Category Archives: History

Sharing Haggis With Robert Burns

Posted on February 3, 2012 | 6 Comments

In 2006, Neil and Morag Grassie family moved from Scotland to Westport. They lived there for a few years, eventually opting for more space and a wee bit of a rural lifestyle in Redding.

Soon after arriving in Westport, they started their own version of the long-established, worldwide tradition of celebrating Robert Burns’ birthday: January 25.

Robert Burns

“It was a great excuse to have a party during the post-holiday lull, when everyone is feeling a bit down,” Morag says.

Burns suppers range from a few men sitting around the fire reading poetry — “very boring,” Morag admits — to the other extreme: “full revelry and Scottish dancing.”

Most of the Grassies’ events include dancing, plus lively speeches and performances of poetry and song.

Burns suppers everywhere feature “the ceremonial piping in of the haggis” by a piper and bagpipes; the “Address to a Haggis” (a lively Burns poem about the virtues of haggis-eating), and of course, eating haggis.

Never had haggis? Here’s what you’re missing: a savory pudding of a sheep’s or calf’s offal, suet, oatmeal and seasoning, boiled in a bag.

Mmmmmm good!

The Grassies’ had a smae challenge when they first arrived in the States: it’s illegal to import haggis. (“The logic of this still defeats the intelligent mind,” Morag laments.)

Haggis.

After much sourcing and testing, they found a butcher in Maine who makes an authentic haggis under license from a butcher in Glasgow — the Grassies’ home city.

There are 3 other producers in the US, Morag reports — in New Jersey, Florida and Texas — but “none are a patch in the beans meat haggis from Maine.” Whatever that means.

This was the 5th year for the Grassie Burns supper. Many friends attend, but only 3 have made it to every one. All are from Westport: David and Sherry Jonas, and Roy Marmelo.

Roy’s wife Maite missed one. Jonathan Ewert is another active Westport participant.

What 3 well-dressed Westporters wear to a Scottish dinner.

“The biggest challenge for Neil and me is clearing out the house so we can get all 44 people seated, with room for the piper to move around, and then serve the 5-course dinner,” Morag says.

She cooks it from scratch, with help from friends who “peel potatoes and turnips for the traditional haggis, neeps and tatties course.” Of course.

Contributors this year included Sherry Jonas, with Heather Lyons (a Westporter originally from Glasgow) and Jane Morrison (a Westporter from, of all places, England) preparing shortbread for dessert.

This year’s program promised — right there, between one course of haggis, neeps and tatties, and another of poached Scottish salmon, wild race and salad — “intercourse entertainment.”

I can’t believe I missed that!

Little bits of Burns poetry are interwoven throughout the night. “You’ll be surprised how many you know,” Morag says.

There are speeches about poems like “Immortal Memory” (it tells a little about his 13 children, many of whom were illegitimate and/or called Margaret). Guests also talk about his socializing and death at age 37 (the two are linked).

Poetry, bagpipes, dancing and haggis. It doesn’t get any better than that.

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Posted in Arts, Entertainment, History, People

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Susan Wynkoop Walks The Talk

Posted on January 24, 2012 | 31 Comments

If you’re going to lead an organization, you should walk the talk.

The CEO of Ford should not drive a BMW. The Secretary of Education should not send his kids to private school.

And the head of the Westport Historical Society should not live in a brand-new McMansion.

Susan Wynkoop does more than just walk the talk. She sprints it.

Since 1990 the new president — she takes over from Dorothy Curran this Sunday (January 29) — has lived in a house built around 1683. It’s not only the oldest house in Westport — it’s the only pre-1700 structure in the entire town.

The Wynkoops' home: 187 Long Lots Road. (Photo by Larry Untermeyer)

Though she’s a native Virginian, Susan is not one of those I-always-wanted-to-live-in-the-past people. As a child, she says, “I visited Williamsburg. But there weren’t a lot of pre-Revolutionary houses where I grew up.”

She worked first for Wachovia, then the FBI. (There’s a connection: While she represented the bank at a recruiting fair, an FBI agent at an adjacent booth convinced her to switch careers.)

Serving in the agency’s New York office, she met her future husband, Morgan (aka “Dutch”). After they were married, he inherited his mother’s home — the oldest structure, at 187 Long Lots Road. He asked Susan if she’d like to live there.

The rest is history (ho ho).

Susan, Katherine and "Dutch" Wynkoop.

