Fond Memories Of Newtown

To the Editor:

While clearing out a home filing cabinet today, I came across a 50-plus page booklet documenting Newtown’s 250th anniversary celebration on August 5, 1955. Suddenly the memories of growing up in a rural, but pretty sophisticated town in western Connecticut flooded back.

In 1955 I was a 13-year-old kid at the top of Mt Pleasant Road. Newtown was starting to grow but for me the memories are picnicking on the Housatonic River (then white water before the dam was constructed), hearing the steam whistle of the Shepaug railroad, of woods, ice skating on Taunton Lake, the country roads and dairy farms. What a great place to grow up!

Newtown embodied all the best that New England had to offer. I am reminded that two distinctive features stood out in Newtown, just as they do in most of rural New England — the American flag and church steeples prominently displayed in close proximity. Those two symbols of faith and country embody all that is important to a youngster growing up. For me they symbolized all the necessary attributes that guided me as career soldier and civil servant.

I truly regret that my family and I left Newtown after my sophomore year at NHS. Nevertheless Newtown lives on in my heart, even here in the deep South. To you who now live in Newtown, and especially to you whom I grew up with, look around to see what the past 300 years have wrought, and do the best you can to preserve the flavor of your town.

A Connecticut Yankee still,

Carl (Tad) Fedde

5341 McCaghren Drive

Columbus, GA 31905                                                   August 24, 2005