Alert and inspired “06880” reader John Karrel writes:
The recent “06880” reminder of expanded hours for Westport’s yard waste facility on Bayberry Lane made me think: There is no better Unsung Hero candidate than Dan Keayes.
He has overseen the site for 30 years.
His creativity was noted in a 2009 blog post. It described a handsome garden built, on a forlorn dirt pile.
Filled with sea grass, boxwoods — even a fig tree — it wraps around the entire building, behind the Westport-Weston Health District. Every living thing — plus wood chips and a birdhouse — was salvaged from nearby piles.
To those of us who look forward to our regular Bayberry Lane visits, hauling our leaf bags and loads of brush, Dan is not unsung.
He is patient, knowledgeable, cheery, and has the site open at 7 a.m., 6 days a week (closed Sundays). He is often a sounding board for visitors to the facility, answering questions and offering advice.
Dan Keayes, at the Westport yard waste facility. (Photo/John Karrel)
A longtime Monroe resident, he and his wife are proud parents of a 10-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter. In his off hours he is frequently at his mother’s home in Newtown, helping with home renovation projects.
Asked about stories of, um, Westporters being Westporters, he admits there are moments when he must defuse a situation. But there is a twinkle in his eye, and I have never seen his feathers ruffled.
Improved signage in recent years means there is far less Sunday dumping for him to clear away Monday mornings. Again, he smiles as he says that.
Asked about that 2009 post, Dan says that Martha Stewart’s landscaper brought him a fig 3 years ago. Now, in warmer weather, it yields luscious figs.
Something for me to look forward to, a few months from now.
(To nominate an Unsung Hero, email 06880blog@gmail.com)
(“Unsung Hero” is a weekly “06880” feature. Please click here to support your hyper-local blog. Thank you!)
Westport’s 2 budgets — town operations, and education — passed big hurdles this week.
On Monday, the Board of Finance okayed First Selectwoman Jennifer Tooker’s $84,380,124 proposal. It’s a 1.96% increase from the current year.
Last night, it was the Board of Education’s turn. Their $147,300,744 request represents a rise of 8.08% over the current year. Much of that is driven by health insurance.
Both budgets now move to the Representative Town Meeting, for final approval.
Tomorrow’s Board of Education meeting (Thursday, March 21; 7:30 p.m., Staples High School cafeteria) includes discussion of redistricting, and a Policy Committee update.
The Policy Committee meets today (Wednesday, March 20; 11 a.m., Town Hall auditorium) for a 6th reading of possible revisions to the Student Discipline document.
Last month, “06880” wrote about — and linked to — a new online map. It gives residents a chance to provide feedback on Westport’s Safe Streets and Roads for All Safety Action Plan project.
Users easily zoom in on a particular place in town. The map has 3 options to drop a pin, and offer feedback: “Safety Concern”; “Safety/Improvement Idea”; “Good Example.” There’s a chance too to like a previous comment (and see how many other residents agree).
In the month since, Westporters have made dozens of suggestions and comments.
You can see them all. Click here; then scroll down, and click “Continue.”
You can also add your own thoughts. It’s a dynamic, ongoing — and very interactive — map.
PS: Click here for the “Traffic & Pedestrian Safety” page on the town website.
Every icon represents a bad or dangerous spot (orange thumbs-down); something good (blue thumbs-up), or a comment (gray light bulb). Each icon is clickable, to read details.
Couch Potato Salad — the great new illustrated word puzzle game developed by Westporter Zack Gross — is adding players every day.
(What’s it all about? Click here for the very fun back story.)
Now you can see how you stack up against everyone else. And win $100 while doing so.
Every day, Couch Potato Salad posts a clever image. It describes 2 common phrases, linked together by a shared word in the middle. The image above shows (duh) “Couch Potato Salad.”
Couch Potato Salad’s March Madness competition is free to enter. All you need is a creative brain.
Just click here. Sign in. Play the daily puzzles from today (March 20) through March 31.
The top 3 scores earn $100 each. Winners are the 3 players who solve the most puzzles out of the 12.
Tiebreakers are: Most Nailed (got the answer in one entry), Most Sailed (did it piecemeal), and finally, time (quickest solutions).
Can you figure this one out? The answer is at the end of this item.
The site gives you all the info you need to play (it’s easy). Sign in using an email and password (not the “password-less” login).
