In 1953, Westport illustrator Stevan Dohanos posed some Camp Mahackeno boys at the wooden bridge, where Poplar Plains Brook runs into the Saugatuck River.
The result was a classic Saturday Evening Post cover.
This afternoon — 58 years later — Westport Y officials gathered some Water Rat swim team members at the same spot.
A few things were different — there’s no totem pole, but there are girls and safety railings — yet much remained the same.
The kids loved the watermelon. The trees and rocks haven’t moved. There’s still no mountain in the background (Dohanos’ artistic license).
(Photo/Miggs Burroughs)
The photo will be used as part of the Y’s fundraising campaign. And although the new Y will be built just a few yards from where the 1953 cover was drawn — and the 2011 photo taken — the brook and river will remain.
Hopefully they’ll look the same in 2069 — 58 years from now.
(The August 1, 1953 Saturday Evening Post cover is courtesy of Peter Prigge — a Mahackeno camper who posed for Dohanos’ illustration.)
Tragically he passed away in 1994 while windsurfing off Darien’s Weed Beach
hi arthene, your old school buddy here,
happy holidays, im sure you will be home, i,ll be in bahamas once again helping island children
im on face book
carolyn bennett faddis.
hi to maureen hughes if you see her.
carolyn