The weekend’s horrific events in Charlottesville shined a spotlight on the despicable, bigoted, anti-American groups and individuals now crawling out from under the rocks where they’ve hidden for years.
It also gave fresh momentum to a no-hate movement that’s been building here in Westport.
Earlier this summer, Bedford Middle School teacher Kerstin Rao visited Evanston, Illinois. She spotted several lawn signs:
Kerstin was staying with her husband’s cousin. Both men were born in India. Like Kerstin, her husband’s cousin is in a mixed marriage.
Pushing a stroller with her relatives’ infant daughter, and seeing similar signs on every street, gave Kerstin a “truly inclusive” feeling.
She vowed to bring that feeling back to Westport.
Online, she found the website for what was becoming a national movement. Organizers laid down a few simple rules: It could not be a fundraiser; it could not be political or partisan; the original design could not be altered, and the yard signs had to be sold at cost.
“This is truly a grassroots effort to show our welcoming hearts,” Kerstin says.
She learned that a few areas in Connecticut already had signs. She bought one from a Milford friend.
When Kerstin wrote about the movement on Jane Green’s “Westport Front Porch” Facebook page, the response was immediate. She organized a meeting at Barnes & Noble.
Baker Graphics offered a great price for printing. Steam Coffee at the Greens Farms train station offered to sell the signs to commuters.
The group that met at Barnes & Noble last week loved that the project is non-partisan. They vowed to include people from a wide spectrum to help spread the “no hate” message.
On Sunday, Kerstin and her husband Vijay brought their red-and-blue sign to the demonstration on the Post Road bridge:
“Peace is non-partisan,” Kerstin notes. “We are not affiliated with any political party, religion or cause. We just want to put a message in our neighborhoods that hate has no home here.”
She adds, “As a teacher, I imagine students of various backgrounds heading back to school, maybe feeling nervous. Maybe this will be their first year in Westport schools. The thought of them looking out their bus windows and seeing so many welcoming signs — well, that is really wearing our hearts on our sleeves.”
(The no-hate group has set up a fundraising page (click here). Donations will pay for printing only. To volunteer for the effort, email hhnhhwestport@gmail.com.)
Pat Kery thinks of the Saugatuck firehouse as “her” firehouse.
The art appraiser once had an office at Bridge Square. She still lives nearby.
So when she found a Stevan Dohanos print for sale called “Hose Co. 4” — which looked a lot like the Saugatuck firehouse, Engine Company 4 — she was excited.
The Saugatuck firehouse.
Actually, more than excited. She helped bring it home to Westport.
Kery consults for WestPAC — Westport’s Public Art Collection. She’s also a longtime Dohanos aficionado. Researching her 1982 book, “Great Magazine Covers of the World,” she learned a lot about the local illustrator. He drew 123 covers for the Saturday Evening Post — as well as the incredible mural that has hung since 1953 in the Coleytown Elementary School office.
Dohanos’ 1950 firehouse lithograph shows firemen shooting the breeze with a mailman, as they wait for the next call.
Stevan Dohanos’ “Hose Co. 4.”
“His genius was capturing the ordinary things in life — in particular some of the small details we might miss in our fast-paced lives,” Kery says.
“Hose Co. 4” shows bedposts in the 2nd-floor windows, laundry drying on a clothesline, and an alert Dalmatian for companionship.
“From a stylistic standpoint, the artist brilliantly echoes circles and squares — the firehouse, the trees, the dog — to visually tie in elements in the print,” she explains.
Stevan Dohanos at work.
Recently, Kery learned the print — signed by the artist in the lower right, one of an edition of 250, and in pristine condition — was being sold by a dealer in the Midwest. She called, and learned he’d visited Dohanos in Westport shortly before his death.
The seller offered an excellent price — and framed it. Sam Gault generously provided funds for its purchase. Now it joins 3 other Dohanos Saturday Evening Post covers, and various illustrations — in the WestPAC collection.
It’s a treasure trove of art, including a Picasso and other world-renowned works.
But the real value of WestPAC is the chance to bring something like Stevan Dohanos’ firehouse “home.”
BONUS STEVAN DOHANOS PHOTO BELOW:
This circa 1950 print — donated by Kery — is from a photograph at the Norman Rockwell Museum’s Famous Artists School Archives.
It shows Dohanos hanging out with Westport firefighters, in front of the original fire headquarters. It was on Church Lane downtown, next to the YMCA Bedford Building (left).