Some puzzles are dated prior to March 20. You can play them, but they won’t count for this competition.
You don’t have to play the puzzles on the day they are posted. But there will be a leaderboard, so you can see how you stack up.
MoCA Westport’s new exhibition opens with a reception and special performance by Sahmra Sawyer (also known as Supreme Divinity) tomorrow (Thursday, March 21, 6 to 8 p.m.).
“It Will Go On” merges MoCA’s gallery space with the first New England installation of the Black Art Library. The exhibit explores how the visual and the literary intersect, and inspire each other. It “urges visitors to interrogate contemporary forms of silencing, quieting, and censorship.”
The exhibition runs through June 16, and is free for MoCA Westport members. There is a $10 suggested donation for non-members.
Longtime Westporter Margaret Labbance DeMace died peacefully, surrounded by her family, on Friday. She was 91.
She was born in Fairfield. When I-95 was built, she and her mother relocated to Westport. A neighbor, Dominick DeMace, became the love of her life.
They married in 1955. She proudly raised 3 children, and cherished her role as grandmother and great-grandmother. S
Marge enjoyed winters in Florida, and mission trips the couple took with Assumption parish. She was an active member of its prayer network, and a devoted attendee at Saturday mass.
She was predeceased by her husband. Marge is survived by her children David, Danielle Yingling and Dominick (Joanne); grandchildren Stephanie Fagan (Joseph); Christina Bierwirth, and Natalie, Emily, Elisabeth and Eric DeMace, and great-grandchildren Connor and Devin Fagan, and Andrew Bierwirth, as well as many nieces and nephews.
The family will receive relatives and friends today (Wednesday, March 20) from 4-7 p.m. at Harding Funeral Home. A Mass of Christian burial will take place at Assumption Church tomorrow (Thursday, March 21, 10:00 a.m). Burial will follow at Saint John’s Cemetery in Norwalk.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions to Assumption Church may be made in her name.
Marge DeMace
==============================================
Today’s “Westport … Naturally” photo could have been taken at many Westport locations. Spring is popping up everywhere.
And finally … Vera Lynn was born on this date, in 1917. The English singer — who, along with Winston Churchill, was an enormous inspiration to her country during World War II — died in 2020, at 103.
(Don’t be a couch potato! Please click here to support “06880,” your hyper-local blog. Thanks!)
Like so much of modern life, soundtrack releases are no longer simple.
Everything is streaming. Streaming is run by AI and robots, designed to make money based on immediate popularity.
That was a problem for Brian Keane. The 1971 Staples High School graduate — a noted Emmy- and Grammy-winning composer — worked on one of the most ambitious high art projects on television in years: “Dante: Inferno to Paradise.”
The 700-year-old story of one of the greatest works of literature in history debuted on PBS earlier this week.
Keane explains: “You have to release a track and hit it with promotion all at once. The robots recognize that people are listening, and push the music out to others in the hopes of making more money.” It works for Beyoncé and Taylor Swift.
Of course, the AI streaming robots don’t realize that — unlike Dante — today’s pop stars won’t be around 7 centuries from now, in 2724.
But the bots don’t care that if there is no potential immediate dollar return, no one will ever hear Dante’s soundtrack.
Keane has always taken a different path.
“I always believed in the enduring qualities of music,” he says. “Music is just a language, and you can communicate in that language on all kinds of levels.”
He has always taken risks, and avoided doing things the standard way.
However, he notes, “AI robots present a new challenge — not only to making a living, but to making people aware of long-term oriented, artful projects.
“It even presents a challenge to a musical legacy. In prior generations, great music was passed down by the written page. Now the format is digital. It changes every 5 years, and is controlled by robots, not people.”
Brian Keane, in his studio.
After playing rock ‘n’ roll in clubs, he worked his way up in the jazz world as a sideman to artists like Larry Coryell, Bobby McFerrin and Eddie Gomez.
He then stumbled into becoming a leading documentary composer when his first work, “A Cuban Odyssey” — for Westport husband-and-wife directors Jim Burroughs and Suzanne Bauman — was nominated for an Academy Award in 1982. (This was before there was such a profession as “documentary composer”).
Documentaries have been a viable business only since cable TV came of age in the early 1980s.
Keane scored the chimps movie for Jane Goodall, a popular soundtrack about the Ottoman Empire for Bauman, and other notable projects.
