For a 208-year-old guy, Horace Staples looks pretty good.
Some say he’s never looked better.
For years his portrait — painted in 1934 by Samuel Brown, as a WPA project — hung in a deserted corner of the school he founded.
When the new building — a gazillion square feet larger than the one he donated in 1884 — opened a few years ago, Horace Staples was placed in a prominent spot. He smiled enigmatically — a philanthropic version of the Mona Lisa — right outside the main office.
Earlier this year, principal John Dodig — who loves the school as much as Horace did — noticed the founder was flaking. In fact, his paint had begun deteriorating in his “youth.” Previous conservation treatments failed.
Horace Staples, before undergoing treatment…
Dodig notified Carole Erger Fass, co-chair of the Westport Schools Permanent Art Collection. She and co-chair Kathie Bennewitz called Peggy Van Witt, an art conservator in Kansas City.
Peggy, a former Westporter, had recently conserved the damaged portrait of another, equally famous school namesake: Edward T. Bedford. She was happy to help. Off Horace Staples went, to the Midwest.
Peggy unpacked him, and was not pleased.
“I just removed Mr. Staples from the box, and examined him closely,” she wrote to the WSPAC. “He is severely delaminating.”
Doesn’t it suck to delaminate?
“In a previous restoration the tacking edges were trimmed,” she explained. “He was glued to a panel which was then nailed to a stretcher bar. This makes it more complicated.”
Peggy had 2 choices: “inject him with an adhesive from the front, or remove him from the panel and put him on the vacuum table.” She ran a battery of tests, then treated him.
…and Horace Staples today.
Soon — all spiffed up — Mr. Staples was back in Westport. Once again, he hangs proudly outside the main office.
And — just like Horace Staples 128 years ago — Peggy Van Witt is a very generous soul.
She waived her $1,247 conservation treatment fee.
All of Westport — and the no longer delaminating or flaking Horace Staples — thank her.
No matter how many references to the past I toss out on “06880,” alert readers always offer more. They dredge up memories buried deeper than the old town dump upon which the Westport Library now sits.
The other day, for example, I mentioned the former Vigilant Firehouse. It’s that slender structure on Wilton Road, in the parking lot behind the Inn at National Hall.
The Vigilant Firehouse, circa 1977. (Photo/Norwalk Hour, Bramac Studios)
The story was about 2 new restaurants moving to the area, but Doug Bond pounced on the building. Though he now lives in San Francisco, the story brought him back to his 1970s childhood on Edge Hill Road.
That’s the street that runs between Wilton Road and North Kings Highway. (It’s a fantastic little shortcut, though folks who live there always fume when I mention it publicly. So I won’t.)
A firehouse siren, Doug reminded me, blared every day at 5 p.m. It also sounded for every big fire, summoning volunteers to help fight the blaze.
How did they know where to go? A series of short and long blasts indicated exactly where in town it was. The number of times the signal was repeated indicated the seriousness of each fire.
The code, Doug says, was also published in the phone book. (I never knew that.) (If you don’t know what a “phone book” is, ask your parents.)
He remembers the terror he felt when 4 consecutive blasts — the signal for his part of town — rang out.
That code was also used by other firehouses in town. One night, home from college, I was awakened by a series of blasts. Things were ominous. I forget how I knew out the code, but I got up and drove a short distance from High Point to the Post Road.
Sure enough, the bowling alley — now Pier 1, near V Restaurant — was ablaze. You haven’t seen a real fire until you’ve seen bowling pins — sparked by the lacquered lanes — fly out through what used to be a roof.
I guess if you grew up in Westport, listening to fire sirens was a ritual we all shared.
Today, Doug notes, we find out where the fire is by checking our tweets.
The event — now in its 51st year — honors an eclectic group of former athletes. Many competed as youngsters in Westport; some arrived here after their playing days were over, but got involved in town sports.
All have intriguing stories to tell.