Over the years, she’s become passionate about preservation. “It’s hard not to let an antique home get in your blood,” she says.

Two years ago, the Wynkoops embarked on the long process of gaining WHS “local landmark” certification for their home. As a result, she says, “it can never be torn down.”

Voluminous research by the Historical Society’s Bob Weingarten revealed that the house was nearly a century older than previously thought. The dating process included examination of wood beams (possibly from ships sailing to America), and the foundation. Susan has “no idea how it survived all these years.”

Her mother-in-law bought the house in 1971, saying, “It’s stood for hundreds of years. It won’t come down now.” It’s so well built, in fact, there are almost no water leaks into the basement.

The original home consisted of 2 rooms downstairs, 2 above them. More rooms and baths were added in the 1800s, but the house has remained essentially the same. The Wynkoops have done some work — “you could see daylight through a few beams,” Susan says; they’ve modernized the upstairs, and re-insulated — but the outside looks the same.

An upstairs bedroom in the Wynkoop home. (Photo by Larry Untermeyer)

Inside, the exposed chestnut beams and original dining room pine flooring look just as they did in 1683.

“It’s not for everyone,” Susan admits. The ceilings are low, the stairs steep. But she wouldn’t live anywhere else.

“It’s been my home for 22 years — longer than anywhere else,” Susan says. “I find it very warm and welcoming. I can’t imagine a new house, where all the lines are straight and everything is perfectly plumb.”

Her involvement with the Westport Historical Society is, however, relatively recent. She’d always been a member, but not until the landmark designation process did she realize how important the organization is.

She went on the 2010 Holiday House tour, met many interesting people, and was drawn in.

Her job as president will involve fundraising and education — including raising awareness of the importance of historical preservation.

Another challenge will be increasing the Historical Society’s membership. There are many new young families in town. The WHS needs to reach them to grow.

Some live in large new homes — built on the sites of torn-down older ones. Susan Wynkoop — owner and proud resident of a 329-year-old home — will gladly invite them in.

Downstairs in the Wynkoop home. (Photo by Larry Untermeyer)

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Posted in History, Looking back, Organizations, People, Real estate

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Sherwood Island And The Mill Pond: The Prequel

Posted on January 13, 2012 | 20 Comments

Monday’s “06880″ unraveled a bit of the mystery of the house on the island in the Sherwood Mill Pond.

Now Elwood Betts adds even more details — including some history about the adjoining property, Sherwood Island State Park.

Or, as Elwood called it back in the day, Sherwood’s Island Farm.

Elwood Betts, at Evergreen Cemetery. His interest in genealogy led him to help renovate this cemetery, as well as undertake research into the history of Sherwood Island and the Mill Pond.

He should know. An 86-year-old Westport native — he was born in a house on Imperial Avenue — he is an amateur genealogist. Elwood literally knows where all the bones are buried.

And — with the help of Loly Jones — he’s written a few short histories about his ancestors, and the Westport that once was.

Growing up during the Depression, he heard stories of the great American sailing ships that dominated world commerce in the 1840s and ’50s, and the members of his family who captained them. A painting of the packet ship “The Adeline Elwood” — of which his great-grandfather Charles Elwood was captain — hangs proudly in Elwood’s Park Lane home.

He and Loly wanted to find out more. Research at the Westport Library led to the grand list of 1917. Fannie Elwood — a descendant of Capt. Elwood — was one of the top taxpayers in town, assessed $30,350 for “Sherwood’s Farm” on the island bearing the same name.

The original gristmill.

The island was not far from the site of a gristmill on what we now call the Sherwood Mill Pond. In 1705, the 1st mill had been built on what was then called Gallup Gap Creek. (Gallup Gap itself was located where the Sherwood Island connector is today.) In 1790 Daniel Sherwood bought the mill.

After his death in 1828, it was rebuilt. It thrived for years, specializing in kiln-dried corn meal shipped to the West Indies, on boats that docked right at the mill. Oysters were also grown and harvested in the Mill Pond, fetching up to $20 a barrel at the Fulton Fish Market.

The gristmill has been replaced by the house on the right. Back in the day, ships sailed right next to it to load cornmeal, oysters and other goods.

The growth of railroads cut into business, though, and after standing idle for a while, the mill was destroyed by fire in 1891.