Keane began working for Ric Burns just after he produced the most consequential documentary series in television history, “ The Civil War,” with his older brother Ken in 1990.
Keane and Ric Burns collaborated on classic documentaries like “New York,” “The Donner Party,” “Andy Warhol” and more.
Brian Keane (right) and Ric Burns, at work on “Oliver Sacks.”
“Dante” is their latest effort.
Keane also had some hit records and soundtracks in the late 1980s and ’90s. He was an in-demand record producer, winning a Grammy and emerging as “the John Williams of the documentary” (Hollywood Reporter).
After signing a big recording deal as a jazz artist with Capitol Blue Note records, he scored the first prime time documentary series on television. “ABC Turning Point” drew 30 million viewers a night.
“People thought that was nuts to try to get dropped by Blue Note after having a very successful debut record. But I had to get them to drop me, or I would have been condemned to be Earl Klugh II for the rest of my career.”
He began to “over-invest” in the quality of his scores. “Well-made documentaries ‘document’ history. They’re there for the long-term,” Keane says.
He morphed into sports history for a multi-Emmy-winning run at HBO and ESPN. That came in handy when Napster put record stores out of business.
As the television industry went “cheap and digital, and started hiring kids with computers in their mom’s basements for 10% of the price,” Keane retired for a few years.
He went back to work for Barry Levinson in 2012 on a BBC series, “Copper.”
When that ended he took all that quality music he’d written (and owned), set it up with metadata and a computer search system, and has non-exclusively blanket leased it to major entertainment companies ever since.
The problem, he says, is that “in streaming, which doesn’t pay artists anything anyway, the AI robots look at my most popular records as an artist. I ended my career as an artist in 1993.
“My most popular records are Middle Eastern jazz fusion I made in the late ’80s. They have 15 or 16 million hits.
“So the profit-seeking AI robots put me on Radio Baghdad streaming, and ignore my many soundtrack albums.”
Keane decided that being restricted artistically and financially by a fan base was “not a great plan.” While he produced many hit records, the AI robots of streaming recognize only the song and the artist.
So, he says, “I’m relegated to being a Middle Eastern artist who is really a rock and jazz guitarist, who happens to write symphonies and is known as a world music producer, who now is promoting a high art movie soundtrack from medieval Italy. No wonder the robots are confused.”
(One track of “Dante” will be released Friday, March 22. The entire double album will be released March 29.)
(“06880” is “where Westport meets the world.” Please click here to support our work. Thank you!)
This afternoon, superintendent of schools Thomas Scarice sent this message to the Westport community:
When I arrived almost 4 years ago as superintendent, Westport’s decades-long commitment to diversity and inclusion could be seen across the community and within the schools.
Over these 4 years, the school district has continued to build on the work of the community in many ways, including our Equity Study, our district Strategic Plan, curriculum revisions, and advanced teacher training to name just a few initiatives.
In a recent conversation with our district-wide PTA presidents, it became clear to me that I have more work to do to keep the school community informed about our progress by actively sharing our work.
While my focus recently has been on offering purposeful updates on timely topics, I have been remiss in not sharing some of our proactive and preventive student programs, ongoing teacher training/professional development initiatives, and curriculum efforts, all of which enable and inform our continuous evolution as a place founded in academic excellence and belonging.
Last Wednesday night, about 1/3 of the district’s administrators and I joined local clergy and community leaders at Temple Israel to share details about our framework for preventing and responding to identity-based bullying in our schools.
Superintendent of schools Thomas Scarice, Staples High School principal Stafford Thomas and grades 6-12 social studies coordinator Lauren Francese, at last week’s Temple Israel forum. (Photo/Dan Woog)
The information we shared demonstrated how our programs follow every Westport learner’s journey from pre-k through graduation, and we hope, beyond.
The presentation’s content was guided by the questions and feedback we’ve received from the community over the last few weeks. A copy of the presentation is attached to this message and the recording is available here.
Even with a broad prevention strategy, there is the likelihood that we will experience bias incidents. For this reason, we have also worked to develop an effective response protocol across all of our schools.
Over the past 2 months the district has worked to engage with the community, educators and students to update our student “Code of Conduct.”
A critical and unique input to this work has been the solicitation of ongoing feedback from the community, including multiple public readings of the student discipline policy at Board of Education meetings over the past few months.
