haywoode
Photo by John Lenis
Ted Hebert ’74 is made of stories.
There was the time he had the jitters during a hot air balloon ride and couldn’t find the ring he was sure he had. Running out of flight time, he finally found the ring, mustered his courage, and proposed to his girlfriend, Barbara. There was the priest he met in Mexico who turned out to be a long-lost relative. There was the time, decades ago, when his mother said she wouldn’t be able to spend much on Christmas, and then she turned around and gave money to someone asking for a donation. “There are other people,” Hebert recalls her saying, “who need money more than we do.”
And then there’s the professional story that starts with 14-year-old Hebert getting a job as a gofer at a swimming pool company and slowly learning the business. In the middle of this story, Hebert is a kid who’s worried about the world’s tolerance for him. He didn’t have a lot of money, and he had a speech disability.
“I always had dreams,” Hebert said, recalling his childhood, “but when you stutter, and you can’t talk right, when you’re scared and insecure …” Then it seems like dreams are all you have.
And while Cinderella had a fairy godmother, the magic that made all the difference for Hebert was working. He delivered newspapers. He washed neighbors’ cars. He mowed lawns and shoveled driveways. At a local diner, he washed dishes and baked muffins. He learned to install pools and earned money doing this work. He saved up $1,600 to buy the car he wanted, a Mustang. But the real payoff was that work was where he could see and feel his own value.
“Work,” Hebert said, “is health.”
It’s an affinity that runs in the family. During the 1950s, Hebert had seen his mother work two jobs.
Hebert wanted to be a doctor. He started out at Holyoke Community College and Springfield Technical Community College before transferring to Worcester State University to take pre-med courses. Having access to a public university was crucial, Hebert said, because even as hard as he was working, he couldn’t have earned enough to pay a private college’s tuition. Worcester State offered him strong professors who provided the flexibility Hebert needed to keep installing pools on the weekend.
Add up Hebert’s education and hard work, mix in the connections he made along the way, stir in the fact that he grew out of his stutter, and the result was a young man with a big personality and a swimming pool’s worth of empathy for other people.
During his final year in college, Hebert applied to 15 medical schools. He was accepted by only one: the University of Southern California. He’d saved $10,000 to pay for the education, but he was scared of leaving the life he’d built. Then, six days before he was supposed to fly to California, he got a phone call with bad news. His mother had been getting groceries at Stop & Shop when she’d had a mild aneurysm.
“My mom was home the next day. I said, ‘You know what, I can’t go, I can’t.’ So I got a hardship leave for a year, and I never went to medical school.”
Instead, Hebert kept living a life full of stories. He traveled, learned to ski, played hockey, kept installing pools, ventured into commercial real estate, and got involved with car racing. “I was even in a play,” he said. “Thirty-six shows of The Graduate. Hardest thing I ever did in my life.”
On the professional front, he committed to pools, launching Teddy Bear Pools & Spas in 1975 in his parents’ carport in East Springfield, Mass. The name was his mother’s idea: She said Ted Hebert, pronounced as it would be in French (Hebert’s father’s family is French Canadian), sounded like teddy bear. Today, Teddy Bear Pools has a bigger home—and a reputation that attracts customers from Western Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Vermont.
“The blessing of it all is that by keeping my business alive, I’ve been able to accumulate money and give back to my family—who are my employees—by giving them good jobs.”
But that’s an understatement: He and Barbara, his wife, who said yes to his proposal on that hot air balloon ride, are also busy giving back to their community. And when he tells stories about philanthropy, the ending is mostly the same: Helping is a great way to connect with people, and connecting with people is the best reward.
“I always tell people the most important thing is your happiness—and doing something to make the world better.”
Take the story about how the Heberts supported Camp Words Unspoken, a camp in Pittsfield, Mass., for kids who stutter. That was personal. Both Hebert and his wife had stuttered when they were young. So they visited the camp and met the students, then Hebert got up to deliver a speech. He told the kids about his childhood: his stuttering, his low self-esteem, how he didn’t feel good enough. He told them that visiting the camp now made him feel like he was home.
The unexpected happy ending: “Somehow or another, I almost started bawling. I got my wife to speak,” Hebert said. “And I told the kids that Barbara would never speak publicly, that her words were unspoken. But she spoke, and I was totally proud of her.”
The Heberts have also sponsored golf tournaments and sports teams. They are involved with Rotary International. They have supported the Make-a-Wish Foundation; the Chicopee, Ludlow, and West Springfield, Mass., Boys and Girls Clubs; and Junior Achievement of Western Massachusetts. And Hebert’s board service includes being a trustee on the board of Holyoke Community College.
“We love animals, so we sponsor the Second Chance shelter,” Hebert added. “They run clinics for people who can’t afford to pay for things like rabies shots. We’ve supported a couple of clinics.” The Heberts have also donated to the Thomas J. O’Connor Animal Control and Adoption Center and to the Zoo in Forest Park, both in Springfield.
In 2022, Roca, a violence intervention and behavioral health program for young people in Chelsea, Mass., named Hebert one of its Difference Makers. The award brought up old feelings of not being worthy enough. But he accepted the award, went to the event, and did what he loves: forged connections with people, in this case Stefan Davis, CEO of I Found Light Against All Odds, an organization that supports at-risk youth—and that Hebert now supports.
Hebert is also a history buff and a local cheerleader who wants Western Massachusetts and its residents to be better known, so he tells stories about how George Washington made the Springfield Armory the nation’s first national armory. Ask him why history is so important, and he says:
“As human beings, if we look back at what others did—or did not do—we can make it a better world. But somehow or another, people think that this is the first time things have ever happened. If they knew history, we would not be making the same mistakes day in and day out. We’re making the same mistakes, but people don’t want to be bothered with the past. History is so important to human fundamentals.”
What advice does he give to young people? “I always tell people the most important thing is your happiness—and doing something to make the world better.”