Three wrestlers will be honored at this year’s dinner (Tuesday, May 22, 6 p.m., Continental Manor in Norwalk). Nick Garoffolo, Mike Breen and Andy Lobsenz were all stars during Staples’ grappling heyday; all continue to give back to their sport, long after their days on the mat are over.
Ex-Staples baseball and football standout Jeb Backus — later a softball star, now a youth coach — will be feted. So will Danbury High basketball, field hockey and track ace Janet Zamary, who went on to become Staples’ first athletic trainer, and now as a phys. ed. teacher heads up the school’s highly regarded Unified Sports program for students with disabilities. And longtime Little League volunteer Joe Nixon too.
Three other honorees have gone on to non-athletic careers. But they may not be where they are today without the lessons they learned as kids, on the fields.
George Barrett
George Barrett was a superb soccer, basketball and baseball player at Staples. A back injury ended his soccer career at Brown University. He coached and taught at the Horace Mann School in New York, and got an MBA at NYU. Today he’s chairman and CEO of Cardinal Health, ranked #19 on the Fortune 500, and a major healthcare company. He serves on numerous civic and charitable boards, and has an honorary doctorate from LIU.
Suzanne Allen Redpath
Suzy Allen played field hockey and ran track for legendary Staples coach Jinny Parker. After Hollins College she joined CBS News, where she’s had an astonishing 40-year career. She was Walter Cronkite’s researcher during Watergate; covered earth-shaking events like the rise of Solidarity in Poland and the Falklands War, and then — as CBS Evening News senior producer for foreign coverage — directed and oversaw stories like the fall of communism, the emergence of democracy in China, and 9/11. Suzy — now Suzanne Allen Redpath — has won Emmy and DuPont Awards, and received an honorary doctorate from Hollins.
Rich Franzis
Rich Franzis is known to many Westporters as an assistant principal at Staples. Many do not know that he played football at Shelton High. A longtime U.S. Army reservist with the rank of colonel, he was deployed to Iraq where he oversaw the intelligence operations of 5 brigades. He was awarded a Bronze Star for his service.
George, Suzy, Rich and the other very worthy honorees may or may not discuss the role athletics has played in their lives, when they make their speeches May 22.
But — if they’re anything like the five decades of Sportsmen honorees before them — they’ll definitely tell tales of games, coaches, teammates and opponents in the social hour before the dinner, all during the meal, and long into the night.
They’ve accomplished plenty professionally, in the years since the last whistles blew.
But at this month’s banquet — and, really, their entire lives — they’re sportsmen. The capital letter — Sportsmen — is just one more feather in their caps.
(Tickets, at $50 each, are available at Settlers & Traders Real Estate, 215 Post Road West; Junior’s Hot Dog Stand, 265 Riverside Avenue, or by emailing karen_defelice@westport.k12.ct.us. For more information call 203-341-1365, or click here. )
One of Westport’s best-kept secrets is the White Barn Theatre.
The White Barn Theatre.
Founded in 1947 by actress/producer Lucille Lortel on her Newtown Road property straddling the Norwalk line, the 148-seat White Barn has always played second fiddle to the bigger, better-known red barn Westport Country Playhouse.
But despite its low-key presence — it may be the last organization on earth without a website — the White Barn Theatre deserves its place in arts history.
Lucille Lortel
Lortel envisioned the former horse barn as a showcase for daring plays and new playwrights, composers, actors, directors and designers. It has been called “one of the greatest American experimental theaters of the 20th century.”
It presented works by Ionesco, Albee and Beckett, and premiered or staged early versions of plays that went on to successful Broadway and Off-Broadway runs, including Paul Zindel’s “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds” and Terrence McNally’s “Next.”
Among the actors who got their start there were Peter Falk and Geoffrey Holder.
The White Barn Theatre and Athol Fugard, featured in a 1964 1994 Norwalk Hour story.
Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller were regular guests for plays by Athol Fugard, Bertold Brecht and Tennesse Williams.
It’s the real deal — even if you’ve never heard of it. And many Westporters have not.