When fire headquarters moved to the Post Road, where it is today (next to Terrain), the old firehouse was incorporated into the YMCA. Its 1st floor became the Y’s new fitness center, while the 2nd floor was converted into a weight room and cardio studio.
Today, both the Bedford Building and old firehouse have been refashioned into Bedford Square.
Fran Southworth has lived in Westport for 29 years. She is part of Indivisible Connecticut 4, and the Facebook Love in Action group.
Last night — saddened and horrified by the events in Charlottesville — she felt compelled to act. Fran writes:
Seeing the images of the University of Virginia students made me think about my own kids when they were in college, and the horror if they had been confronted with such hatred, intolerance and racism. Because of the hateful slogans chanted by the white supremacists, and the physical actions that caused at least 1 death and many injuries, I felt the need to unify as a community. We needed to come together to voice our opposition to hate, and teach our children and grandchildren that what they are witnessing now is not what America is all about.
So I decided to do a pop-up peaceful gathering on our bridge in Westport. I thought I might be standing there alone with my sign: “Normalize Love Not Hate! Honk if You Agree.”
Getting Darcy Hicks involved was a sure way to gather people.
This morning Melissa Kane contacted me. We chatted about our similar family history. She spread the word as well.
Then a new activist friend, Juliana Hess, told her group. We were off and running.
Juliana wrote beautifully that people in Europe would never have sat back and done nothing if they knew what was coming. My Jewish grandparents ran for their lives from Russia. They and others told me stories of friends and relatives who ran. Many were killed in the Holocaust. Others survived. All taught me: “Never Again.”
Never again — yet Charlottesville just happened. I feel very deeply the pain, destruction and horror it has caused. I also say: “Never Again.”
Fran Southworth (center), flanked by Myra Garvett and Darcy Hicks, on the Ruth Steinkraus Cohen Bridge earlier today.
I also want to speak out for my close friend and singing partner, an African American woman. Because of the history of slavery and racism in America, blacks have always struggled here. But things are worsening, with white supremacists set loose by the tacit acceptance of our administration toward violence and intolerance.
My friend explained to me that they don’t want to have a separate “Black Lives Matter” presence. Unfortunately they have to.
We have to stop these white supremacists in their tracks. We must make it very clear that they — and their hate and intolerance — have no place in our communities. White supremacists, neo-Nazis and anti-Semites are the antitheses of our American values.
The president said there are many sides to this. There are no other sides to hatred and bigotry. I watched David Duke, a former KKK leader, say that President Trump told them they will take back our country.
No! We will take back our country. We will continue to live up to the American ideals of tolerance and inclusion of all people.
We need to let our politicians know that this is a very important issue for all of us. It’s not about anyone’s political party or agenda. It’s about human decency, compassion and respect.
Bob Powers grew up in Westport. After graduating from Staples High School in 1971, then Amherst College in ’75, he headed to med school at the University of Virginia.
He loved life in the college town. His children were born there. He moved twice — to Minnesota, and back to Connecticut. But as Powers — a physician and professor at UVa’s med school — notes, he’s now spent 30 years in Charlottesville. That’s longer than he’s lived anywhere else.
Like any Southern town, Powers says, there’s a history of racial discord dating back to slavery. Though the university has provided an intellectual base, schools there closed in the 1960s rather than succumb to desegregation.
“I have African American friends here who helped integrate the schools,” Power says. “And I have white friends who were pulled out of them.”
One of his patients — an older black woman — was involuntarily sterilized.
“This is not ancient history,” he explains.
Dr. Robert Powers
As a youngster in Westport, he says, “I was blissfully ignorant of all that. It’s part of Southern history. There’s nothing like that in the north.”
When he moved to Charlottesville he noticed rebel flags, and statues of Confederate heroes. He saw “thinly painted over signs” for colored restrooms.
Since then, he says, the town of 45,000 has gentrified. UVa has drawn “carpetbagging Yankees like me” for years.
Much of Charlottesville remains “voluntarily segregated.” There are black and white churches, funeral homes and neighborhoods. “People feel a level of comfort” in separate cultures and identities.
There is little “overt animosity” between blacks and whites, Powers says. The university in particular has made great strides toward inclusion. The dean of the medical school, hospital director and Powers’ own boss are all African American.
