06880

Happy Birthday, Dear Longshore

February 9, 2010 · 2 Comments

Westport has been awash in 50-year celebrations.  Mitchells, Staples soccer, Staples Players, Orphenians — all reached the half-century mark within the past year.

Next up:  Longshore.

The Inn at Longshore back in the day. Much has changed since this undated photo was taken -- and much has not.

Few Westporters realize that our town jewel camethisclose to being something else entirely.  In early 1960, the 169-acre property — the privately owned Longshore Beach and Country Club, with a golf course, tennis courts, pools, marina, inn/restaurant and play areas — came up for sale.

The typical Westport response — build houses! — was strongly considered.  But First Selectman Herb  Baldwin and his kitchen cabinet decided to make a bid, on behalf of the town.

They had to act quickly.  In just 18 days they put together a $1.9 million package — then earned approval from the Board of Finance and RTM.  The latter vote was 38-0.  (The RTM doesn’t even  name bridges or approve jUNe Day unanimously.)

A month and a half later — on May 28, 1960 — Longshore Club Park opened to the public.   It’s gone through plenty of changes — it took several owners to get the Inn right; the golf course and tennis courts have been revamped; a much-loved but rickety apartment building was torn down; a sailing school and rental shop now flourishes; some trees have been cut down, others planted; the swimming pool was renovated; a handsome entryway was built; an ice skating rink was added, and the way-cool (but decorative only) lighthouse is long gone — but everyone and everything else has changed in 50 years too.  (Except the Quonset hut behind the Boat Locker on the Post Road.)

Longshore is a photographer's delight, at all hours of the day and in every season of the year.

To mark the occasion, First Selectman Gordon Joseloff has appointed a 50th anniversary committee.  We (full disclosure:  I’m on it) will celebrate the milestone appropriately — through public ceremonies, exhibits, a website and publications.  We have started collecting materials, and despite the early stage we can tell it’s going to be a very cool project.  At the 1st meeting, we saw memorabilia ranging from towels from the old private country club, to 1920s aerial photos showing just a rough 3-hole golf course near the Inn.

Westporters will learn much about Longshore over the coming year.  It looks like the celebration will culminate with a grand event on May 28, 2011, honoring the end of the public park’s golden anniversary. 

Hall & Oates will not appear.  (If you don’t understand that reference, read the history of Longshore — whenever it comes out.)

“06880″ will report back, from time to time, on Longshore’s 50th.  Meanwhile, the next time you drive past the park — or into it — look around.  Enjoy the spectacular view.

And think what this town would be like if — 50 years ago this winter — our civic leaders had decided that $1.9 million was just too much to pay for 169 acres of land.

(Got photos, home movies or other Longshore materials you’d like to share?  Email longshore50@gmail.com)

In the mid-1960s, the Westport Recreation Commission's youth soccer program played games at Longshore. The field -- now the site of the Inn parking lot, and several tennis courts -- sloped appreciably upward. This shot looks toward the golf course; the Inn would be on the left.

→ 2 CommentsCategories: History · Local politics · Places
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Wall Street Meets Main Street — Westport-Style

February 8, 2010 · 1 Comment

Much of America learns about the financial crisis by reading the Wall Street Journal, and watching congressional hearings on C-Span.

Not Westport.  Our town is filled with what used to be called Masters of the Universe.  They work on Wall Street, but return here at night.

And when they’ve got a spare minute, they share their insights with the rest of us.

David Komansky

Last year, at one of the bleakest moments in economic history, David Komansky and Marc Lasry delivered what they’d promised to a standing room only Westport Library crowd:  helpful, thoughtful insights from 2 men with important perspectives.

This Thursday they return (7:30 p.m., McManus Room), for a “Community Conversation:  What’s Happened to Wall Street, Part II.”

Komansky spent 35 years at Merrill Lynch.  At the height of its power, he was chairman and CEO.  He serves on the Library’s Advisory Council.

Marc Lasry

Lasry is founder and CEO of Avenue Capital Group, a $20 billion distress hedge fund firm.

