Marty Yellin is a longtime Westporter — and 84 years old.
On Sunday afternoon, shortly after the snow ended, he fell into a creek by his house.
The water was 4 feet deep, running, and cold: about 35 degrees.
Marty’s phone was wet, and did not work.
For 15 minutes he tried in vain to get out of the creek.
Luckily, after vigorous shaking of his phone, he got connected to 911.
Within 10 minutes, 4 policemen and an EMT ambulance arrived.
It took all 4 officers to pull him out of the water. His body temperature was 94 degrees.
The ambulance took him to Norwalk Hospital, where he was treated. A doctor said he would not have lasted another 15 minutes in the water.
“Your officers were very competent, comforting, and caring,” Marty wrote to Police Chief Foti Koskinas. “I wish I knew their names, so I could thank them personally.”
We don’t know their names, either. But “06880” adds our thanks to today’s Unsung Heroes.
(To nominate an Unsung Hero, email 06880blog@gmail.com. If you enjoy this weekly feature — or any other part of our hyper-local blog, please support our work. Just click here. Thank you!)
A wrong location was posted yesterday for this week’s candidate debates. Here’s the correct info:
Planning & Zoning Commission candidates take the Town Hall auditorium stage tomorrow (Wednesday, October 11, 7 p.m.). They’re followed by a double-header on Thursday, October 12: the Board of Education at 7 p.m., Board of Finance at 8:15.
Questions must be submitted in advance. They will not be taken from the floor. Email: lwvwestportct@yahoo.com.
The debates are sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Westport.
An overflow crowd of 1,000 — including Governor Ned Lamont and Senator Richard Blumenthal, local officials and many clergy — packed Temple Israel last night, for a “We Stand With Israel” solidarity gathering.
Representatives from nearly 2 dozen area synagogues and other organizations hosted the event, which was organized in just 48 hours by the Jewish Federation of Greater Fairfield County.
Senator Richard Blumenthal (bottom center), at last night’s “We Stand With Israel” gathering.
Religious leaders and others, at Temple Israel. (Photos/Allison Wachstein)
Westporters Arthur and Lisa Hayes are in Paris this week.
On a boat in the Seine yesterday night, they saw from a distance that the Eiffel Tower was not lit in white, as usual. One half seemed to be dark; the other was very dark blue.
As they got closer, they all understood. The tour boat grew very quiet, as they passed by.
In this week’s timely “Westport … What’s Happening” podcast, 1st Selectwoman Jen Tooker discusses a recent study on the growing lack of civility in small towns, and her own public comments on the issue.
The podcasts are sponsored by the Y’s Men of Westport and Weston. Click below to listen:
Owner/chef Federico Perandin will appear on Guy Fieri’s legendary “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” Food Network show. The episode airs this Friday (October 13, 9 p.m.).
Westport’s own David Briggs will conduct an Instagram interview tonight (Tuesday, October 10, 7:30 p.m., @westportlibrary) with Rhone co-founder and CEO Nate Checketts. They’ll talk about how the men’s wellness brand — which opened on Main Street this summer — is committed to men’s mental health issues.
From left: ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky and Nate Checketts at Rhone’s Westport store.
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Longtime Westporter Marty Yellen offered a presentation on aging — and a cancer treatment update — at yesterday’s Y’s Women meeting.
Yellen was an engineer on the Hubble Space Telescope. He then earned a doctorate in medical biology engineering. He works now with Yale scientists, biologists and engineers on diseases that come with aging, researching techniques and treatments to alleviate them.
Yellen warned the large audience to stay away from beef (particularly grilling), processed meats that can stand at room temperature like salami, and animal fats.
He suggested instead lamb, chicken, fish, plenty of fiber and vegetables, nuts, yogurt, beans — and most importantly, virgin olive oil rather than butter.
Daily exercise daily — for example, 30 minutes of walking — is especially important.
“You are your own doctor,” Yellen said. “Take care of your body, eat right, exercise daily — and don’t smoke!”
Speaking of health: The 29th annual Making Strides Against Breast Cancer of Fairfield County event is always a celebration of courage and hope
Over 5,000 participants will gather this Sunday (October 15, 9 a.m. to noon), at Sherwood Island State Park.
Over 3 decades, Making Strides Against Breast Cancer’s 3- to 5-mile walks have provided a supportive community for survivors, caregivers and families. The event funds breast cancer research, programs and services.
From Azerbaijan to Westport: Amina Figarova has moved from her upbringing behind the Iron Curtain to become a celebrated jazz pianist and composer.