This Saturday (May 12, 2 p.m.), you’ll get a chance to peek inside the White Barn Theatre. The Westport Historical Society is sponsoring a tour. Former general manager Mark Graham and British stage designer Peter Ling will show off the building and grounds (Lortel’s private residence still stands).
There will be a reading, and refreshments in the garden.
Eva La Gallienne
Plus, Ling says, through “the magic of theater” Lortel and Eva La Gallienne — the actress/producer/director long associated with the White Barn — will “live again.” I can’t say more than that, but it should be very cool.
Just like everything about the White Barn Theatre. Whether you’ve been a fan for 6 decades, or heard of it for the first time 6 seconds ago.
(Tickets are $10 each. For reservations, call 203-222-1424. The White Barn Theatre is located on Newtown Turnpike, near the corner of Cranbury Road.)
The Minuteman — a Compo Beach icon since 1910 — looks as watchful as ever, as work proceeds on a new fence at his base.
(Photo/Tom Feeley)
For over 100 years, Westporters (not all of them teenagers) have decorated the Minuteman with scarves, Christmas caps, baseball hats, flowers and, let’s just say, a second “gun.”
He’s seen it all.
We’re betting his new fence — replacing the old, rusted one — will not deter a new generation of Westporters, as they too get “up close and personal” with our favorite statue.
Westport has no direct living links to the Titanic tragedy, 100 years ago last month.
But 86-year-old Elwood Betts remembers another disaster well. 75 years ago today the Hindenburg burned in a hellish fireball, as it attempted to dock with its mooring mast in New Jersey.
Just a few hours earlier, it had flown gracefully over Westport. Here is Elwood’s story.
May 6, 1937 was just another routine day. I was probably daydreaming about the last day of school. I would leave Westport for rustic Norwich, Vermont, to spend the summer on my grandfather’s farm. I’d drive the cows to pasture, feed the horse, and take him to the blacksmith shop. I’d carry a couple of bags of last year’s potatoes to pay the smith. Good potatoes would be a treat this time of year.
Elwood Betts today. The Evergreen Cemetery restoration is one of his many civic projects.
But in the back of my 11-year-old mind, there was the excitement of seeing photographs in Life magazine. Soldiers in Italy strutted in their stiff lockstep, and thousands of German youths gathered in the stadium saluting the Nazi swastika.
If my mind wandered as I sat in Mrs. Caswell’s 6th grade homeroom at Bedford Elementary School (now Town Hall), it was jolted by the PA. Word came to go quickly into the playground, in the back of the school.
As we burst outdoors we saw the massive circle of the nose of the monstrous airship Hindenburg. It loomed directly toward us. Its altitude was so low, and the path so close to the edge of our playground, that we actually saw passengers lean out the gondola windows. We all waved frantically.
Above the roar of the engines, we were mesmerized by the huge swastika emblazoned on the tail fins.
The Hindenburg. It carried the only swastika ever to fly over the United States.
We soon were dismissed from school. We left exhilarated, having seen another great technological advance that was becoming the hallmark of the new Nazi Germany.
The next morning I rose very early. I biked downtown to Lamson’s Newsy Corner on Taylor Place (across from the Y), to pick up the morning newspapers to deliver on my regular route.
To my complete amazement, there were the now-famous pictures of the Hindenburg burning explosively as it docked at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station. The scene of horror, as people jumped from the windows we had seen only the afternoon before, and running among sheets of flaming debris falling all around, will never leave me.
The New York Daily News sent a bundle of extra copies. They were distributed to each of us, to sell for 3 cents apiece. I went directly to Smitty’s Diner, next to the then-new post office.
I was a shy boy. But I surprised myself by bursting into the diner, shouting like I had seen in the movie newsreels, “Extra, extra! Hindenburg burns!“
I sold all the papers immediately. Most people gave me a nickel — a 2-cent tip. I was rich.
On reflecting that 36 people died — in just 37 seconds — I was humbled thinking of my previous day’s exaltation at the mastery of Germany technology.
The disaster, as reported in the Westporter-Herald the following day.
