2011 Was Another Year Of Giving For Newtown

By Nancy K. Crevier

In 2011, as always, Newtown residents continued to give of their time and talents to benefit others, and learn about the wider world.

Newtown resident Tim Bartlett returned January 31 from a three-week trip to South Africa, traveling with a team of six from the Bridgeport early childhood education (ECE) community. The goal of the partnership, he said, is to help with the creation of an early childhood education lab school in the Royal Bafokeng area of South Africa.

Pam Kurimai, Amy Greenfield, Iris Baldino, Roberta Ahuja, Nancy Fansher, Ellen Fogle, Rosaly D’onofrio, Melanie Michael, Gene Shapiro, Cindy Mowell, Mat Kastner, Patty Graves, Allan Graves, and Pat Martin, and pottery instructor Karen Pinto made more than 100 bowls to donate to the Maplewood at Newtown “Spring Fling” to support Kevin’s Community Center. The bowls were used for the make-your-own-sundae event, which people were able to buy, and the Connecticut Clay Artists, of which Ms Pinto is a member, contributed an additional 30 bowls.

“[The Clay Artists] knew about other fundraisers that had utilized handmade bowls filled with something to eat, to raise money, so this seemed great,” Ms Pinto said.

Peter D’Amico, Sr, Newtown businessman, philanthropist, and founder of the Newtown Youth Academy, wrote a check in June to match ten percent of the donations to rescuedirect.org, a fundraiser he organized in April benefiting the cities of Hachinohe and Onahama, Japan, after the terrible earthquake in that country. Mr D’Amico has personal relationships in Japan he has developed through his company’s (SCB International Materials, Inc) overseas work. Two of the plants with which SCB International has connections in those cities were shut down, due to damage from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The disaster also left many of the 200,000 residents in each of those cities, many of whom are employed at the plants, homeless. It is the residents that will benefit from rescuedirect.org, said Mr D’Amico, and it is because of the plight of the Japanese people that he decided to expand on his local community service.

Mr D’Amico took time in May to congratulate Sandy Hook Elementary School fourth grader Sidney Blagborough, daughter of Chris and Ann Marie Blagborough. She donated $122 to the rescuedirect.org foundation, the result of her door-to-door canvass in her Sandy Hook neighborhood to support relief efforts in Japan. Sidney was inspired by her school’s Hearts for Haiti program that assisted earthquake victims in that island country, and hoped that her idea for “Joy for Japan” would become a schoolwide program, as well.

An outreach project by members of Newtown United Methodist Church (NUMC) to sew “Little Dresses for Africa” took on an ecumenical flavor, thanks to efforts by Newtown Congregational Church (NCC) members Carol Smiley, Vicki Truitt, Jane Phillips, and Judi Craven, and the generous donation of material by the NCC Cornerstone Thrift Shop. NUMC organizer Betsy Kraushaar organized the Little Dresses for Africa program, and NCC members reached out to help.

Little Dresses for Africa is a Christian-based, nonprofit organization that distributes simple, handmade dresses to orphanages, churches, and schools in 22 countries in Africa. As of spring 2011, more than 130,000 dresses, donated by groups all over America, have been given out to children in Africa and other countries, as well as in the Appalachian Mountains and South Dakota.

Like a complex Venn diagram, the worlds of Make A Home Foundation, Robin Buchanan, Associated Refuse Haulers President Pat Caruso, and Connecticut Computer Care owner Christian E. Porter overlapped in 2011, to the benefit of numerous families around the state.

Make A Home Foundation is operated by Dan Telesco and Anita Pettengill of Sandy Hook, and collects and distributes household goods to veterans and Connecticut residents who find themselves homeless.

Robin Buchanan is a volunteer with Make A Home. Online, she found out about Connecticut Computer Care owner Christian Porter’s sideline, Connect-A-Vet, his personal effort to see that families of troops stationed away from home are able to stay in touch via computer. Because the foundation frequently gets donations of computers, keyboards, and monitors, but does not have the ability to distribute them and set them up, she called Christian and asked if he could use them, and he arranged to come and pick them up.

Around the same time, Mr Telesco asked Ms Buchanan to arrange for a dumpster for nonrecyclables that must be discarded.