Meanwhile, back in 1787, farmland on Fox Island had been given to Daniel Sherwood Jr. as a wedding present. It became known as Sherwood’s Island, and he and his wife Catherine Burr farmed onions and potatoes there.

The Sherwoods had 11 children. The youngest — identical triplets Franklin, Francis and Frederick — all had long and storied careers as sea captains. In 1865 Franklin retired, and became a gentleman farmer on Sherwood’s Island. Indentured servants — immigrants from Russia, Greece and Switzerland — worked the land and helped with household responsibilities.

When Franklin died in 1888, his daughter Fannie Sherwood Elwood inherited the entire 24-acre property. She was the wife of the son of Elwood Betts’ great-uncle, Captain John B. Elwood.

The productive land was surrounded on all sides by unusable marshlands. By the end of World War I, farming there wound down. In the 1920s, it became difficult to support the taxation on the large assessed valuation of the property.

Elwood remembers swimming there with his Sherwood cousins, and visiting the homestead on the island. It provided a great vista, all the way to Long Island. Traveling there — on a winding path — seemed “a journey into a distant world, set apart from the (Westport) community I was accustomed to.”

In 1932, Aunt Fannie sold her property to the State of Connecticut. The house fell into disrepair; the farmland became overgrown. By the late 1930s, it and other open farmland throughout Westport started growing quickly back into wooded areas. Elwood calls this a “dramatic change in the landscape.”

A 1930s map showing subdivision possibilities for Sherwood Island.

Gradually, the State of Connecticut bought more and more property — eventually 234 acres. The 1st parcel — adjacent to Burying Hill Beach — had been purchased in 1914. In the decades that followed, influential landowners in the Green’s Farms area fought the state. By 1937, however, key parcels were acquired — remarkable, considering the dire straits of the Depression. The 150-year-old homestead was demolished. Sherwood Island — the 1st state park in Connecticut — opened to the public.

Had the state not prevailed, a housing development — with hundreds of homes — may well have been built on the land. Westport would look far different today.

In fact, much of the nearby Sherwood Island Mill Pond looks not greatly different from the 1930s — or decades, even centuries, earlier.

Ships no longer dock there, and the “old mill” itself is gone. But the tidal pond is there. Sherwood Island — “Sherwood’s Island — is one marshland away.

And Elwood Betts remembers it all.

Sherwood Island Mill Pond today. (Photo/Wendy Crowther for WestportCT.gov)

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Posted in Beach, History, Looking back, People, Places, Real estate

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That Old House

Posted on January 10, 2012 | 16 Comments

Plenty of readers have admired the new header photo at the top of “06880.”

(If you subscribe by email and have no idea what I’m talking about, here it is:)

Plenty of Westporters — myself included — have long admired the house in the middle of the Mill Pond, but never known the back story.

(I have been inside. Back in its uninhabited — and my younger — days, it was a favorite party destination. I really hope the statute of limitations is up.)

But only Wendy Crowther emailed me with some very intriguing info. This very alert reader wrote:

The photo shows the cottage that I’ve heard called “The Hummock House.” It is the small shack sitting on a hummock (a rounded knoll, or in this case a rocky sand and mudflat) in the middle of the Sherwood Mill Pond.

Old stories say that it was once a part of the gristmill that sat at the foot of the pond (where the tide gates are today). When the mill was destroyed by fire in 1891, an unburned portion (perhaps part of the barrel and cask-maker’s shed) was floated out to the hummock. Once there, it served as a guardhouse for the shellfish beds in the pond.

Despite the fact that there is no electricity or plumbing, it has been occupied over the years, on and off, by a resident who obviously lived very simply and preferred privacy. A few years ago the cottage was put on the market, along with 6 watery acres surrounding it, for $1.5 million. It came with an option to buy the clamming and oystering rights to an additional 30 acres. I don’t know whether it sold.

I cropped the header photo, by the way, from a larger (and very beautiful) photograph I found online. I believe the photographer is Jeff Giannone:

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Posted in Beach, History, People, Places

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108 Cross Highway: The Sequel

Posted on January 5, 2012 | 48 Comments

Last month, “06880″ reported on the proposed demolition of 108 Cross Highway.

The “Henry Munroe House,” I wrote, is one of the few dwellings in town “documented as being built by a free black.”

Henry Munroe, a farmer, bought the land from John Burr in 1802. His descendants were members of Green’s Farms Church. One was the housekeeper for Peter Sturges, at nearby 93 Cross Highway.