On Thursday (October 12, VFW Joseph J. Clinton Post 399) she makes her “Jazz at the Post” debut. Rudy Royston, Boots Maleson, Bart Platteau and Greg “The Jazz Rabbi” Wall join her for two shows: 7:30 and 8:45 p.m. Dinner starts at 7.
Reservations are highly recommended: JazzatthePost@gmail.com.
Their first-ever dance performance this Saturday (October 14, 7 p.m.) features the East Coast Contemporary Ballet Company, in collaboration with Alturas Duo and Yale University’s Calllisto Quartet.
“Strings and Asymmetry” offers a fusion of styles, instruments and artistic
expressions.
Tickets include admission to the current exhibit. For details and tickets, click here or call (203) 222-7070.
And finally … on this day in 1845, the Naval School opened with 50 students in Annapolis, Maryland.
Today it’s known as the United States Naval Academy. Its enrollment is about 4,450.
(Another Roundup filled with political, entertainment, restaurant and health news — and another reminder that “06880” relies entirely on reader support. Please click here to help. Thank you!)
Luciano Paving, the writer noted, is a long-time, very generous local business.
They donate to Westport PAL, and supply the equipment that keeps the Longshore skating rink clear. They bring equipment to the Touch-a-Truck event at the Imperial Avenue parking lot, and provide trucks and a car for the Westport Woman’s Club Memorial Day float.
Sam Luciano — former Westport chief of police, for whom the Saugatuck train station park is named — was Tim’s cousin. Every year, Tim sponsors a golf tournament in Sam’s name at Longshore.
More broadly, contractors are an asset to the town. In weather emergencies, they plow snow, clear roads and do whatever else is needed.
We would not be where we are without contractors like Luciano — a family that traces its heritage back to Antonio Gilbertie, founder of the floral business over 100 years ago.
Tim Luciano, of Luciano Paving, is a Westport native and Staples High School graduate.
Winfield Street Coffee has come a long way from its start, 98 years ago in East Norwalk.
Under current owner Breno Donatti, there are locations in Westport (the old Art’s Deli, just over the Ruth Steinkraus Cohen Bridge) and Stamford; kiosks in the Croton-Harmon and Rye train stations, plus Q line subway stops in Manhattan, and 2 in Naples, Florida.
Now — in addition to coffee (f course), Italian deli sandwiches, healthy bowls and salads, and fresh pastry.
Donatti is not sitting still. Culinary director Chris Gonzalez has designed an expanded menu, adding side dishes like bacon mac & cheese, roasted brussels sprouts with hot honey and crispy shallots, fries options like (sweet potato wedges, polenta fries, home fries), and homemade baked goods.
Coffee director Caleb MacPherson is implementing new drinks and roasting beans.
I know all this because Westport’s own Stephanie Webster covered it in her great CTBites blog. Click here for the full story (and excellent food photos).
PS: Click on the “Restaurants” tab at the top of “06880,” for details on Winfield Street Coffee and many more.
“Ain’t Misbehavin'” — a revival of the Broadway show celebrating jazz pioneer Fats Waller’s career, while exploring the “masks” he and his musicians wore while performing for white audiences — opens tonight at the Westport Country Playhouse. It runs through April 29.
Among the special events:
Taste & Chat (tonight, Tuesday, April 11, 6 p.m.): Wine and cheese with Marcella Monk Flake, of The Monk Center for Academic Enrichment and Performing Arts, and co-founder of Monk Youth Jazz and STEAM Collective.
Pride Night (Thursday, April 13, 6 p.m.): Pre-show cocktails for the LGBTQ community and friends.
Black Excellence Night (Friday, April 14, 6:30 p.m.): Free pre-show celebration for the Black and Brown community.
For ticket information, click here. For more on these special events, scroll down on that page.
Especially fascinating is this Westport connection: His 2010 biography, “Al Jaffee’s Mad Life,” was written by local writer Mary-Lou Weisman.
A 2010 story explains:
He has always had a soft spot … for Mary-Lou Weisman, a 72-year-old author from Westport, Conn., who used to own a summer place near his (in Provincetown, Massachetts). Not only did she appreciate his eccentricities but she also donated a stupid question to his collection. (For that, she thanks the sister who demanded to know, “Where do you keep your ice cubes?”)