What happened this weekend, he says, began with outsiders who seized on the fact that Charlottesville’s officials “dithered” about removing statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson from prominent places. Issues like cost, and what to do with them once they were gone, made the city a “fat target and convenient flash point” for alt-right and racist groups.
However, he adds, 2 of the main organizers have ties to the area. White supremacist Richard Spencer graduated from UVa in 2001 (with high distinction in English literature and music), while self-described “white rights activist” Jason Kessler lives in Charlottesville.
A rally last month drew Ku Klux Klan members from North Carolina. It was “nasty,” Powers says, “but not terribly violent.”
A striking image from the Ku Klux Klan’s July 8 rally in Charlottesville.
That led to a national call to action, by a variety of alt-right, Nazi and KKK groups. It also galvanized opposition from around the country.
“It was very clear that people came this weekend expecting to fight,” Powers says. Protesters wore fatigues, and carried helmets, batons and shields. Virginia is an “open carry” state; some brandished civilian versions of AK-47s.
Storeowners boarded their windows. The UVa hospital discharged patients, keeping beds open for mass casualties.
The weekend turned into “much more than the First Amendment right of assembly and peaceful speech,” says Powers.
Mostly, he says, “this was not local people behaving badly. It was people coming in to our city to behave badly.”
A scene from yesterday in Charlottesville.
On Friday night — hoping to “demonstrate opposition” to the march, by “showing our faces and being counted without confrontation or violence” — Powers and his wife Sally attended a large community prayer service. Harvard professor Cornel West gave a powerful speech. Other clergy — including Muslims — spoke too.
Powers was gratified to see that the majority of attendees were white. “This is not about race,” he says. “It’s an outrage of principle.”
A torchlight alt-right procession came close to the church. As a precaution, police kept service-goers inside.
On Saturday morning, Powers and his wife went to a clergy-led march. It ended around 9:30. The couple went home.
Soon, authorities revoked the alt-right marchers’ permit. They dispersed — unhappily — into smaller groups around Charlottesville. Police could not control them. Confrontations ended when a car roared into counter-demonstrators, killing 1 woman and injuring 19.
“I’d be horrified to watch this from a distance,” Powers says. “It’s even worse when it happens in your own back yard, in a city not prone to this.”
Now, he predicts, there will be finger-pointing. Why were demonstrators and counter-protesters allowed to be so near each other? On the other hand, how could a small city be expected to handle so many inflamed people?
Powers is sure of one thing.
“The vast majority of the city — rich and poor, white and black, university-affiliated and not — were unified against this.”
And, he notes, the woman who was killed was from Charlottesville. The driver was from Ohio.
“Someone in our town was murdered by someone from elsewhere,” he says.
Bob Powers grew up in Westport. But Charlottesville is now his home town.
Like many Americans, he grieves for it.
And like many of us — in Westport and elsewhere — he wonders what comes next.
For decades, the Ruth Steinkraus Cohen Bridge — the Post Road span named for Westport’s tireless UN and peace advocate — has been the site of social justice protests.
This afternoon, several dozen folks of all ages thronged the bridge. In the aftermath of yesterday’s horrific anti-black, anti-Semitic, Nazi-infused demonstration and murder in Charlottesville, the group had a united message: Hate has no place here.
“06880” readers sure know where all the bones are buried.
Especially the ones in the Platt Burial Ground.
Many of us whiz past on Post Road West, never noticing the small cemetery just this side of Whole Foods. (Click here for the photo.)
But Susan Lloyd, Jill Turner Odice, Ellen Greenberg, Bob Weingarten, Diane Silfen, Bill Kiedaisch, James Weisz, Jacques Voris and Lawrence Zlatkin all knew exactly where it is.
Weingarten — the Westport Historical Society house historian — also knew the back story. He wrote:
In 1812 Samuel Platt willed a small lot to be used as a family cemetery which was used into the 20th Century on Post Road West, next to Whole Foods shopping area. The cemetery is now owned and preserved by the town.
We go above ground for this week’s photo challenge. If you think you know where in Westport you’d find this, click “Comments” below.
I’m not the only one who noticed an invasion of pop-up tents this summer.
A recent “06880” post about summer crowds at Compo drew a number of comments about the pup tents, lean-tos and other space-filling mini-homes that have, in the words of one Westporter, turned our beach into a “tent city.”
(Another commenter, more charitably, compared it to the Caribbean.)
Of course this is not Compo. We don’t have a volleyball court in the middle of the beach.
