Fifty years ago, Rita McCaffrey placed her first call to a Vermont prison to ask about setting up a visit with an inmate. She didn’t have a particular inmate in mind — just someone who didn’t have family close by and might feel the outside world had forgotten about them.

The Rutland prison superintendent who took her call was puzzled about why McCaffrey wanted to help a stranger living behind bars. Didn’t McCaffrey, who was married with four children, have enough to do?

McCaffrey’s interest was sparked by a family friend — a priest who had taken up prison ministry. After a couple more phone calls — and the superintendent learning from checking around that McCaffrey’s husband, Francis, was a well-respected Rutland attorney — she was finally allowed to pass through the prison gate.

The more times she visited, the more McCaffrey recognized that the vast majority of people who are incarcerated deserve an opportunity to turn their lives around. But to have any chance of succeeding after their release from prison, they need a roof over their heads and community support.

In the early 1980s, McCaffrey founded Dismas of Vermont, the nonprofit organization that for nearly 40 years has provided affordable transitional housing to people who have just finished their sentences in the state’s prisons. What started with one house in Burlington has grown into a network of five, including Hartford Village.

Last Saturday, Hartford Dismas House celebrated its 10th anniversary by honoring McCaffrey, who at age 87 is stepping away from her official duties with the nonprofit.

U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., was among the 120 people who showed up to thank McCaffrey for what she’s done over the years to help those that much of society has written off.

“She has a soft demeanor with a titanium spine,” Welch, of Norwich, told me. “There’s no Dismas House in Hartford or anywhere else in Vermont without Rita.”

McCaffrey had a brief political career herself. In 1988, she won a seat in the Vermont Senate, representing Rutland County. But when it was time two years later to begin campaigning for re-election, she shocked the state’s Democratic party leaders, including Welch, by not entering the race.

After opening the first Dismas House in Burlington in 1986, the nonprofit was looking to expand into Rutland. The proposed project, however, was met with stiff opposition from the not-in-my-backyard crowd.

With the project in jeopardy, McCaffrey decided Dismas needed her full attention. “She gave up her Senate seat for Dismas,” Welch said.

Rutland now has two Dismas houses, including one solely for women that opened in 2021.

Dismas of Vermont got its start after McCaffrey and her husband met Jack Hickey, the chaplain at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. Using Hickey’s transitional housing program in Nashville as a model, Rita McCaffrey, working with a small group of volunteers, brought Dismas to Vermont.

Hartford Dismas came about when social service providers in town approached McCaffrey. Raising money to renovate the two-story, early 1900s house on Maple Street was only the beginning. As in Rutland, not everyone in Hartford was thrilled at the prospect of eight to 12 former inmates living together under one roof in their community.

McCaffrey was key in gaining public and local government support, said Sue Buckholz, a current member of the Hartford Selectboard. “She never raises her voice, she never gets upset,” Buckholz told me at Saturday night’s event. “She just makes things happen.”

Hartford Dismas residents pay $85 a week in room and board. On my most recent visit this spring, eight men ranging in age from their early 20s to the mid-50s were living at the house. Residents are expected to find jobs to cover their living expenses, and save up for a place of their own. Currently, Dismas has residents who work at restaurants, cooking and washing dishes, and in construction. Another resident is a custodian.

In her 10-minute speech, McCaffrey spent the first 9½ minutes, thanking the Dismas staff, along with volunteers who prepare dinners and break bread with residents. “It’s important for people to know how much Dismas is dependent on the community to make it successful,” McCaffrey told me.

The speech was “classic Rita,” said Bartlett Leber, of Norwich, who chairs the Hartford Dismas board. “She doesn’t like to take credit for anything she’s done.”

With roughly 95% of people who are incarcerated, nationally, eventually gaining release, it’s in the public’s best interest to support their re-entry into society.

Peter Rivera, 31, arrived at Hartford Dismas in April. McCaffrey, who happened to be in town for a board meeting, was one of the first people he met.

“She took time out of day to ask how I was doing,” said Rivera, who is legally blind. “I’m not used to people doing that, but she cares about (Dismas residents.) She believes in giving people second chances.”

Francis McCaffrey, her husband for 60 years, was often her sounding board, but stayed in the background. The first time that I met Francis McCaffrey, who died in 2018, was at a Hartford Dismas event, where he spent the afternoon, directing guests to parking spaces in a lot next door to the house.

It wasn’t long after Rita McCaffrey made her first prison visit in 1974 that she started inviting people just out of prison over for Sunday dinners. At Christmastime, she played the family’s piano as their guests clutched small books of carols that she’d handed out.

“Most of them didn’t know the words and even as a young kid I could tell they had never been looked after or truly loved,” said her son Jim, who was in elementary school at the time.

Marybeth McCaffrey told me that she and her siblings agree that “mom taught us a lot,” but the most important lesson?

“Be empathetic, but do something tangible to make a positive impact with your empathy.”

For Rita McCaffrey, it’s mission accomplished.

Jim Kenyon can be reached at jkenyon@vnews.com.