Chris Collins
Veteran Tom Hasting struggled for years with homelessness and health issues, but has a fresh start thanks to a job at MMoCA.
With salt-and-pepper hair parted on one side, black chunky glasses, a dark sport coat and a warm grin, Tom Hasting looks the part of a benignly watchful gallery attendant at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.
But there was a time, just a few years ago, when he wanted to be invisible.
In his early 50s, his weight hovering near 400 pounds, Hasting worked the night shift at a group home not far from his hometown of Rockford, Ill. During his shift he’d sneak in a shower, maybe do some laundry. At 7 a.m. he’d get into his “home” — a Mitsubishi pickup truck — and drive to an inconspicuous parking spot outside a big-box store where he could sleep.
“I used to love it when it would snow, because the snow would cover [my truck’s] windows and no one could see me,” he says.
Hasting, an Army veteran, has struggled for decades with post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from a childhood incident that he declines to discuss.
As a teenager, Hasting was a varsity baseball player and Eagle Scout. And he was an artist. His dream life was to play for the Chicago Cubs and paint at the Art Institute of Chicago.
But after high school, Hasting turned down academic scholarships to two Big Ten universities and opted for “the safe route” of a job at a print shop.
He married young, had two kids and worked in the printing business for much of his 20s and 30s. He also spent two years in the early 1980s as a military police officer for the Army at Fort Sheridan, just north of Chicago.
But a slow spiral of weight gain and untreated mental issues caught up with him. He went through a divorce, and later lost much of the feeling in both feet from diabetes. From about 2008 until 2013, he was homeless, which he tried to keep secret.
“I was about as down as I could possibly be,” he says. One source of pride was that he never turned to drugs or alcohol.
Eventually Hasting found a place to live after a television ad led him to a transitional housing program in Janesville. While there, he traveled to Madison’s VA Hospital for counseling and diabetes treatment. He liked it here, and discovered another VA program could help with rent. He “took a leap of faith” and moved to an efficiency apartment five blocks off the Capitol Square.
“I’m an east-sider now!” Hasting says. “I live on the isthmus!”
His health was improving, but Hasting wanted a job in his new city. After learning about his interest in art, staff at the VA put him in touch with MMoCA. He was hired part-time in December 2013 through the VA’s Compensated Work Therapy program.
Now 57, Hasting can’t work full-time because of the pain and numbness in his feet. But he logs about 25 hours a week and last spring was promoted to shift supervisor.
Hours of standing around in silent galleries can make the time drag, but Hasting says he enjoys chatting with patrons and takes seriously his role of protecting artists’ work.
The new job “has given me back my dignity,” he says, and rekindled his love of art.
“It’s like a free art education working here,” he says. “I’ve turned into a sponge. Any time there’s a lecture, I’m there.”
For years, he says, he just wanted to get through each day. Now he has goals. His weight — which peaked at 450 pounds — is down to 260, and he wants to get to 200. He regrets giving up art as a young adult but has the bug to sketch and paint.
“One day, I’m going to [show my art] in here,” he says. “That’s a goal I have. And I mean it. I’m back to where it’s like, ‘Okay, let’s give it one last good ride.’”
Number of veterans hired at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in the last seven years: nine
Years that MMoCA’s director of public operations, Mary Kolar, served in the Navy: 28
The unemployment rate for veterans in 2014: 5.3%
Unemployment rate in 2013: 6.6%
Month the Department of Veterans Affairs gave MMoCA a “Veteran Industries Employer Award” for its efforts to hire vets: August