Dan Goodgame – financial journalist, editor and media consultant — will moderate.

The discussion will include a look at the past year; bailouts and their aftermaths; the implications for the future — and much more.

Chris Dodd and Barney Frank:  Eat your hearts out.

→ 1 CommentCategories: Economy · Library · People
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Clean Out For Haiti

February 7, 2010 · 2 Comments

Westport youth organizations and a Bridgeport woman are hosting a 1-day used clothes and medicine drive in Norwalk, to benefit Haiti.

The day-long collection is this Thursday (Feb. 11), at the Builders Beyond Borders office (8 Willard Rd., Norwalk — behind CVS on US1).

Winy Cedon at work on a recent trip to Haiti.

Items most needed — languishing in many Westporters’ closets, bathrooms, basements and attics — include all types of clothing and shoes (except formal attire and heavy winter jackets), shoes, socks, new underwear, sheets, pilows, towels, work gloves, toothpaste, soap, pain relievers for children and adults, Band-Aids, feminine products, antibacterial ointment, diapers, antacids and gently used stuffed animals.

Donations — clean and in good condition — can be dropped off in bags or boxes. Westport Girl Scout Troop 50553, Christ & Holy Trinity Church’s youth confirmation classes, and other youth volunteers will  help sort and pack the items.

Bridgeporter Winy Cedon is a driving force behind the event. Long before the recent catastrophe, she helped ship needed items to her poverty-stricken native land.  She has lived in the US since age 13.  When she is not working as a nurse, she gathers clothes, first aid supplies, toys and other items — then personally delivers them each summer to remote villages.

Thursday’s collection will be shipped to Cap-Haitien.  With help from Winy’s family and friends, the donations will be trucked south to some of the neediest areas in and around Port-au-Prince, which have not yet benefited from relief organizations.

Westporters — including Kelly Frey Pollard, Regina Engler, Melissa Waters, Kim Porio, Jill McGroarty and Karen hube — are helping Winy organize this effort.  Several local businesses are assisting too, and Gault has offered a warehouse.

(A $5 to $10 contribution to cover shipping costs is suggested.  For questions, or to offer assistance, email Karen_Hube@yahoo.com)

→ 2 CommentsCategories: Organizations · People
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Local Artists To Get Hung

February 6, 2010 · 1 Comment

Art By Local — an awkwardly named, but intriguing and inspired week-long event — won’t open until May.  But if you’re a local “emerging artist,” you can prepare for the juried exhibition and sale now.

Applicants must be at least 18 years old, live in Fairfield County and have no gallery representation or previous solo exhibitions.  Artists may enter up to 5 works of art in any media.

Entries must be accompanied by a $20 fee, a CD of up to 5 works, an artist statement and biography.  All work must have been completed after January 2008, and priced under $1,000.  The deadline is March 19.

Art work will be displayed in retail stores and offices in Sconset Square from May 15-23.  The show opens with a preview party on May 20, and closes with a day of art demonstrations, entertainment, food and activities.

It is sponsored by the Downtown Merchants Association and Westport Arts Center.

(For more information and an application form, click here or call 203-505-8716.)

→ 1 CommentCategories: Arts · Entertainment · Organizations
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45K For Haiti

February 5, 2010 · 1 Comment

The Westport Y Water Rats and Staples swimmers weren’t kidding when they said they’d raise money for Haiti.

Today they — and the Westport Swim Club – presented Save the Children with more than $45,000.  The funds came from this week’s Swim for Haiti event.

On Tuesday — just 3 weeks after the earthquake – more than 250 swimmers ages 6-66 swam as hard as they could, at the Y and Staples.  For the adults and teenagers, that meant over 3 miles each.  Younger swimmers did 200 relay laps.

Sponsorship money poured in from across the country — and Canada, France, even New Zealand.

Peggy Mevs, a lawyer at GE Capital, created Swim for Haiti with help from her husband Ronald Wimer, and Linda Bruce, whose son Cameron is a Staples swim team captain.