As America celebrates the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, Westport prepares to obliterate a house that predates that conflict by half a century. And was built by someone who himself was historically significant: a free black Westporter.

Or not.

An anonymous commenter just posted (on the original story’s “comments” section) that a descendant of the Munroes is disputing the Connecticut Freedom Trail information about the family — the reference to them being black, which led to a townwide controversy over the fate of the house.

108 Cross Highway

The commenter noted the words of the family member, who identifies himself only as “Mike.” On the Freedom Trail website, Mike has written:

I am a decenent [sic] of this Munroe family listed … as African Americans.

This is not correct. The term African American did not exist in that time era. The terms used were Colored, Black, Mulatto, Indian. My family has even been listed as Blackish on the census. People keep changing their race description to African American which is historically incorrect and in fact the family are American Indian.

….This is how history gets changed!

The person who posted on “06880″ added, parenthetically, about the fact that the Munroes may have been Indians, not blacks: “Not that it matters or anything.”

But does it not matter? If the Munroes were not black, does that change the discussion about demolishing the 207-year-old house?

If they were Indians — or had mixed blood — does that make a difference?

“06880″ readers: What do you think?

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Posted in History, People, Places, Real estate

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108 Cross Highway

Posted on December 5, 2011 | 45 Comments

There are teardowns. And then there are teardowns.

It’s one thing to buy a 1960s split-level on a private road, knock it down, and build a monster McMansion. Your neighbors may (or may not) like it, and the old house probably has little historical or architectural significance.

Then there’s 108 Cross Highway.

As reported by WestportNow.com, a 2-story “vernacular” may soon be demolished.

108 Cross Highway

It’s sad enough that the house is definitely old — dating back to 1805.

It’s sadder that it’s a handsome home, adding pleasure to the streetscape of that much-traveled stretch between North Avenue and Roseville.

But how about this:  according to the Westport Historic District Commission, the “Henry Munroe House” is one of the few dwellings in town “documented as being built by a free black.”

Henry Munroe, a farmer, bought the land from John Burr in 1802. His descendants were members of Green’s Farms Church. One was the housekeeper for Peter Sturges, at nearby 93 Cross Highway.

As America celebrates the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, Westport prepares to obliterate a house that predates that conflict by half a century. And was built by someone who himself was historically significant: a free black Westporter.

Because the home was built more than 50 years ago — waaaay more — the demolition application must come before the Westport Historic District Commission.  That sounds good.

Westport has been a town for over 175 years. Free black man Henry Munroe built his home on Cross Highway 3 decades before the founding of Westport.

However, the commission can prevent a teardown only if it is part of a Local Historic District (there are 4 6: Kings Highway North, Jesup Road, Violet Lane and Gorham Avenue, plus recently added Evergreen Avenue and 20-26 Morningside Drive South ), or a property owner asks for designation as a Local Historic Property (there are over a dozen).

If that is not the case — and, with 108 Cross Highway, it’s not — all the commission can do is impose a 180-day waiting period. That, supposedly, gives time for someone to propose an alternative to demolition.

Right now, Westport does not provide tax breaks or credits in exchange for protective covenants on deeds. (The money saved could theoretically be put toward renovation or restoration of the property — which might even enhance the resale value.)

The demolition application will be heard at a Historic District Commission meeting at Town Hall on Tuesday, December 13 (7 p.m.). A large turnout is expected. Many will argue for the 180-day delay, in hopes that a solution can be found.

For inspiration, just look across the street. For years, 113 Cross Highway was a dump. Despite its history as an 1800s farmhouse and (later) pioneering gas station, it was an eyesore — and in 2006, about to be torn down.

At the last second, Mike and Kim Ronemus stepped in. They bought it, then lovingly renovated it and several outbuildings.  Today it’s a jewel of the neighborhood.

They had to jump through countless bureaucratic hoops. But they persevered — and won an award from the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation.

113 Cross Highway -- a view of the renovations from the back. (Photo/Douglas Healey for the New York Times)

108 Cross Highway is in far better shape today than 113 was a decade ago. It’s also more historically significant. But — to paraphrase Thomas Paine — eternal vigilance is the price of preservation.

The 1st step takes place December 13, at Town Hall. All creative solutions are welcomed.

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The Spookiest Spot In Westport: The Sequel

Posted on October 13, 2011 | 5 Comments

More than 2 years ago, I wrote a blog post about “the spookiest spot in Westport.”

