Jean Tucker: At 99, Clear And Warm Westport Memories

Last September marked the first time in 74 years that Jean Tucker returned to Westport.

Much has changed in the town where she grew up, graduated from Staples High School with the Class of 1941, then stayed in while working as a rare female aircraft engineer during World War II.

She’ll be 100 in November. But she remembers with superb clarity her childhood, youth and early adulthood in Westport.

When we spoke last weekend — just days after she visited the Connecticut Air & Space Museum, to recount her years as a “Rosie the Riveter” (though mainly at a drafting table) — her voice was as strong as her mind.

Jean Tucker at the Connecticut Air & Space Museum earlier this month. She’s with (from left) her granddaughter Nevada Marion, grandson-in-law Heath Marion, and great-granddaughter Lexy Vanderford.

Her descriptions of life here were fascinating.

So were some of the tidbits she dropped in to the conversation.

Like the fact that the Hunt & Downes building — the one with Arezzo restaurant, Winfield Coffee and Stephen Kempson, wrapping around the Post Road West/Riverside Avenue corner — is named in part for her father, Leon Hunt. He was in the real estate and plumbing businesses.

Oh yeah: He also owned Gorham Island.

“06880” has reported on Jean before. We’ve described how, beginning at age 18, she worked at Chance Vought Aircraft in Stratford. She made drawings of parts for electrical installations — without ever seeing the actual equipment. She also worked on fuselages.

In 1945 Jean entered Northeastern University, in one of its first class of women.

She married in 1949. When Chance Vought moved to Dallas, she stayed here. She earned a degree in industrial engineering, then taught math for 38 years in 3 states and 2 foreign countries.

Jean Hunt has never forgotten her days at Chance Vought Aircraft. In her Florida home, a model Corsair hangs from the ceiling.

But our conversation last weekend reached back years earlier than even that. Jean told fascinating stories about Westport’s history — and America’s.

Take the Open Door Inn. Located on the site of the present Police headquarters, it was where Westport Country Playhouse actors stayed.

Jean’s father — who apparently was a many of many talents — took it over during the Depression. At 10 or 11 years old, Jean operated the switchboard. She got to know Tallulah Bankhead, Tyrone Power, many other stars, and non-actors who stayed there like boxer Max Baer.

The Open Door Inn. (Photo courtesy of Paul Ehrismann)

When her father was young, he was a guard at the Westport Sanitarium.

It’s been long since demolished (though it’s the reason for the asphalt paths near where it stood — now Winslow Park).

He may have gotten the job through connections: His grandmother (Jean’s great-grandmother) ran the sanitarium.

In 1923, Jean’s father Leon built their house on Imperial Avenue. It was a wonderful place to grow up.

After 100 years, the home still stands. Sharon Levin owns it, and gave Jean a tour when she made that first-time-in-74-years visit to Westport last September.

Jean says the Levins did “a superb renovation.”

Jean attended Staples High School when it was on Riverside Avenue. She had classes in what is now Saugatuck Elementary (it was then “new”), as well as the original 1884 high school building (located where the Saugatuck El auditorium is today).

Jean Hunt with some Staples classmates. She’s in the middle of the 2nd row, with short black hair and wearing a jumper.

She made her mark on the school. Her yearbook — which she still has — lists these activities: junior class play, secretary of the junior and senior classes field hockey and rifle (!) teams, Photoplay Club, yearbook, editor of the school newspaper Inklings, senior play committee, assistant basketball team manager.

Jean Hunt, in the 1941 Staples yearbook.

Her life outside Staples was full too. On Saturday afternoons, she and “every teenager in town” would have lunch at Achorn’s Drugstore on Main Street, then head to the movie matinee at Fine Arts Theater (now Barnes & Noble).

Tickets were 10 cents, until age 16. The price then jumped to 15 cents.

Jean played tennis on the courts behind Staples (still there), went to football games, and enjoyed events like roller skating parties at the YMCA (now Anthropologie).

Jean Hunt (3rd from right), with her Staples field hockey teammates.

In the summer, Jean and her friends took the Westport bus from the old library at the corner of Post Road (State Street) and Main Street, to Compo Beach.

They would lie on blankets, then swim out to the rafts. “We spent the whole day in the sun,” Jean says. “I’m paying for that now.”

World War II brought the loss of young friends. She still remembers names like Lloyd Nash and Bill Reilly.

“Everyone who could went to war, or worked,” she says.

In Westport, there were ration books for everything from gas and butter to stockings. Chicory was “the worst substitute ever” for coffee.

Jean did her part. She drove her Model A Ford up the Merritt Parkway to work. Chance Vought treated her well.

Jean Tucker still has — and loves — her Model A.

Her life after the war was very fulfilling: college, a family, and a teaching career in math at schools in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, England and Honduras.

But I wanted to hear more about Westport. Jean offered more memories.

“I loved it. I felt very safe. In the snow we slid down the Imperial Avenue hill. I just felt so comfortable.”

She has many stories about her father too. Somehow, he took title to Gorham Island (the site now of an office building off Parker Harding Plaza).

He lost it during the Depression, when he could not pay the note.

The old house on Gorham Island. (Photo/Peter Barlow)

Years later, on the day World War II ended, a large crowd gathered downtown. Jean was at Taylor Place, facing Main Street.

On the block to her left — the one that now houses South Moon Under — was a diner, a tavern, and shoemaker Nick Geremia.

Suddenly, a parade began. “It was riotous, chaotic and wonderful,” Jean says.

It was also a reminder of a story her father often told. He stood on that same corner less than 3 decades earlier, at the end of World War I.

“He and Johnny Coyle, another plumber, found a tub,” Jean says. “They started their own parade.”

On November 21, Jean Tucker will be 100 years old. She will celebrate in her St. Petersburg, Florida home with her son, daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter.

But she also plans a return trip to Westport soon.

After hearing so much about this place, her son wants to visit.

He could not ask for a better tour guide.

Jean Tucker in the cockpit of a Delta Airlines jet, before her flight here last month.

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