This work will lay the foundation for transparency, common language, mutual understanding, and consistent processes. But it’s only the beginning, and it requires a collaborative partnership with the community, including a continuous flow of information.
To that end, I’m pleased to share that we launched the district’s DEIB website (westportdeib.org) last week as the source of truth regarding the work, progress, and dialogue happening in, and for, our schools. Here you’ll find sample learning experiences, curriculum highlights, school policies and protocols, and current news and events. In the coming weeks, answers to frequently asked questions will be added.
I always appreciate the community’s candor, dialogue, and shared vision for our schools. Together, we can continue to exemplify the values of the town where we live or work, grounded in caring and understanding.
Click here for a PDF of the Temple Israel Community Forum.
What do Lynsey Addario, Christiane Amanpour, Carl Bernstein and Robert Woodward have in common?
They — and 12 others — will be honored by Long Island University, as the first-ever Polk Laureates, “for outstanding contributions to American journalism in the spirit of George Polk.”
The April 12 event marks the 75th anniversary of its George Polk Awards in journalism. It’s at Cipriani 42nd Street, and will hosted by Anderson Cooper.
Lynsey Addario
The 16 honorees’ careers reflect the Polk Awards’ commitment to “outstanding investigative reporting.
LIU calls Addario — a 1991 graduate of Staples High School — a “fearless and resourceful combat photographer whose photo in 2022 of a Ukrainian family slain by a Russian mortar was just one example of compelling work in war zones across the world.”
In early 2022, Lynsey Addario’s photo of Ukrainian soldiers trying to save the father of a family of 4 — the only one who still had a pulse — after being hit by a mortar near Kyiv drew worldwide attention to the horrors of Russia’s invasion.
Four very different women founders and investors offered insights and advice last night, to a large Westport Library crowd.
The event celebrated StartUp Westport‘s 1st anniversary, along with Women’s History Month.
Tracy Cho (Qeepsake, a family-story company), Marissa Fayer (DeepLook Medical, women’s health), Alison Gregory (AreaHub, environmental information) and Kathryn Winokur (Hally Hair, beauty products) described the joys and challenges of their work.
Moderator Galia Gichon — co-managing partner of Tidal River Fund — asked compelling questions about “angel investors,” mentors and more. The public had their chance too, with several entrepreneurs speaking up at the end.
Among the takeaways:
“You have to make hard decisions on the fly, and be comfortable with them.”
Female entrepreneurs are often asked, “What does your husband do?” Men are never asked that.
“You should support and invest, to help create the world you want.”
Only 2% of all venture capital funds go to women.
The next StartUp Westport event is April 30. ESPN CEO Jimmy Pitaro — a Westport resident — will be honored as Innovator of the Year. Click here for tickets, and more information.
From left: Alison Gregory, Marissa Fayer, Tracy Cho, Kathryn Winokur and moderator Galia Gichon, at last night’s StartUp Westport panel. (Photo/Dan Woog)
Twelve Staples High School musicians have earned All-State recognition.
Congratulations to band members Deneil Betfarhad (trumpet), Ryder Levine (flute) and Zachary Newshel (timpani); orchestra members Isabel Jo (viola), Ludovit Pauliny (oboe) and Ayush Rudra (double bass), and choir singers Demi Betfarhad (bass), Josie Caricato (alto), Sofia Donroe (alto), Alex Esser (tenor), Alyssa Lee (alto and Andrew Maskoff (tenor).
===============================================
Every Westporter has an opinion on the future of the Cribari Bridge.
But what about the railroad bridge nearby?
On April 16 (7 p.m., Zoom), the state Department of Transportation hosts a virtual public information meeting concerning the mechanical and electrical rehabilitation of the Metro-North bridge over the Saugatuck River.
Registration is required. A Q-and-A session follows the presentation, which will be recorded. To learn how to join the meeting, provide comments and ask questions, click here.
This meeting will also be livestreamed on the CTDOT YouTube channel; no registration is required.
Construction is expected to begin in the fall of 2025.
Members of the public can submit comments and questions by April 30. Email Hareshkumar.Dholakia@ct.gov, or call 860-594-3173. Reference State Project #0301-0177 in the email or voicemail.
Railroad bridge over the Saugatuck River. (Photo/Patricia McMahon)
The Exchange Project — founded by Westport mom Carly Ridloff — is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint. Just exchanging clothing!