The next fall, we had the privilege of having Al Scully — future first selectman of Westport — and Frank Kaeser as our social studies teachers at Bedford Junior High School. These gentlemen took pleasure in holding after-class arguments with us boys about the headlong fall of the rest of the world into the chaos of aggression and local wars.
One believe that the American continents should be isolated from the turmoil of the world, as Teddy Roosevelt had championed in another era. This was the position taken by most of this country at that time.
The other side felt we must prepare with urgency to meet the rapidly mounting aggressive advances of the militant regimes of Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia. Thrown out was the challenge that we, the United States of America, should step in and eliminate the “plague” before it could completely overwhelm the world — perhaps including even ourselves — if we were not prepared.
To this day, the Hindenburg disaster of May 6, 1937, is held in my mind as the inflection point when my attention was diverted from dreaming of a future life as a country farmer, to the events leading to that day on July 4th, 1943, when I boarded a train to leave home.
I did not return for 3 1/2 years, after service in the United States Navy.
On that day in May, my view for the future was changed in entirely new directions.
God bless America.
(Click below for remarkable footage of the tragedy, with commentary by radio newsman Herbert Morrison.)
In the mid-1960s, the Skolnick family was ready to leave Coney Island. Austin Sholes — who lived on North Compo, across from Gorham Avenue — urged his in-laws to look at Westport. They liked it, and bought a house on nearby Tamarac.
Irving Skolnick had been a diamond setter in New York. Now he bought Liquor Locker — one of the 3 package stores then on Main Street.
Seth Sholes and his grandfather, Irving Skolnick.
A bit later Irving’s son Harvey came home from the Army. He didn’t know much about whiskey or wine, but he joined the business. He liked dealing with customers. That was good for Irving, who preferred being in the background.
Irving’s wife Eva worked at the shop too. Theirs was a great partnership, and the store thrived. Changes came to Main Street — among the mom-and-pop shops that left were the 2 other liquor stores — but the Skolnicks stayed.
Liquor Locker has been a Main Street mainstay for 45 years. This week, though, the shelves are empty. The bottles are packed.
On Monday, Liquor Locker reopens in Compo Shopping Center. The new digs are between Olympia Sports and Gold’s.
Seth Sholes and his uncle, Harvey Skolnick.
The other day — between moving, and taking care of his 2 kids — Seth Sholes talked about Liquor Locker’s long history. He’s Irving’s grandson, and Harvey’s nephew.
Now — retired after 27 years on Wall Street — he’s also the store’s new co-owner.
Growing up in Westport, Seth says, “everyone went downtown.” For him and his friends, the store — with couches in the back — was a place to hang out during jaunts to the Y, Bill’s Smoke Shop, and “checking out the mitts at Schaefer’s and the skis at Sport Mart.”
As the business grew over the years, wines grew more prominent.
But what grew too were Main Street rents. “They’re crazy now,” Seth says. Harvey tried many times to buy his building. But the landlord — a 98-year-woman who’s owned it since he opened — never wanted to sell.
Her relationship with Harvey is warm. She came in the store the other day, and they hugged.
Harvey Skolnick at Liquor Locker, on Main Street.
Yet Main Street has changed. “People don’t hang out there anymore,” Seth notes. “They go for a specific purpose, like the Gap. We all knew Bill, Sam Sloat, the people at Klein’s. There aren’t many places now where you have interaction with the guy behind the counter.”
Liquor Locker did not change much. Harvey never got into email, and the store does not sell online. When an interesting new wine comes in, Harvey calls his customers.
Seth Sholes
There is no inventory system. “It’s all in Harvey’s head,” Seth says with wonder. “He knows when to order, and what’s where.” Seth plans to move it “out of his head, onto a computer. It’ll be the best of both worlds.”
When they thought about moving, Seth and Harvey looked at Compo Acres, near Trader Joe’s. Then a “For Rent” sign across the street caught their eye. They looked at the space near Gold’s, called the number, and waited for the real estate rep to come. A week later, the space was theirs.
