For a mid-sized city with at best mid-level national visibility, St. Louis has a remarkable number of institutions that serve as a national model. Consider our Major League Baseball team, our symphony orchestra, our United Way organization, our community media, our black repertory theater company – and our Urban League affiliate. In the 27 years that our friend and colleague James H. Buford has led the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, its annual budget has increased from $2.5 million tenfold to $20 million. And as Jim says in the Business story about him in this week’s paper, those numbers mean more than money: they mean programs to serve the needy but striving citizens of this region.
Jim’s board at the Urban League, currently chaired by BJC executive Debra Denham, has struggled to keep him at the helm as his agency’s proven success at managing ambitious programs has made the St. Louis affiliate a magnet for recent jolts of major federal funding. But alas, Jim has found a brief respite in the exhausting responsibility that comes with success and finally announced his retirement this time next year, pledging one last year to finalize one last major Urban League program we will all be hearing about soon.
The board chair with the unenviable task of replacing this supremely capable leader says well what so many of us feel about Jim Buford. “The broader community has greatly benefited from his wisdom as an eloquent voice for understanding among all racial and ethnic groups and from his leadership on a wide array of issues,” Denham says. For our part, we can attest that the St. Louis American Foundation’s annual Salute to Excellence in Business would not have enjoyed its growth and success without Jim’s partnership. For many years now he also has submitted a monthly column to The American where he has written incisively on every issue that affects our community – and often with a disarming candor very seldom shared by the CEO of a prominent social service agency that depends on support from the corporate sector. We thank him very deeply for this critical service to our mission.
Indeed, Jim has been a major player – both up front and behind the scenes – on every issue one could name; most recently, his advocacy for minority inclusion in contracting and workforce has been the right stand to make at the right time. What amazes his many admirers is that Jim somehow plays a hard, inside game without coming away soiled by the politics involved. He has enjoyed Republican presidential appointments while fighting the fights for the poor that are always led by Democrats. His agency benefits from mammoth government funding because of its efficacy, not its CEO’s connections. Jim is pragmatic about that, as with all things. “We don’t try to get contracts politically,” he tells us. “Live by that sword, die by that sword.” He has instead lived by his word and his bold actions, and for that reason he is walking off the field of battle with pride.
“Jim is the consummate relationship builder – nobody else in St. Louis has a broader, more diverse or more effective network of colleagues and friends,” his board chair, Debra Denham, says. That is, simply, true. We have been blessed to be one of those many colleagues, one of those many friends. We will miss his leadership immensely. And while we respect our friend’s right to enjoy some well-deserved rest and time on the golf greens in the gulf, we hope to retain the privilege of sharing Jim’s wisdom with our readers. Like everyone else in St. Louis, we don’t want to lose this colleague.