Their friendship has led to a collaboration that should cheer anyone with a secret affinity for Mad magazine. Written by Ms. Weisman, “Al Jaffee’s Mad Life” lays bare in harrowing yet often riotous detail how a Southern boy, twice uprooted by his mother to Lithuanian shtetls on the eve of World War II, grew up to become a tireless satirist for some of America’s cheekier magazines. HarperCollins published the book on Tuesday under its It Books imprint.
Readers will also be treated to 74 original drawings by Mr. Jaffee, nearly twice what he had pledged. “He was on fire,” Ms. Weisman said.
Ever-popular pianist Chris Coogan headlines this week’s Jazz at the Post (Thursday, April 13; shows at 7:30 and 8:45 p.m.; dinner at 7 p.m.).
Chris grew up here, and the area is home base for his multi-faceted career. He is a world-class jazz pianist; an in-demand accompanist for singers; a powerhouse Gospel pianist, choir director and bandleader; an inspiring educator, and an all- around good guy.
He’s joined this week at the VFW by bassist John Mobilio and drummer Joe Corsella.
Reservations are highly recommended: JazzatthePost@gmail.com.
Chris Coogan
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Starting yesterday, Church Lane will be closed to through traffic.
The move — begun during COVID, and continued in following years thanks to the popularity of outdoor dining and leisurely strolling — continues through November 6.
Marty Yellin — a Ph.D. in engineering, who helped design and manage the Hubble Space Telescope — explained the differences between it and the James Webb Telescope.
His photographs, we are told, were “out of this world.”
Marty Yellin addresses the Y’s Women.
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Martha Stewart returned to Westport recently.
She sampled Arogya Holistic Healing & Tea’s teas, and shared recipes. The event was filmed for her TV show, “Martha Cooks!”
Posted onOctober 4, 2022|Comments Off on Roundup: Scholars, Cyndi Lauper, Universe …
Twelve Staples High School seniors have qualified as National Merit Scholarship semifinalists.
Congratulations to Aalok Bhattacharya, James Cao, Sharmila Green, Emma Losonczy, Colin Morgeson, Gavin Thomas Rothenberg, Katharine Shackelford, Matthew Shackelford, Tegh Singh, Lucia Wang, Lilly Weisz, Tom Zhang
Nationwide, 16,000 semifinalists — fewer than 1 percent of the over 1.5 million students who took the 2021 PSAT/NMSQT qualifying exam –will compete for 7,250 National Merit Scholarships, worth more than $28 million.
From left: Aalok Bhattacharya, Tom Zhang, Colin Morgeson, Sharmila Green, Lilly Weisz, Emma Losonczy,
From left: Lucia Wang, Gavin Thomas Rothenberg, James Cao, Matthew Shackelford, Katharine Shackelford. Missing: Tegh Singh.
There’s a true hometown flavor to this week’s Jazz at the Post.
“Jazz Rabbi” Greg Wall will be joined by Westport’s own Melissa Newman.
She’s had a long career singing jingles for companies like AT&T and Chevrolet. Neighbors know her from performances at Blue Lemon, Tengda and Harvest.
There are 2 shows — 7:30 and 8:45 p.m. — on Thursday (October 6) at VFW Post 399 (465 Riverside Avenue). There’s a $10 cover. Food service starts at 6:30.
Guitarist Tony Lombardozzi, bassist Phil Bowler and drummer Matt Moadel will join Greg and Melissa.
Reservations are strongly suggested. Email JazzatThePost@gmail.com.
Melissa Newman
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For thousands of years, humans have wondered about the universe: How big is it? How did it start? How will it end?
Only in the last few decades have we had the space tools to begin to find answers.
Marty Yellin has special insights. With a doctorate in biomedical engineering, he worked at PerkinElmer on a top secret program to design and build the largest spy satellite ever. Then he helped design and manage the Hubble Space Telescope.
On October 20 (10 a.m., Westport Library Trefz Forum and Zoom), he offers an overview of the fascinating, often mindboggling discoveries made by modern telescopes. Click here for the Zoom link.
Just an infinitely small portion of the universe. Can you see where we are?
Need another reason (besides great books) to go the Westport Book Shop this month?
How about Susan Lloyd’s shells?
The longtime Westporter exhibits an assortment of 2-dimensional shell art works, including mirrors and mosaics.
Over 15 years, her work has evolved to include skulls (plastic reproductions), old dolls and Saints (for their stories, not religious reasons). Colors, shapes, textures and shell varieties are all important elements n her designs.
Her work is on display through October 31, and is available for purchase. To see more of her art, click here.
Susan Lloyd at the Westport Book Shop, with shell art.