It was the Masonic Hall — the 3-story beige building located on the Post Road, just across Imperial Avenue from State Cleaners.

Or, to put it another way:  The “temple lodge” located right above a funeral parlor, which seemed not to have changed since the Masons moved there in 1902.

Westport's Masonic Lodge, pre-painting...

Now, however, it’s time to revisit that story.  And not just because Halloween is around the corner!

No, there’s an actual news peg here:

Anthony Foote, “Worshipful Master” of Temple Lodge 65 sent me a note.  (By email, not telegraph.)

He wrote:

This Saturday (October 15, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.), Temple Lodge 65 will open its doors to the public for our open day.

We recently re-painted the exterior of the building, restoring it to its original glory.  Supporting us on Saturday will be our local Boy Scout Troop 39, that we donated $1,600 to for their scout trailer, and the Westport EMS emergency cycle team that we also donated a sum of $3,000 to.

This year Temple Lodge is celebrating its 187th year, which is quite an achievement  in today’s day and age.  Founded in the year 1824, it is the oldest organization in the Town of Westport, even pre-dating the charter of Westport by 11 years.  During this vast expanse of time, members of Temple Lodge have played a role in the leadership of the town and its many community services.

1949 marked an important milestone in our history.  In that year we purchased the building from the estate of Worshipful Brother Charles Fable and it became the permanent home of Temple Lodge.

On September 12, 1953, the cornerstone of the new Westport Police-Court Building was laid with the First Selectman and Brother W. Clarke Crossman using the silver trowel donated by Wor. Brother Frank N. Bellizzi – who was to build the building.  The trowel suitably engraved, is now preserved in our archives.

Please come along and find out about Masonry and your local Masonic Lodge.

Coffee and snacks will be provided.

I can’t make it, unfortunately.  I’m sorry I’ll miss what sounds like a very intriguing event.

Especially that engraved, archived trowel.

...and today.

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Posted in Downtown, History, Organizations, People

When The Cold War Came To Town

Posted on October 11, 2011 | 13 Comments

Recently the New York Times ran a story on the top-secret nuclear bomb shelter built for President Kennedy near his Palm Beach home.  These days, it’s a tourist attraction.

We could have had something similar, right here in Westport.

Instead we turned our Nike Site into a school.

At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. government developed a defense system.  Nikes were line-of-sight anti-aircraft missiles that would destroy incoming bombers.

In the 1950s Bridgeport — an important manufacturing city, with military production places like General Dynamics, Remington and Sikorsky — was presumed to be high on the Russians’ target list.  Nike missiles would defend it.

They had to be launched from a high elevation, not far from the city.  Westport seemed a perfect spot.

Nike missiles on display.

The town was rattled.  RTM member Ralph Sheffer was appointed chairman of the Nike Site Committee.

Meanwhile, Ralph recalled in a Westport Historical Society oral history, the Army sent in “their best PR people — handsome young captains” to calm things down.

Ralph visited Nike sites around the country.  He even called a former classmate — President Eisenhower’s press secretary — to ask for help.  He offered to set up a meeting with Ike.

“I decided it would be too presumptuous,” Ralph said.

The missiles were placed in silos on North Avenue.  They were to be set off from another point in Westport — one with direct sighting to the Nikes.  The tower had to be built on a higher elevation:  the Sheffer family’s 32-acre property on Cross Highway, from Bayberry to Sturges Highway.

Ralph’s father-in-law — “a loyal American citizen” — donated the property to the Army for $1.  He stipulated that if the Nike site was no longer used, it would revert to the town.

The Army built barracks on Bayberry Lane.  Ralph said he spent mornings “throwing beer cans back onto Army property.”  Other military personnel — those with families — lived on Wassell Lane.

A typical Nike site -- much like the North Avenue one. Missiles were usually buried underground.

Westport writer Max Shulman wrote about the Nike Site  — the town’s reaction, and how it dealt with frisky GIs — in Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys!

In 1958, the book became a movie.  Paul Newman played the Ralph Sheffer character; Joanne Woodward was Ralph’s wife Betty.  The film introduced the Newmans to Westport.  They soon moved here — and never left.

“Of course,” Ralph said in his oral history, “by the time the Nike site was built and in place, it was outdated by new technology.”

In 1960, control was transferred from the U.S. Army to the National Guard.  Westport’s Nike Site closed 3 years later.