This Thursday, the Exchange Project’s “Sustainable Shopping Event” (March 21, 6 to 9 p.m., Nihcols MD, 1215 Post Road, Fairfield) is “a night of fabulous fashion and community focus.” It includes drinks, bites, skincare and (of course) sustainable shopping.
The idea is simple: Clean out your closets; select 10 or so items in perfect condition.
Drop your items at the designated drop location. Then go to the event, to mingle, and shop.
Attendees will receive skin treatments, skin scope evaluations, discounts on special products, gift bags, expert styling tips from local influencer/fashion guru Zac Mathias, and more.
Guests are encouraged to recycle empty beauty products in the New Nichols MD Recycling Program.
All unclaimed items will be donated to a women’s shelter selected by the event’s hosts.
After launching in Westport in 2021, the Exchange Project has expanded to New York and Florida. For more information, click here.
A few tickets remain for the Westport Woman’s Club “Death by Bathtub Gin” murder mystery dinner.
This Saturday (March 23, 6 p.m.), their Imperial Avenue clubhouse will be transformed into a Jazz Age speakeasy.
A professional troupe of Broadway actors will guide 100 guests through a hunt for the “murderer.” It may well be one of them.
The night includes cocktails, hors d’oeuvres and a 3-course Italian dinner, as the “murder mystery” unfolds.
Flapper dresses and tuxedos are welcome. A photo booth will have “jazzy” accessories for all. There’s a silent auction too.
Tickets are $150. Proceeds help fun scholarships, grants and food gift cards — continuing the Woman’s Club’s 100-plus years of service to the community.
Call 203-227-4240, or email wwc@westportwomansclub.org for tickets.
=================================================
Pianist/vocalist Johnny O’Neal and drummer Joe Farnsworth headline this Thursday’s Jazz at the Post (March 21, shows at 7:30 and 8:45 p.m.; dinner from 7 p.m.; VFW Joseph J. Clinton Post 399; $20 music cover charge; $15 for students and veterans).
Influenced by Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson, O’Neal began as a gospel pianist. He later became the house pianist at Birdland, and part of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.
A highly regarded jazz drummer, Farnsworth is known for his blazing speed, precision and melodic playing.
Reservations are highly recommended: JazzattthePost@gmail.com.
Staples High School graduate Jill Wellner died peacefully at her Fairfield home last week. She was 69, and survived nearly 6 years after being diagnosed with glioblastoma.
Her family says: “Jill bravely faced many life challenges and was dedicated to helping others. She worked at a number of high-profile health care organizations, including Bridgeport Hospital, Mount Sinai Hospital and the Veterans Administration.
“She was a talented change agent who proposed innovative ways to improve quality, access and profitability. She is most proud of being certified as a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt and passing this knowledge on to countless teams, students and colleagues.”
Jill studied at Wells College, Fairfield University the University of Connecticut before receiving her second master’s degree in epidemiology and public health from the Yale School of Medicine.
She served as an adjunct professor at the Yale School of Nursing, Sacred Heart University, Norwalk Community College and Salve Regina University.
She took joy from being with family and friends, especially fellow Staples alums.
She loved wine, traveling, the arts, and was fluent in French.
In addition to her husband Ken, Jill is survived by her daughter Jessica Daponte (Matthew), and siblings Anne Lynn (Bruce), John Kantor, and Reginald Kantor (Brigitte), along with many nephews, nieces and cousins.
Visitation is tomorrow (Wednesday, 4 to 7 p.m., Spear-Miller Funeral Home, 39 South Benson Road, Fairfield). A funeral service will be held Thursday at 10 a.m., in the funeral home.
And finally … spring arrives tonight, at 11:06 p.m.
This was our second straight Winter That Wasn’t. Not exactly a “long cold lonely” one.
I feel bad for the plow guys. But otherwise …
(As the days get longer, there’s more time than ever to support “06880.” Please click here to make a tax-deductible contribution to your hyper-local blog. Thank you!)
The other day, alert and longtime “06880” reader Scott Smith tromped around one of Westport’s most historic sites: the “Meeting House” land, where the original Green’s Farms Congregational Church was located. It was there that the West Parish of Fairfield grew and flourished, on its own.
Today the site is off the Sherwood Island Connector, just beyond the I-95 commuter parking lot.