The 13th annual Push Against Cancer is coming soon. And a group of Westport dads is pushing hard, to raise money for campers and their families at The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp.
Founded in 1988 by Paul Newman, it offers fun, friendship and a healthy dose of mischief to seriously ill children at its great facility in upstate Connecticut, plus outreach to hospitals, clinics and communities across the Northeast. All services are free.
The event is Sunday, October 16 (10 a.m., Staples High School). Andy Berman and Adam Vengrow are spearheading the dads’ effort. Click here to help.
Adam Vengrow (far left), Andy Berman (far right) and friends get ready for the Push Against Cancer.
It’s still early October. But Al’s Angels is getting ready for the holidays.
This year’s goal is to provide toys to over 20,000 children suffering from cancer, rare blood diseases and financial hardship.
They’ll do it by providing an Amazon wish list. Just click here; purchase as many needed items as you wish, and have them shipped to: Al’s Angels, 342 Greens Farms Road, Westport, CT 06880.
Date clarification: Westport Moms’ 2nd annual Fall Family Festival is next weekend — not the coming one. It’s Saturday, October 15 (10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Greens Farms Academy; $20 per family).
The event includes food, crafts, games and fun (bouncy houses, ninja course, music, art projects, DJ, pumpkin and cookie decorating, face painting, hair extensions, glitter tattoos, magic, STEM activities and more).
Many businesses will show off their products and services — all with activities for kids.
Organizers Megan Rutstein and Melissa Post ask attendees to bring gently worn jackets, for donations to a local non-profit.
For over 10 years, Marty Yellin was a control systems engineer at Perkin-Elmer.
Starting in 1965, the longtime Westporter helped design key elements of Hexagon — a reconnaissance spacecraft that, one NASA official says, “helped prevent World War III.”
For over 4 1/2 decades, Yellin was forbidden to talk about any aspect of his work.
Until last Saturday.
That’s when — 25 years after the top-secret, Cold War-era mission ended — Hexagon, and 2 other satellite programs were finally declassified.
The public got its first view of the Hexagon spy satellite last Saturday, at the National Air & Space Museum. (Photo courtesy of Roger Guillemette/Space.com
Last weekend Hexagon — along with Gambit and Gambit 3 — were open to the public. The one-day-only event was held at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum’s Dulles Airport center.
According to MSNBC.com, a throng of joyous National Reconnaissance Office veterans were “finally able to show their wives and families what they actually did ‘at the office’ for so many years.”
It was quite a lot.
MSNBC.com says, “the Hexagon’s panoramic cameras rotated as they swept back and forth while the satellite flew over Earth.” Intelligence officials called this process “mowing the lawn.”
“Each 6-inch-wide frame of Hexagon film captured a wide swath of terrain covering 370 nautical miles — the distance from Cincinnati to Washington — on each pass over the former Soviet Union and China. The satellites had a resolution of about 2 to 3 feet (0.6 to nearly 1 meter).”
The 60-foot long, 30,000-pound Hexagon carried 4 spools — a phenomenal 60 miles’ worth — of high resolution photographic film on its space surveillance missions. The spools weighed 3,000 pounds. Every few months a spool was dropped by parachute from the satellite to a waiting plane, which hooked it and reeled it in. The force of the giant film would drop the plane 10,000 feet.
From there, the film was sent to an ultra-secret Kodak lab. It was so sensitive to light that only blind people could work on it, Yellin says.
The developed film was sent to the Pentagon for analysis.
Between 1971 and 1986, NRO launched 20 Hexagon satellites from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base.
“The final launch in April 1986 — just weeks after the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion — also met with disaster,” MSNBC.Com says.
The Titan 34D booster “erupted into a massive fireball just seconds after liftoff, crippling the NRO’s orbital reconnaissance capabilities for many months.”
Of course, no one outside a small circle of political and military leaders ever heard about this catastrophe. Marty Yellin, his fellow engineers — and everyone else associated with the spy satellite program — was sworn to secrecy.
Until last Saturday.
This week, Yellin looked back with pride at his decade of work on Hexagon. He notes that the technology led directly to breakthroughs like the Hubble Telescope.
At the same time, he is awed and humbled by comments like this, from NASA’s Rob Landis:
“You have to give credit to leaders like President Eisenhower, who had the vision to initiate reconnaisance spacecraft. He was of the generation who wanted no more surprises, no more Pearl Harbors.”
In fact, Landis continues, “I think that Hexagon helped prevent World War III.”
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