It will have enough room for wine tasting. Yet Seth does not see Liquor Locker changing what it does best.
“We’re not interested in selling 500 cases of Absolut vodka,” he says. “We’ll still get excited about 20 cases of wine that no one else in the area has.”
Seth loves Compo Shopping Center. Gold’s has been there 47 years; the barber shop and textile store, even longer. “They’re all excited we’re coming,” Seth says. “We are too.
“It’s a little bit now like what Main Street was.”
If you’ve been paying attention, you know that the Westport Country Playhouse 2012 season opens tomorrow (Tuesday, May 1) with Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods.”
What you may not know is that the composer/lyricist’s connection to the Playhouse goes back more than 60 years. In fact, Sondheim may have longer ties to the Playhouse than just about anyone else on earth.
In the summer of 1950 — just after graduation from Williams College — a young Sondheim was one of a dozen Playhouse apprentices.
Stephen Sondheim (crouching, top of photo), during his 1950 apprenticeship. The photo was taken at the Jolly Fisherman restaurant. Also in the photo: future film director Frank Perry (front row, left) and Richard Rodgers' daughter Mary (2nd row, 4th from left).
He was 20 but not totally untested: he had written two shows in college, one of which was staged. He had won a composition prize that would help finance his further studies. And Oscar Hammerstein II, a neighbor from previous summers in Bucks County, Pa., had been giving him assignments in musical theater writing, critiquing the results without condescension.
Still, he had not moved many sets or called lighting cues from a booth and didn’t yet have the practical knowledge of stagecraft that would eventually inform his scores, helping to create the seamless style of works like “Company” and “Sweeney Todd” decades later. And if there’s one thing a summer theater apprenticeship can deliver on, among the many things it necessarily cannot, it’s the promise of plenty of time spent living the less glamorous life backstage.
An undated photo of the Westport Country Playhouse -- before the most recent renovation.
He applied to the Playhouse because it was near his father and stepmother’s home in Stamford. Perhaps more importantly, he said, “in those days (it was) the most prestigious summer theater in the country.”
One of the great things about his apprenticeship, he added, was that
you got to be an assistant stage manager on at least one show during the summer. I got to do it on a show called “My Fiddle’s Got Three Strings,” directed by no less than Lee Strasberg and starring Maureen Stapleton. It was my first taste of the Actors Studio. When the actors started reading, I couldn’t hear one word. You want to talk about mumbling.
Back then, Sondheim told the Times, there was a different show each week. Apprentices learned everything — from getting props and parking cars to selling Cokes and cleaning latrines.
Nothing was beneath anyone. “We were kids in the theater,” he said.
Stephen Sondheim today.
The occasion of that Times piece was a tribute to Sondheim. The Playhouse benefit was hosted by Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.
We think — rightly — of that wonderful couple as two of the Westport Country Playhouse’s most devoted benefactors.
But Stephen Sondheim was there nearly a decade before they moved to town.
Starting tomorrow, he’ll be there — in the form of “Into the Woods” — once again.
In 1936 she began teaching art at Bedford Junior High School (now King’s Highway Elementary).
She moved to Staples (now Saugatuck Elementary) in 1948.
Vivien Testa
Ten years after that, she was part of the new high school campus on North Avenue. (In fact — having minored in architecture — she helped design the place. She has an enormous slide collection from that time, which she will donate to the Westport Library.)
Vivien Testa chaired the art department through the 1970s.
She is as sharp as when she ruled the 4 Building — and that’s saying something.
Happy birthday, Vivien!
——————————–
Several years ago, while writing my book Staples High School: 120 Years of A+ Education, I found an interview Vivien Testa had recorded for the Westport Historical Society oral history project. Here is an excerpt:
My family spent summers in Westport, so I knew the town in 1936 when I came to teach art at Bedford Junior High School. It was the Depression, and my father said I was taking a job away from a man who needed one.
In 1936 the school had a place in the life of the community. Teachers knew what they were expected to do and not do. For example, teachers were not supposed to smoke. But the faculty played basketball against the youngsters, and put on plays for them. There was a feeling we were all growing and learning together.
