“I lived in Newtown forever — all my life,” Joan (Glover) Crick said while sitting in the living room area of her apartment at The Hearth in Southbury. “I never thought I’d leave my house on Glover Avenue.”

Mrs Crick is the tenth generation in her family to have lived in Newtown. Her daughter, Maureen Crick Owen, continues the tradition as the eleventh generation and serves the town as selectman, following in her grandfather Walter L. Glover’s footsteps.

Their family’s long tenure in town is believed to date all the way back to Newtown’s beginning in 1711.

Through genealogy research, Mrs Crick read that her family’s ancestor John Glover purchased land from the local native tribe and built his house in the Hanover District. Many generations resided in the home over the years and utilized the acreage for working the land and selling cows and steers.

After the property was sold out of the family line, a notable Newtown resident, the late Mae Schmidle, lived in the home.

The Glover family then moved to the center of town in a home on Main Street. The building still stands next to where the police station is, which was just “a field with a big hill,” at the time Mrs Crick lived there.

“I lived on Main Street until I was about 10 years old,” Mrs Crick said. “We played softball; I remember playing football — I was very athletic.”

Much of her time in her formative years was spent playing outdoors.

“We didn’t have playgrounds or anything like that, but it was okay . . .” Mrs Crick explained. “We always had something going. We didn’t just hang around.”

She has fond memories of times spent with her good friend, Mary Starr “Skippy” Smith Adams (sister of Newtown Bee and A&A publisher R. Scudder Smith), who lived just a little way up the road in a two-family home at 17 Main Street.

“It was a beautiful house with pocket doors and a beautiful staircase. Her grandparents lived on one side and the other side were her aunts,” Mrs Crick recalled.

To the delight of the children, occasionally Mary Starr’s father, Paul Scudder Smith, editor and owner of The Newtown Bee, would come out and play softball with the girls after supper.

Between playing sports, Mrs Crick says she often spent time roller skating with Mary Starr on the Main Street sidewalk.

“We’d roller skate from the library down and run into the grass when we wanted to stop,” Mrs Crick said with a laugh.

Whenever the friends would skate by the Hawley Manor Inn — now referred to as the Inn at Newtown — they would enjoy the garden out front and look through the glass windows at the ladies sitting down to eat.

“A lot of older people in Newtown would go there in the wintertime, because it was handier for them to go there and go to the store, rather than be three miles out,” Mrs Crick said. “Skippy’s grandmother stayed there at wintertime and we’d go up to see her.”

She remembers riding the elevator in the inn, taking dance lessons downstairs, and playfully sitting on the two large metal animal figures stationed there — which she believes were later donated for metal scraps during the war.

The two girls would also spend their days visiting the C.H. Booth Library’s head librarian Sarah Beers Mitchell, who would let them explore the library; meeting with another girl their age, Mary Cullens, who lived up by the Newtown Savings Bank; and exploring a budding entrepreneurial venture involving fresh produce.

“In the back of [Skippy’s] grandfather’s house there was a lot of apple trees and there was kind of a hill,” Mrs Crick said. “We’d slide down it and there were apple trees up top. We’d find some and sell them on the road.”

Mrs Crick and Skippy even put on plays in the Smith family’s garage and had their mothers watch them perform in the costumes they put together.

“We were always dreaming up something,” Mrs Crick said.

Glover Avenue

When she was about 10 years old, her family moved into a house her grandfather built on the corner of Queen Street and Glover Avenue, a road named after her family.

There the family lived across from a farm, leading to countless hours of entertainment watching the cows next door.

“We had many happy times there,” Mrs Crick recalled.

During her school-age upbringing, she attended Hawley School for 12 years and played every sport from basketball to softball. Upon graduating in 1950, she went to the University of Bridgeport and played basketball for them.

“That was a lot of my life — sports. I enjoyed it immensely,” she said.

Meanwhile, she had met fellow Newtown resident Jim Crick in high school, who just so happened to be a friend of her older brother, Lee Glover.

At the age of 23, she married Jim and the two rented a home in Sandy Hook for four years.

“Then we bought our house on Glover Avenue. I was almost back home again, because our house was about five houses down from the corner [house]…” Mrs Crick said.

It was there that she raised her three children, and where she thought she would remain for the rest of her life.

“It’s a wonderful house, full of many memories,” she said.

A Neighbor To Newtown

Now in her 80s, Mrs Crick has been residing at The Hearth in Southbury for the past two years.

While she admits it was an adjustment to be without her husband after his passing and then have to leave her beloved home on Glover Avenue, she speaks very highly of her current residence.

“I find it very comfortable,” Mrs Crick said. “I’m able to do what I still want to do.”

After being so active in the Newtown community, she says she does miss going to meetings and being with people from town.

While in Newtown, Mrs Crick was part of the Borough of Newtown for 33 years, serving as warden for much of the time. Now she is on a committee at The Hearth using her voice to advocate for her fellow residents who need assistance solving problems they are having.

She has not only found a place to grow and make new experiences, but she rests assured knowing that her beloved home on Glover Avenue, filled with so many happy memories, is being cared for by her daughter and son-in-law living there.

Changes On Main Street

Having lived in Newtown for more than 80 years, Joan (Glover) Crick has seen the area change from farmland and fields to more development every which way.

Her desire to preserve Newtown’s history and beauty was strong throughout her time in town, and she served as the Borough of Newtown warden for many years.

“We tried our darndest to keep commercial [buildings] off of Main Street,” Mrs Crick said. “We didn’t want anything to happen to Main Street, because it was a drawing card for people with it being the older homes — it was beautiful.”

During Mrs Crick’s time as warden she invested a lot of time and energy going to Hartford and creating the Borough’s Historic District.

When it comes to current projects proposed for Main Street today, her passion for preservation has not faded.

“I’m very opposed to Hawley Manor — now the Inn at Newtown — being torn down . . .” Mrs Crick said. “I’d hate to see something like the Hawley Manor ripped down and apartments put up.”

She acknowledges Mary Hawley’s many contributions to Newtown as its benefactress for numerous buildings and feels the town should do what it can to honor her legacy.

“I know things change, and I realize that. But if you open land someplace, like on Main Street, it could mushroom and change it completely,” Mrs Crick said. “I don’t think it would be good for the town. We’re special.”