BPW Awards Scholarship, Hosts Ray Sipherd

The Newtown Business & Professional Women’s Club has awarded a $1,000 scholarship to Jane Albrecht of Newtown to study for a nursing degree at Naugatuck Valley Community Technical College. The award was presented Monday night by BPW Co-Presidents Jeanne Matola and Jean Leonard at the organization’s meeting at the Fireside Inn.

A trained massage therapist, Ms Albrecht is taking prerequisite courses, preparing to earn a degree as a registered nurse.

“I lived in Alaska for 13 years before moving to Newtown and I worked in the public assistance department there,” she said. “It was a tough job. I used to go for massages, and decided it was a great job, so when I moved to Newtown 13 years ago I went to the Connecticut School of Massage Therapy in Westport. I’ve been doing that for the last nine years.”

In Alaska she also was an emergency medical technician (EMT) and worked with a midwife in the rural part of the state.

“I know there is a huge need for nursing, and I thought it would be a good field,” she said. “I’ve always been interested in medicine.”

Ms Albrecht researched the nursing program at Western Connecticut State University and at NVCTC, and opted for the community college because she could complete the program in two years instead of four.

“You sit for the same boards [to become certified],” she explained. “At my age I wasn’t interested in taking other classes like gym and history, although I may eventually decide to complete a bachelor’s degree.”

Ms Albrecht’s husband, Scott, is a systems analyst and when he went through a recent period of unemployment, she began thinking about expanding her job options in the health care field. “I think it has a real future,” she said. The couple has a daughter, Jessie McGlasson, 22, who attends the Pratt Institute in New York; as well as two younger children, Emily Albrecht, 10, and Jaden Albrecht, 5.

“The scholarship will pay for a whole semester of school,” Ms Albrecht said. “I was very, very happy to get it.”

Guest speaker at the BPW meeting was Newtown resident Ray Sipherd, who spoke, often humorously, about his life as a writer.

“I am a writer,” Mr Sipherd said. “This may sound like a statement of religious faith, such as ‘I am a Catholic, or a Buddhist, or an Episcopalian.’

“But becoming a writer can be compared in some ways to professing faith in a religion. The first requirement is to have faith in yourself and in what you write. Still, while there are no doctrines to this religion, there are many disciplines. They include hard work and staying power in spite of being, what shall I say, bedeviled by doubts about yourself and your abilities.

“Sometimes a lot of praying is involved, with exclamations like ‘Oh God, how do I begin this scene?’ or “Thank God, I finished that chapter!’”

A playwright and lyricist, Mr Sipherd collaborated with a composer on a musical adaptation of a Russian play, He Who Gets Slapped. It premiered at a new theater near Albany, N.Y., last spring and may be produced at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles this season or next.

Mr Sipherd was one of the original writers and creators of the children’s television series Sesame Street. During his 17 years with the show he wrote seven children’s books and contributed to Sesame Street music albums and videos.

As a published author, he wrote the novel The Courtship of Peggy McCoy, as well as a collection of holiday Christmas stories, The Christmas Store. He is also the creator of a mystery series that includes Dance of the Scarecrows, The Audubon Quartet, and The Devil’s Hawk.

The winner of three national Emmy awards for his television writing, he continues to be a free-lance television and film writer. Currently, he is a contributing writer to the recently launched Bedford magazine.

“Returning to the religious anthology,” Mr Sipherd said, “for me the holy trinity in writing and maybe in most areas, is talent, luck, and timing. I like to think I have a fair amount of talent…I’ve often been lucky…and the timing of things happening for me has been good enough to keep me working.”

Most important, he said, it to be thought of as a professional “who works hard at the occupation that I love and that I’ve chosen, and that has given me some wonderful and gratifying results.”