Rolnick Observatory -- the former Nike Site on Bayberry Lane -- in 1975.

The Bayberry Lane barracks became Westport/Weston Health District headquarters.  The control tower was turned into the Rolnick Observatory.

The North Avenue site has a more intriguing history.

For a decade, it lay abandoned.  Area children — including, ahem, me — have vivid memories of cavorting on the property.  The silos were open — well, we found a way to open them — and believe me, nothing beats the Cold War memory of clambering inside a missile silo.

In 1973 the Department of Health, Education and Welfare — which apparently had taken control — transferred the North Avenue land to the town.

According to the Norwalk Hour of October 1 that year, a ceremony was held.  Paul Newman called it “a great day for Westport.”  The Staples band played a couple of tunes, including — inexplicably — “On Wisconsin” and Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4.”

First Selectman John Kemish said, “The land once needed for war will now be dedicated to the pursuit of peace.  The property will now be redeveloped by our Board of Education as a facility for our children.”

Well — not quite.

Though envisioned as a possible location for the Town School Office, a curriculum center, a maintenance garage and/or a repair area for Staples’ automotive classes, it languished.

In 1977-78, industrial arts teacher Ed Ljostad created a “Woodshop to Nike” class.  Eleven junior and senior boys began a planned 5-year renovation project there.

Their goal was to build bedrooms, bathrooms, a kitchen, storage space, dorm rooms and a dining hall — a living environment that any Staples group could use.

They began removing walls, radiators, pipes and debris; the next step was plumbing and electrical work, a septic system, new windows and doors.

Project Adventure — a one-quarter gym option — installed a ropes course, high wire and 30-foot balance beam, to develop group cooperation.

But both projects petered out.  Generations of Stapleites recall the Nike Site as an abandoned, overgrown, unpatrolled area — the ideal spot for drinking, drugs and sex.  (“Hey, wanna see my silo?”)

You wouldn’t know any of that today.  The missiles are gone; so is any trace of the military.

Instead of Cold War civil preparedness — or teenage wasteland — the North Avenue Nike Site is pristine.

Few — if any — of the people there today know the history behind the property.

The property that today is Bedford Middle School.

The North Avenue Nike site today.

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Posted in History, Looking back, People, Places, Staples HS, Teenagers

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Westport Engineer Prevents World War III

Posted on September 22, 2011 | 3 Comments

For over 10 years, Marty Yellin was a control systems engineer at Perkin-Elmer.

Starting in 1965, the longtime Westporter helped design key elements of Hexagon — a reconnaissance spacecraft that, one NASA official says, “helped prevent World War III.”

For over 4 1/2 decades, Yellin was forbidden to talk about any aspect of his work.

Until last Saturday.

That’s when — 25 years after the top-secret, Cold War-era mission ended — Hexagon, and 2 other satellite programs were finally declassified.

The public got its first view of the Hexagon spy satellite last Saturday, at the National Air & Space Museum. (Photo courtesy of Roger Guillemette/Space.com

Last weekend Hexagon — along with Gambit and Gambit 3 — were open to the public.  The one-day-only event was held at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum’s Dulles Airport center.

According to MSNBC.com, a throng of joyous National Reconnaissance Office veterans were “finally able to show their wives and families what they actually did ‘at the office’ for so many years.”

It was quite a lot.

MSNBC.com says, “the Hexagon’s panoramic cameras rotated as they swept back and forth while the satellite flew over Earth.”  Intelligence officials called this process “mowing the lawn.”

“Each 6-inch-wide frame of Hexagon film captured a wide swath of terrain covering 370 nautical miles — the distance from Cincinnati to Washington — on each pass over the former Soviet Union and China. The satellites had a resolution of about 2 to 3 feet (0.6 to nearly 1 meter).”

The 60-foot long, 30,000-pound Hexagon carried 4 spools — a phenomenal 60 miles’ worth — of high resolution photographic film on its space surveillance missions.   The spools weighed 3,000 pounds.  Every few months a spool was dropped by parachute from the satellite to a waiting plane, which hooked it and reeled it in.  The force of the giant film would drop the plane 10,000 feet.

From there, the film was sent to an ultra-secret Kodak lab.  It was so sensitive to light that only blind people could work on it, Yellin says.

The developed film was sent to the Pentagon for analysis.

Between 1971 and 1986, NRO launched 20 Hexagon satellites from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base.