Peggy – who was born in Port-au-Prince – has family members who were affected by the quake.   Her children, Max and Gabby Wimer, swim in Westport.

“I’m delighted by outcome,” she said.  “When we went home Tuesday night we knew we had cleared $30,000, but to see another $15,000 come in during the next two days – that’s amazing.

“All this support means a lot to me.  I left Haiti when I was 7, but I have cousins who never left. When they tell me about the devastation I can’t understand how they can cope.  I know Haitians need any help they can get. That’s why I felt I had to do something.”

Pledges are still coming in, and Swim for Haiti will deliver them to Save the Children later this month.  Mevs encourages people who did not pledge to send checks directly to Save the Children, or make a donation online and reference “Westport Swim for Haiti.”

Linda Bruce and Peggy Mevs present a check to Save the Children's Rudolph von Bemuth. In the rear are Robert Reeve (Westport Y CEO) and Timothy Rogers of Save the Children.

→ 1 CommentCategories: Organizations · Sports · Staples HS · YMCA
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Confessions Of A MadMan

February 5, 2010 · 1 Comment

“Mad Men” is a great way to experience the ad world — and, thanks in part to that world, the changing America — of the 1960s.

 Miller Pope doesn’t have to watch a TV show about long-ago Madison Avenue.  He was there. 

Miller Pope

A partner in a New York ad agency — and the youngest member elected to the Society of Illustrators — Pope was one of the many “Mad Men” who moved to Westport in the 1950s and ’60s.  Their friendships — on the train, in New York and here in town — along with their hard drinking, sometimes scandalous social lives and civic contributions — gave Westport a unique reputation that remained for years, long after Madison Avenue lost its luster.

Pope has self-published a memoir:  “Confessions of a MadMan:  From Madison Avenue to Island Sands.”  Although in desperate need of a copy editor — he writes of “dinning rooms” and “pool partys” — Pope has produced an insightful look back at a time and town that, for better or worse, is long gone.

Though many illustrators already lived here when Pope and his wife Helen went house-hunting, he was warned about “the Italians.”  The Italians he knew were people like Michelangelo and da Vinci, and the ones he met in Westport turned out to among his best friends. 

The Westport Library’s superb picture reference section; an art supply store “that rivaled the best in New York”; a “first class camera store”  and Westport Country Playhouse all nurtured Pope’s creativity. 

The Westport Artists club was “almost on a par” with the Society of Illustrators and the Art Directors Club in New York.  And “famous illustrators, novelists, TV personalities, movie actors, playwrights, industrial designers and ad men practically crawled out of the woodwork.”

Local folks served as models for Pope’s drawings. His postman, he wrote, “probably appeared in more magazines than many movie stars.”

Pope forgets little from those days.

There was a bar car on one of the late afternoon trains from NY.  I tried to make it whenever I could because it was a rolling cocktail party.  Usually I had so much fun it was a disappointment when I reached my destination. 

Often the contents of this mobile party spilled out of the merry capsule into Marrio’s [sic], a restaurant and bar which had the good fortune to be located just across the narrow street from the little Saugatuck Railroad station.  Marrio must have been a happy man because his bar had eager customers fighting to get up to his bar and thrust cash into his paws.

It is a wonder that those of us from those heady days of the past survived.  It seems that the consumption of alcohol was truly oceanic.  It was not unusual for the ad people I frequently entertained to consume 2 or 3 martinis at lunch and then go back to work. 

Of course, Mario’s (correct spelling) was not the only place Pope and his wife drank.

Helen and I had a lot of parties, and it was not too unusual for some of our guests to still be there when the sun came up.  We worked hard and played hard.

A Miller Pope illustration -- probably using Westport models.

Pope helped create Publisher’s Graphics, a business that centralized paste-up, photostats, typesetting, transparency-stripping and other mechanical work under one roof.  It soon moved from an old icehouse to a converted factory on Riverside Avenue. 

The location was perfect.  Clients rolled off the train (and past Mario’s) to the book-producing factory.  “And if that was not good enough,” Pope writes, “there were several excellent restaurants and bars right next door.”