This 1933 map of Greens Farms by George Jennings shows the meeting house across from the burial ground near Greens Farms Road, West Parish Road and Center Street.
Digging into the subject, Scott found that — years ago — a plan was developed by Westport’s Historic District Commission to create an interpretive trail there.
“Like so many other well-intentioned local improvement schemes, it is just gathering dust in some Town Hall office,” Scott laments.
A vision of a possible “West Parish Meeting House” Historic Site, from the Historic District Commission brochure.
“But maybe 06880 readers will be as curious about the site’s potential as I am.”
Scott writes:
For all the chest-thumping we Westporters do about our rich history and vaunted sense of “place,” I find it odd that so little attention is paid to the earliest traces of our beginnings.
I’m talking about the West Parish Meeting House that was constructed in 1737 at what is now the corner of Greens Farms Road and the Sherwood Island Connector, opposite the Colonial Cemetery established even earlier.
Though it was erected nearly a century after the 5 Bankside Farmers and their families first settled on the fertile coastal upland between Sasco and New Creek in 1648, this ground and its forgotten structure seem to be regarded as the foundational heart of our community.
Some years ago, I tried to explore the setting with my then-young son. We parked in the commuter lot and hiked over to the field where I’d heard the Meeting House once stood, until it was burned by the retreating British in 1779.
I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I thought we’d stumble upon the charred remains of the foundation, or kick up an old glass bottle or shard of a clay jug.
We didn’t make it far, defeated by swampy marshland and thick brambles.
Which is why I was intrigued to see the other day that the overgrown field has been bushwhacked back to stubble.
The entrance to the Meeting House site …
I pulled my car off to the side of the road near a gate of the enclosing stone wall, and wandered across the 5.9-acre property. Squat concrete posts, 2 feet high and set about 30 paces apart, mark 4 corners, likely of the original structure.
… and one of the concrete posts. (Photos/Scott Smith)
What I also see in this empty lot is a blank slate to recreate something new. Perhaps it’s an interpretive trail that explains more of the history of these colonial settlers, ideally including stories of the native inhabitants they replaced (sometimes by force). Their absence from our collective memory is even more stark.
By the time of widespread European contact in the early 1600s, the Algonquian tradition characterized Fairfield County. The Westport area was further defined as the Paugussett/Pootatuck group, though there were many dialects and sub-groups …
The Uncowa occupied territory west of the Pequonnock to Southport. The Sasqua occupied lands about the Great Swamp and Sasco Creek. The Maxumux occupied the lands west of Sasco Creek to Compo, extending inland to the Aspetuck River. The Compaw occupied the lands between Compo and the Saugatuck River. West of the Saugatuck were the Norwalk people. North, along the Aspetuck River, were the Aspetuck.
One of the very few reminders of the first residents of this area is Machamux Park, on Greens Farms Road near I-95. (Photo/Fred Cantor)
That’s a lot of people, and a lot to unpack. Perhaps the Meeting House is the place to do it, paying appropriate homage to all who lived and met here long ago.
I’m a big fan of Westport’s open spaces and pocket parks. A model for a reimagined Meeting House Historic Site would be the Mill Pond Preserve, with its native plantings, benches, and signage displaying historic and wildlife information. It was designed and built by a volunteer committee that still actively maintains it.
Details of the proposed plan.
As it always comes down to parking, there would be plenty for school groups and others at the Meeting House if the state lends access to the commuter lot.
Wouldn’t that be a fitting future for one of Westport’s oldest past places?
(The Historic Site was designated as a State Archaeological Preserve in 2010. Details about the original building are found in this Westport Historic District Commission brochure. A fuller preservation and cultural landscape assessment plan may be found here.)
The Historic District Commission’s proposed “ghost structure.”
(“06880” is Westport’s hyper-local blog. We cover our town’s present, future — and past. Please click here to support our work. Thank you!)
Sybil Joan (Schless) Steinberg — well-respected editor and book critic for Publishers Weekly and other outlets; longtime Westporter and avid civic volunteer, beloved for her long leadership of the Westport Library’s “Sybil’s List” book program — died yesterday in Sarasota, Florida, surrounded by family. She was 90 years old.
Her family says: “Sybil’s life was characterized by a love of literature from an early age, and a generosity of spirit that motivated her to share her book recommendations and literary observations with legions of adoring audiences.”