“The final launch in April 1986 — just weeks after the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion —  also met with disaster,” MSNBC.Com says.

The Titan 34D booster “erupted into a massive fireball just seconds after liftoff, crippling the NRO’s orbital reconnaissance capabilities for many months.”

Of course, no one outside a small circle of political and military leaders ever heard about this catastrophe.  Marty Yellin, his fellow engineers — and everyone else associated with the spy satellite program — was sworn to secrecy.

Until last Saturday.

This week, Yellin looked back with pride at his decade of work on Hexagon.  He notes that the technology led directly to breakthroughs like the Hubble Telescope.

At the same time, he is awed and humbled by comments like this, from NASA’s Rob Landis:

“You have to give credit to leaders like President Eisenhower, who had the vision to initiate reconnaisance spacecraft.  He was of the generation who wanted no more surprises, no more Pearl Harbors.”

In fact, Landis continues, “I think that Hexagon helped prevent World War III.”

That scares the hell out of Marty Yellin.

“I wonder,” he says.  “What if it didn’t work?

“Would we all be dead now?”

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Posted in History, Looking back, Organizations, People, technology

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Remembering Dexter Brooks

Posted on September 4, 2011 | 8 Comments

Much of B.V. Brooks’ life seems to come from an earlier, more traditional New England era.

His real name was Babert Vincent.  His nickname was “Dexter.”  He attended Deerfield Academy and Dartmouth College.  Like his father — also named B.V. — Dexter was a faithful Yankee Republican.

B.V. Brooks

He followed his father into real estate development.  (In the 1950s, B.V. Sr. developed one of Westport’s 1st shopping strips — Westfair Center, opposite what is now Super Stop & Shop — and an adjacent housing development behind it.  Dexter Road is named for his son.)

In 1964, the Brooks family launched a new local paper, the Westport News.  According to Woody Klein’s history of Westport, it was formed as an opposition voice to the established Town Crier, seen as “the voice of the Republicans in power.”  The Brookses were aligned with Westport’s more conservative Taxpayers Party.

Ironically, the News made its biggest name — and ultimately drove the Town Crier out of business — with a very un-Republican crusade.  In 1967 United Illuminating announced plans to build a 14-story nuclear power plant on Cockenoe Island, less than a mile off Compo Beach.

Brooks’ paper — led by its activist editor, Jo Brosious — began a 2-year crusade against the utility company’s purchase.  In 1969, the town of Westport bought Cockenoe for $200,000.  Our water has been swimmable — and our homes safe — ever since.

The News tilted more Republican in later years, but Dexter Brooks never was a ham-fisted, you’ll-say-it-my-way-or-be-gone publisher.  I should know:  I spent 3 years as sports editor there, and my byline has appeared in the paper ever since I was a Staples junior.

In 1999 the Brooks family sold the Westport News — and its other Brooks Community Newspapers, in towns like Fairfield, Norwalk, Darien and Greenwich — to the Thomson chain.  Dexter stepped down as publisher that year.

He remained president of the Brooks, Torrey and Scott real estate company.  It was another family business:  Torrey and Scott are the names of his sons.

(Fun fact:  Brooks Corner — where his newspaper and real estate company once had offices — is named for the family.  The fact that Brooks Brothers now has a clothing store there is pure coincidence.)

Dexter Brooks’ impact on Westport — both as a real estate developer and a publisher — were enormous.

And no one could say he did not know his town.

Woody Klein’s book contains an anecdote about Dexter Brooks.  Once, a fellow member of the New England Press Association asked him how a small town like Westport could support an 84-page paper.  Where did so much news and so many ads come from? he asked.

“You don’t know Westport,” Brooks replied.

He explained that thanks to shoppers from far and wide, the town’s retail sales per capita were the highest in the state.

“The number and quality of restaurants is renowned far and wide,” he continued.  Home prices and income levels were quite high too.

But, Brooks continued, statistics did not tell the whole story.

At the heart of the difference here, in my opinion, is the dynamics, the widespread activism that engulfs Westport.  We kid that the shortest time span in the world is the time between when the light turns green and the guy behind you blows his horn.

And Westport boasts the world’s shortest time for organizing a group “pro” and a group “con” on any local issue.

Dexter Brooks died on Thursday, after suffering a heart attack while vacationing in Mexico.  He was 84.

His family’s legacy — and his own — will live for years.

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