As with any problem he’d faced in advertising, creativity was key.  One project involved photographs of kids playing.  He used local boys and girls, but the client did not want white children only.  “I sent a couple of my guys over to Norwalk to hire a few minority kids,” Pope says.

In 1975, the Popes left Westport for North Carolina.  They established beach and golf resort communities.  He became a major force in publicizing the area — and remains active today — using, no doubt, the professional (and social) skills he honed back when “Mad Men” ruled the world.

Or at least Westport.

(For information on this and other books by Pope, click here.)

A typical ad from the 1960s envisioned the future.

→ 1 CommentCategories: Arts · History · Looking back · Organizations · People · Saugatuck · Westport Country Playhouse
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Jason Gandelman Goes For The Intel Gold

February 4, 2010 · 3 Comments

Jason Gandelman didn’t think his stuff was “sexy” or “good-looking” enough to draw a 2nd look.

He should have had more faith in Advanced Glycation End-Products, and how their buildup and activation are strongly linked to the cause of common diabetic complications like atherosclerosis and kidney failure.

That was the gist of his 3-year Authentic Science Research project at Staples.  And — sexy or not — it’s earned Jason a coveted finalist spot in the Intel Science Talent Search.

Next month the senior joins 39 other high school students from around the country in Washington, DC.  They’ll present their projects to a panel of judges; display their work to the public — and hope to win the $100,000 1st prize.

Jason would be Staples’ 2nd Intel national prizewinner.  Mariangela Lisanti captured the mega-prestigious honor — for the contest long known as the Westinghouse science search — in 2001.

Jason Gandelman, with his roll-right-off-your-tongue research project title.

Jason may not have thought his project — which provides new directions in the creation of medications to cure the horrible diabetic complications of blood vessels and kidneys — had sex appeal.

But he knew that the research he’d conducted at Yale for 2 years was strong, and worthy of a shot at the Intel competition.

The process was as lengthy as a college application.  Jason submitted a 20-page paper outlining his reearch, plus 2 long essays on his science abilities and view of important scientific problems for the future.

From the time he entered Staples — as far back as Coleytown El and Midle School, really — Jason has enjoyed the help of caring, committed teachers.

Drs. Nick Morgan, Michele Morse and AJ Scheetz helped lead him through the intensive, multi-year Science Research course — while fostering the independence and creativity any scientist craves.  Westport Teacher of the Year Mike Aitkenhead wrote a recommendation to supplement Jason’s application.

Jason also credits his Yale mentor, chemistry professor David Spiegel, for reaching the Intel finals.

“Of course there were scientific speed bumps” along the way, Jason says — for example, data that did not fit his hypothesis.

The biggest obstacle, though, was “the stigma that statistical analyses of data is not ‘real science,’” he says.  All of his work that 1st summer at Yale was done on computers using advanced statistics — but even judges looked down on his work.

They felt that “because it wasn’t lab work on real live animals, it wasn’t significant,” Jason says.  State science fair judges told him condescendingly, “This is a good starting point.”

Jason calls that “a good experience.  I learned it was important to keep plugging away at what I knew was ‘real,” even when all those around me couldn’t see the value in my work.”

In preparation for DC, Jason is reading scientific journals.  He’ll have to show the judges he is broadly excellent in a variety of areas, so he is “brushing up on burgeoning fields, and the ever-changing world of science.”

Jason is polished in areas far beyond math and science.  Sure, he’s taken AP courses in chemistry, biology, physics, statistics, multivariable calculus and environment — but he’s loved AP courses in English Literature and economics too.

He is co-president of Staples’ debate team (and, with his partner, took 3rd place at last year’s Harvard National Tournament).

He is co-captain of the engineering team, where he finds enough time to help build a fully electric car that will be shown at this year’s Ecofest.

Jason is co-president of Staples’ Stock Investment Club — and, oh yes, youth chairman of the Westport Youth Commission, whose major projects include getting a community movie theater in town, and giving internet safety presentations to middle schoolers.