The original Staples High School, on Riverside Avenue. (Located where the Saugatuck Elementary School auditorium is today.)
When Mrs. Holden, the arts supervisor, left in 1948, I took over. We had a lovely art room in the building on Riverside Avenue. It was good size, and well lit. There were 15 to 20 students in a class, and I taught 4 or 5 classes a day. Westport was growing as an arts colony.
I still carried nearly a full teaching load, but I was given one or two afternoons a week to supervise. There were three townwide directors in art, music and physical education. Those were considered special subjects, and the principals were not trained in them. But the Board of Education members and superintendent really knew teachers. They came into the classroom all the time.
Pop Amundsen was the custodian, and his wife ran the cafeteria. They set the tone for Staples. If they saw youngsters doing anything out of line, they let them know. Students respected them just as much as the principal.
Everything was in apple pie order. No one dared mark a desk. We were a small family. Education at that time was a family business. Teachers and students and parents all felt responsible for what was happening. There was no closing eyes to what was going on. Everyone respected what was happening.
We got help from a lot of places. The Westport Women’s Club had a $350 art competition, and when Famous Artists School came in they gave scholarships. Al Dorne [a founder of Famous Schools] always helped. He’d produce booklets for new teachers or students. He underwrote hundreds of dollars.
I was involved in the plans for the North Avenue building. I worked with the architects, Sherwood, Mills and Smith. I minored in architecture, so I was able to lay out my ideas about what I wanted to have. It worked nicely for me, except when they cut this, that and the other thing, and we ended up with just a mishmash. That was kind of too bad. But it was still better than you would find in many places.
The “new” Staples, circa 1959. The auditorium (center left) and gym (largest building in the rear) are the only original structures that remain today.
There were many bugs in the building that had to be taken care of. A 3rd art room was cut out of the original plan, and a wing in the auditorium was cut. We had to put all the crafts stuff – kilns, etc. – in 2 rooms designed for 2-D stuff. Then when they added Building 9 a few years later, they added a 3-D room, and extended the stage.
Before they did that, a ballet company came to use the stage. The stage had only been planned for lectures and assemblies, not theater – there was no room for stage sets. As you face the stage, there was a brick wall on the right, and a passageway and electric panel on the left. A handsome male dancer ran right into the brick wall. Performers had to dress in the art rooms, too. It was quite a mess.
There was one boys’ and one girls’ bathroom – none for the faculty. I learned a great deal about youth by using that bathroom. But we always took an interest in keeping our building beautiful, because art is beauty.
With its brontosaurus-size steaks and overflowing pitchers of martinis, it evokes a “Mad Men” vibe.
Even the place mats offer a chance to travel back in time.
The other day, an alert Mario’s place mat reader noticed a Cohen’s Fashion Optical ad for Dr. Susan Westrup. Yet the eye doctor hasn’t been there since the store changed hands a while ago.
There was also an ad for S.Z. Manufacturing. That elicited fond memories of Yekutiel “Kuti” Zeevi, who owned what had become Y.Z. Jewelry Manufacturing when he was killed last December, in a robbery.
And more: The warm welcome from the owners told diners, “should you find anything less than perfect, please tell Frank or Mario — one or the other is sure to be on hand.”
Unfortunately, no. Mario Sacco died in July 2009.
The alert reader asked what was up with all the retro stuff.
She was told that someone had found a few boxes of old place mats, and decided to use them up.
Maybe they thought no one actually read the place mats. Or perhaps service was slower than usual than night.
And about the headline on this story: Mario’s is, of course, located directly opposite the train station.
A stop at Willoughby? Westport? Mario's?
One of the most famous “Twilight Zone” episodes of all — “A Stop at Willoughby” — involves a harried 1960′s ad executive whose train ride home to Westport keeps stopping in a bucolic town called Willoughby. In the year 1888.
Like the train station at Westport/Willoughby, Mario’s has transported us all back in time.