She contacted Associated Refuse, and when Mr Caruso dropped off a dumpster, he noticed the sign for Connect-A-Vet. Coincidentally, shortly afterward, he was doing a cleanup job for an oral surgery center in Danbury that had a number of computers to be trashed. The office told him to take them, he loaded a pallet full, and brought them to Make A Home, where Mr Porter picked them up and distributed them to those in need.

A Hair Raising Project

As a lacrosse player at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, 20-year-old Jaime Vavrek of Newtown and his teammates let their hair grow all year long. But during the summer, it seemed time to shear it off, and Jamie wanted to do more than just cut it, so he checked out the Locks of Love website. Locks of Love is nonprofit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children suffering from long-term medical hair loss. The hairpieces are provided at no cost, or on a sliding scale.

On June 4, Jaime, who runs a summer lacrosse program for Parks and Rec, set up a tent on the grounds of the Yale Bowl in New Haven, during the Eli Youth Lacrosse Jamboree, and invited the public to stop by and cut a snippet of his hair, for a fee. It worked. Jamie got a haircut, and he raised $260 for Locks of Love.

Seventeen-year-old friends and rising Newtown High School seniors Riley Wurtz and Will Fletcher love lacrosse, and they love Africa. The opportunity to combine those two passions came together when they joined with the Fields of Growth International charitable foundation, and traveled to Uganda, August 4 to 19, teaching and playing lacrosse on fields created by the foundation, and helping to build a home in the mountainous rainforest region of Bwindi. It was an unforgettable experience for them, and one they hope to repeat someday.

After enduring several days without easy access to power and water due to Tropical Storm Irene and then Storm Alfred, it does not seem possible that any Newtown resident would be excited about the prospect of paying $1,300 to spend another eight days without power or running water. Yet “excited” was exactly the feeling repeatedly expressed by several of the nine members of the Newtown United Methodist Church group that is planning to travel to Furcy, Haiti, January 20–28, 2012, where electricity and water are rare or nonexistent.

Hope For Haiti, And Others

Mike Beaudry, Don Singer, Betsy Kraushaar, Dom Corsi, Brad Tefft, Dr Bernie Cieniawa, Lynn Cieniawa, NUMC Senior Minister Reverend Mel Kawakami, and the first teenage Newtown Methodist Church member to travel on an out-of-country mission, 16-year-old Tami Corsi, will form a team on a “Mountains of Hope for Haiti” mission to the rural Haitian village of Furcy, southeast of Port au Prince. There the team will provide continuing support to the village that has been in the care of the United Methodist New York Annual Conference (NYAC) for the past eight years.

Dan Patti, Newtown resident and owner of DMP Asset Management at 84 South Main Street, who lost his mother to pancreatic cancer in 2005, is a board member of Project Purple, a nonprofit pancreatic cancer awareness organization. Mr Patti wants to raise the volume on the “silent killer,” as pancreatic cancer is known. Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cancer killer in the United States, behind lung, colon, and breast cancer. Some types of pancreatic cancer are treatable, but none are curable. Project Purple strives to alert the public to the vague signals that can indicate pancreatic cancer. Because Mr Patti and his wife are both runners, Project Purple has focused primarily on raising awareness and funds through road races, although the group has also hosted a wine tasting and dinner to support research. “Our goal has been 13 races in 13 months, and it looks like we will do that,” said Mr Patti. The first race was held in June 2011, and the last one for that particular goal will take place in July 2012.

Pennies for Parvo is a fundraiser set up by 14-year-old Erica Bloomberg and her family this fall, after their new puppy nearly died from complications of the gastrointestinal disease, parvovirus. Erica wants to alert dog owners to the symptoms of the often fatal parvovirus and the necessity for swift diagnosis and treatment. All of the funds she raises through boxes set up at AquaDog Spa, Route 6 in Bethel, the Southbury Veterinary Hospital on Main Street South, and at the Lathrop School of Dance in Edmond Town Hall, or at her site penniesforparvo.com will benefit the North Shore Animal League America Alex Lewyt Veterinary Medical Center, where her puppy, Trixie, was successfully treated.

These are but a few examples of the personal and community efforts in 2011 that make one proud to say, “I’m from Newtown.” No doubt, the idea of yet another way to help is already stirring in someone’s head for 2012.