A Doctor’s Son Recalls Life In A Simpler Time—

Former Home To Newtown’s Third Medical Practice Razed

By John Voket

Designer Paul Egee remembers growing up during the early 1950s, and the quiet nights living in a modest saltbox home on Church Hill Road.

“On summer nights with the windows open, I would fall asleep listening for cars going up the hill,” he recalled. “Once it got dark, sometimes five minutes would pass before I’d hear the next one go by. And during snowstorms, it could be half an hour. And then I’d hear the jingling of tire chains on a plow or truck.”

Those days, when the neighborhood still teetered on the edge of being more farmland than a mixed commercial strip, Paul was one of five children of the town’s third practicing physician, J. Benton Egee. Currently residing at Heritage Village in Southbury, Paul is still close enough to venture through town regularly.

And while he has many fond memories of his childhood, where “you didn’t need a car because everything was within walking distance,” he is not entirely disappointed to know his childhood home will soon be replaced by a fusion Japanese restaurant — something of an odd twist of fate.

“My parents moved into the house two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and we all moved out to a new home on Currituck Road in 1967,” he said. “But I’m not sorry to see it go, it’s fallen into such a state of disrepair.”

According to local building sources, the level of disrepair and several other factors are making it more practical to demolish the structure and build new, than try to renovate the existing building. Newtown borough zoning official Jean St Jean said the new building would resemble a large Colonial mansion, housing a main restaurant, two small private banquet rooms, and three commercial offices on the second floor.

Dr Egee came to Newtown several years before the home and office was constructed, but chose to establish his practice from rented facilities in Sandy Hook. But by 1941, he was so busy with patients across the region, and his own growing family, that it was time for him to construct his own home and office.

The building was designed by Lester Balstead, who worked for General Electric at the time, and was based on a center chimney saltbox model. The house was constructed by Edward Knapp, a popular local builder at the time.

“He bought that lot and built the house for $15,000 in 1941,” Paul Egee said. The lot extended far beyond the current boundaries, encompassing part of the land that is now a neighboring shopping center and another rear parcel that is part of the middle school and former high school grounds.

It is unfortunate that his father’s funds ran out once he commissioned the home, Paul said, because he was offered several more acres that eventually were developed as the rest of the shopping center, along with most of the rest of the old high school land for another $15,000.

While he could not afford that extra land purchase, Dr Egee’s relocated practice flourished to the point where he was able to build his parents a modest home adjacent to the main house in 1953, on a plot that is now the driveway to the shopping center.

About 15 years later, that small house was moved on the back of a giant flatbed truck up Church Hill Road, past the flagpole, and down Main Street to Currituck Road.

“It was like my grandparent’s house was following us to Currituck, where we had just moved in 1967,” he said. “That little house is still there, near the corner of Blakeslee and Currituck.”

During the years the entire family was together on Church Hill Road, Paul remembers Grand Union and the new school being built. In fact, after his retirement, the Egees’ grandfather went to work part-time as a janitor in the brand new high school on Queen Street (now Newtown Middle School).

“Even when I drive through the area today, besides all the changes with the new commercial developments, I still get that feeling I had when I was young, of growing up in the center of town,” Paul said, adding that he misses the rows of huge maple trees that used to line Church Hill Road.

“I swear some of those trees were three feet wide. They would provide a full canopy of shade as you went up the hill in summer, and stood there like sentinels in the winter,” he said. “It’s so unfortunate they were cut down to make room for the power lines. Nobody even put up a fuss. It would probably be quite different if they tried to cut those trees down today.”

Mr Egee said he and his brothers John and David and sisters Elaine and Leslie would take turns walking across the street to the stately Victorian farmhouse of Sarah Mitchell and Herbert “Hub” Beers to get fresh eggs and butter for breakfast.

“At that time their farmland ran all the way down past the gas station,” he said. “We’d get fresh milk from their cows, my brothers and I would play in the barn, and my sister Elaine learned to ride a horse in that field on one of Hub’s old nags.”

Feeling for a time like his neighborhood was the center of the universe, Paul would walk letters to be mailed up to Edmond Town Hall when the town’s post office was located in that building, and on winter days he would huddle by the bonfires parents would build for ice skaters on the pond at the Ram Pasture.

He would often be asked to keep his father company during his shifts doing house calls, when he would ride between Stevenson, Southbury, Hattertown, and Botsford.

“Dad was a general practitioner, and in those days, that meant he handled everything from hangnails to birthing babies,” Paul said. “When dad came here in the early 1930s he was affiliated with Bridgeport Hospital. But Newtown was so far away, they made him change to Danbury Hospital.

“From that point on, he and the other two doctors in town, Dr Desmond and Dr Kyle, worked to bring Danbury Hospital up to the standards that were set at Bridgeport,” Paul said.

It was a busy time for Dr Egee. After early morning breakfast, he would do morning house calls and rounds at the hospital. Then he would attend patients at the home office from 1 to 3 pm, then it was out again for afternoon rounds and more house calls before returning for dinner.

“After dinner Dad saw more patients at the office from 7 to 9 pm, except on Thursdays and Sundays, his days off,” Paul said. He described the country practice as a partnership forged between his dad and mom, who would act as dispatcher, phoning ahead to the doctor’s next house call to divert him to a more pressing case.

Since his parents and family were so well-known, Paul said it was like growing up with the whole town as his babysitter. He also remembers as a child, running his pedal car up to the former deli at the corner of Church Hill and Queen Street, “when Queen Street was still part dirt road,” and smashing into the shins of the television host Ed Sullivan who lived in town at the time.

With his old homestead on the verge of fading into memory, Paul Egee, who now works at Danbury-based Waterworks, said he is pleased to have had the opportunity to grow up in what he calls “an extraordinary community.”