Sybil Steinberg
She was born on May 3, 1933, in Bridgeport to Marcus and Ann (Backer) Schless, who owned and ran a shoe store.
After graduating from Bridgeport Central High School, Sybil entered Smith College, majoring in English literature. She made the dean’s list all 4 years. She edited the Sophia student newspaper. and was named a Sophia Smith Scholar.
She graduated magna cum laude in 1954, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
At a friend’s wedding while home on break from Smith, Sybil gravitated to a small crowd gathered around a young doctor named Harold “Hal” Steinberg. He told a story about running into a friend in New York who was delivering a package to Oliver St. John Gogarty, the inspiration for Buck Mulligan in James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Hal noticed that Sybil was the only one in the crowd who got the literary reference. He stealthily rearranged place cards so he could sit next to her at the reception. From there a romance blossomed.
Upon Sybil’s graduation from Smith, Hal persuaded her to decline a coveted job offer from Doubleday and to marry him instead. They were wed in November 1954. Hal did medical internships and residencies in Buffalo and Hartford, and a stint as an army physician at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
In 1960 the couple moved to Westport, where Hal established an internal medicine practice. They raised 3 sons: Jonathan, Peter, and Richard. Sybil and Hal remained Westport residents the rest of their lives.
While Sybil took readily to her role as a doctor’s wife, she remained active outside of the home. She founded and co-directed the Council Pre-School for Disadvantaged Children, securing state accreditation and incorporation into the Westport school system.
She also served as a part-time instructor for Famous Writers School in Westport, and freelanced for the Westport News and other publications.
Shortly after earning her master’s in education from Fairfield University in 1975, Sybil had a serendipitous encounter with fellow Westporter Jean Mercier, children’s book editor at Publishers Weekly. Jean asked Sybil to write a review, then offered a fill-in copyediting gig that eventually became a full-time position.
Sybil remained at PW for 25 years, ascending to fiction editor. She retired in 2001 as senior editor.
For 18 years she edited the Interviews section, conducting conversations with literary figures including John Updike, Annie Proulx and Faye Weldon.
A highlight of her tenure at PW was her interview with Salman Rushdie, still hiding in London 6 years after the fatwa.
Sybil edited three volumes of interviews compiled from the magazine: Writing For Your Life #1, #2, and #3. As a reviewer, Sybil’s work was nominated for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
She served on the board of the National Book Critics Circle, and made television appearances on “Charlie Rose,” C-SPAN, NBC, and CBS.
Sybil continued to review books and maintain her ties to the publishing industry well into retirement, contributing reviews to numerous media including the Washington Post. Her annual “Sybil’s List” lecture, in which she briefly described her favorite books of the year, drew standing room only crowds at the Westport Library and Bayport Beach and Tennis Club in Longboat Key, Florida, where she spent recent winters. The electronic version of “Sybil’s List” had an extensive digital circulation, reaching thousands of fans.
Sybil was predeceased by her husband Harold in 2016, and her brother Aaron in 2007. She is survived by her sons Jonathan Steinberg (Nancy Mullins) of Westport, Peter Steinberg (Susana Byers) of Easthampton, Massachusetts, and Richard Steinberg (Kristi Yoo Mee) of San Diego, and 8 grandchildren. She also leaves behind her beloved companion Matthew Sagal, who shared Sybil’s love of opera, cinema, fine dining, and life at Bayport.
Funeral services will take place on Thursday (March 21, 11 a.m., Temple Israel), followed by burial at Temple Israel Cemetery in Norwalk. The family will sit Shiva at the home of Jonathan Steinberg and Nancy Mullins on Thursday after the burial, with minyan around 7 p.m.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made in Sybil’s memory to the Westport Library, Fairfield County Hospice House or Planned Parenthood.
Click here to help support “06880” via credit card or PayPal. Any amount is welcome, appreciated — and tax-deductible! Reader contributions keep this blog going. (Alternate methods: Please send a check to “06880”: PO Box 744, Westport, CT 06881. Or use Venmo: @blog06880. Or Zelle: dwoog@optonline.net. Thanks!)
GET THE “06880” APP
The “06880” app (search for it on the Apple or Android store) is the easiest way to get “06880.” Choose notifications: whenever a new post is published, or once or twice a day. Click here for details.