Turns out it’s not just Westport.
According to the New York Post, a Jersey Shore town — Belmar — is considering banning all tents more than 3 feet high and wide.
Officials there have several concerns:
The tents block visibility
They take up too much space
They’re invasive
They cast long shadows
They obstruct the view of lifeguards.
One disgruntled beachgoer described his neighbors: “They bring tables, coolers. It looks like they’re moving in for a week.”
Another noted that tailgating is fine at MetLife Stadium. But, he said, the beach is not a Giants game.
What do you think? Take the poll below:
(To read the full New York Post story, click here. Hat tip: David Loffredo)
Over the years, Westport has been known nationally for a few things.
During the Civil War, our onions helped Northern troops stave off illness. In the ’70s and ’80s we were awash in marketing companies.
And for a longer period of time — the 1950s through ’90s — we were part of “the comic strip capital of the world.”
Vanity Fair’s September issue explores that funny period in our history. Writer Cullen Murphy — whose father was one of those illustrious illustrators — looks at all of Fairfield County as the world capital. It was
where most of the country’s comic-strip artists, gag cartoonists, and magazine illustrators chose to make their home. The group must have numbered 100 or more, and it constituted an all-embracing subculture …. In the conventional telling, the milieu of Wilton and Westport, Greenwich and Darien, was the natural habitat of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit — and I was certainly aware of the commuters who took the train into Manhattan every morning from my own hometown of Cos Cob. But, for me, those salarymen with their briefcases seemed like outlandish outliers.
Murphy cites Westport’s “large cluster” of cartoonists Bud Sagendorf (“Popeye”), Leonard Starr (“On Stage,” “Little Orphan Annie”), Dick Wingert (“Hubert”), Stan Drake (“The Heart of Juliet Jones,” “Blondie”), Jack Tippit (“Amy”), John Prentice (“Rip Kirby”) and Mel Casson (“Mixed Singles/Boomer”).
Bernie Fuchs’ famous studio. It was demolished earlier this year.
Murphy’s father compared Bernie Fuchs to Degas. The writer adds: “Fuchs’s career was all the more remarkable because he had lost 3 fingers on his drawing hand in an accident when he was a teenager.”
Murphy does not mention Curt Swan (“Superman”). I’m sure he’s missed others.
From the 2002 book “Curt Swan: a Life in Comics”
Murphy offers a few reasons why this area attracted so many illustrators: lack of a state income tax; affordable homes, and of course the presence of other artists.
It was solitary work — which is why so many Fairfield County illustrators got together in groups, here and on Wednesdays when they brought their art to their editors in the city. They talked about their work. They also ate and drank.
Murphy notes:
One defining reality about the cartoonists was that although their characters —Beetle Bailey, Snoopy, Prince Valiant, Blondie — were known worldwide, they themselves passed through life more or less anonymously. Unlike actors or sports figures or reality-TV stars, they were never stopped on the street. They didn’t have a “gal” to protect them or “people” to speak for them.
Semi-domesticated, they depended heavily on their families, especially wives, who in many ways held the entire enterprise together, from basic finances to rudimentary social cues…. Life was interrupted mainly by mundane chores. More than a few collectors have bought original comic strips and found notations like “prescription ready” or “diapers, bologna, Chesterfields” in the margins.
Bud Sagendorf, and his most well-known character.
Of course, nothing lasts forever. Murphy writes:
The concentration of cartoon talent in Fairfield County was a product of special circumstances, and those circumstances have disappeared. Newspaper comic strips are not the force they were, and few magazines still publish gag cartoons.
The New York City newspaper strike of 1962–63 led to the demise of the Hearst flagship, the New York Journal-American, whose funny pages were the best in the country. Making it there was like opening at the Roxy. Now it was gone.
New York remains the center of the publishing industry, but the railroad is no longer a lifeline: the Internet has meant that artists can send their work from anywhere. Connecticut has a state income tax now, though that’s not what has made Fairfield County unaffordable — Wall Street is responsible for that.
Westport, of course, is now a financial capital — both as headquarters to the world’s largest hedge fund, and home to many financial executives.
I wonder what kind of cartoon Bud Sagendorf, Stan Drake, Mel Casson or any of the others would draw about that.
(Click here to read the entire Vanity Fair story. Hat tips: Doug Bonnell and Paul Delano)
From comics to capitalism: Westport is now home to Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund.
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