Jason was accepted at Yale in December, and will hear soon from a couple of other schools.  (“06880″ has no idea what they’re waiting for.)

“I just want to find a place that fits me best as a person,” Jason says.  “But I know wherever I go it was what I learned at Staples that got me there, so I’m very thankful.”

In college he hopes to continue conducting biological chemistry research, and major in chemistry.

Here’s hoping he does it with an Intel Science Search gold medal sitting somewhere on his crowded desk.

→ 3 CommentsCategories: Education · Staples HS
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Staples Spectacular Challenge Question – Read It Here!

February 3, 2010 · 1 Comment

You’ve heard all about the Staples Spectacular Student Challenge — the event that kept over 40 high schoolers riveted for 12 hours Saturday, as they researched, analyzed, synthesized, wrote and calculated their way toward a $10,000 prize.

Now you can read it, in all its 10-page glory.

Before “06880″ provides the link, however, a warning:  Sit down.  Get comfortable.  Pour yourself a nice soothing coffee or tea (or whatever).

And imagine how you would have handled this question when you were in high school.

To see the type of thinking Staples encourages today, click here.

Petey Menz has no problem with the Staples Spectacular Student Challenge question. (Photo by Julia McNamee)

→ 1 CommentCategories: Education · Staples HS · Teenagers
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Michael Hayden Is Henry And Richard

February 3, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Westporters know Michael Hayden as Billy Bigelow.

The gifted actor played the “Carousel” role in a production at Long Lots Junior High School.  And Staples. 

And on Broadway.  And in London.

Michael was such a good Billy Bigelow, he received a Theatre World Award, plus Tony, Laurence Olivier and Drama Desk Award nominations.

Of course, the Juilliard graduate is more than a 1-trick pony.  He had recurring roles on television’s “Another World” and “As the World Turns.”

His Broadway credits include  “Festen,” “Enchanted April,” “Judgment at Nuremberg” — and “Henry IV.”  In that Shakespearean drama at Lincoln Center — with an all-star cast including Kevin Kline and Ethan Hawke — Michael played Hal, the ne’er-do-well prince who eventually becomes king.

Now, the 1982 Staples graduate completes Hal’s journey. 

He is cast as the title character in “Henry V,” which opens in repertory this month in Washington, DC.

Michael Hayden as Richard II and Henry V. (Courtesy of Playbill.com)

That’s only the half of it.  Michael also plays the title character in “Richard II.”  Both roles are part of a Shakespeare Theatre Company bill called “The Leadership Repertory.”  It runs through  April.

STC says: 

Shakespeare imagines the reigns of both Richard II and Henry V as they navigate through era-defining decisions, civil war and the ultimate struggle for power. Exploring the timeless themes of power and politics, these two plays performed in repertory keenly focus their lens on the traits of leadership.

 Once more unto the breach…

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JD Salinger and Westport — The Sequel

February 2, 2010 · 1 Comment

“06880″’s recent notice of J.D. Salinger’s long-ago past in Westport brought this recollection from long-time instructor Garry Meyers:

When Gladys Mansir was head of the English department, I as a 2nd-year teacher — without tenure — attempted to introduce Catcher in the Rye into the curriculum.

I was chastised by principal Stan Lorenzen, and ordered to stop.  He said, “It’s not as if the book is literature.”

My colleague and good friend Wyatt Teubert Jr. — at the time of favorite of Stan’s (and Stan’s son, then a senior) — interceded and saved my job.

Although I immediately stopped teaching the book, Stan’s daughter — in my class — defiantly and bravely gave the then-required monthly oral book report on Catcher.

One more related story from Garry Meyers:

Salinger was once a guest of author Peter De Vries, who lived in Westport.  Jan, Peter’s daughter, offered to write an account of the visit for the class.  Feeling that was an invasion of privacy, I discouraged her.

This was before Salinger was noted for his reclusiveness.  I must admit, I sometimes review that decision.

(Got a J.D. Salinger-in-Westport story?  Send it along to “06880.”  Now it can be told.)

→ 1 CommentCategories: Education · Looking back · People · Staples HS
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