Interesting People, Interesting Tales Told To ‘The Bee’

By Nancy K. Crevier

The generosity, curiosity, imagination, and interests of Newtown residents was as apparent in 2006 as it has been for the past 300 years of this town’s existence. Several residents shared a peek into their lives with The Newtown Bee this past year.

The Newtown Bee carried on without associate editor Kaaren Valenta in 2006 as she bid farewell to The Newtown Bee after nearly 21 years. Ms Valenta provided thoughtful and insightful news stories to the people of Newtown, and was well known and revered about town as the food editor in her early years with the paper. Bee staff members Shannon Hicks and John Voket hit the ground running as associate editors following Ms Valenta’s retirement.

In 2006, Newtown resident and chef Patrick Wilson was awarded the Level III ProChef Certification from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, N.Y. Only eight chefs worldwide have passed the demanding Level III certification, and Chef Wilson is the only one to have passed all three levels of certification.

On top of that, if Ron Goldleaf, Kevin Barteleme, and Don Russo have anything to say about it, Chef Wilson will be featured in a new television series they are promoting, Breakfast in Bed. Mr Barteleme and Mr Russo conceived the traveling food show and it is being produced by Mr Goldleaf, all partners in Breakfast in Bed Productions.

To top off the year, Chef Wilson won his first gold medal from the American Culinary Federation for the best fish platter at the Jacob Javits International Hotel Show in New York this fall, and just to add to his crazy schedule, spent Sunday, November 18, judging hundreds of pickle entries at the Rosendale International Pickle Festival in Rosendale, N.Y. According to Chef Wilson, more than 5,000 pickle lovers from all over the world flocked to the tiny New York village.

In January, readers learned that fellow resident Roger Ball is still as busy as ever. Mr Ball welcomed The Bee into the historic sawmill-turned-home he shares with his wife and son to talk about his life of music, which started more than 50 years ago, continues through the 1970s while he was a member of Average White Band, and is maintained today with Mr Ball’s current project, a solo jazz project that recently produced an album called Childsplay.

Sandy Hook resident Darryl Gregory also celebrated the output of his musical talent earlier this year. Mr Gregory and his group SaReel Project were part of a two-night presentation in February at Fairfield University that was called A Grimm Preview: excerpts from an upcoming production of Hansel & Gretel. The SaReel Project used its original world music performed on unique instruments, accompanied by the dancers Otis Cook and Faith Pilger, to explore the traditional story of a boy and girl lost in the woods.

Then in August, Mr Gregory and SaReel Project traveled into New York City for the off-Broadway premier of Grimm at The Duke Theatre in Times Square.

Newtown resident, and a 25-year veteran reporter at The Hartford Courant, Steve Grant shares much in common with a man who walked the woods of New England 150 years ago. Mr Grant has spent a good part of his life exploring nature and environmental issues. He is respectful of the natural world and marvels at the wonders that it holds and has written prolifically about the world around us, observing the connections between the natural world and today’s society. So did that early American naturalist and writer, Thoreau.

But while Henry David Thoreau was known as a gruff loner, Mr Grant is an amiable family man eager to share his admiration of the man who endowed the world with perceptive observations of nature that have retained their relevancy through the years. So it should be of no surprise that Mr Grant’s proposal to the Thoreau Society to edit Henry David Thoreau’s thoughts on the natural world was selected as part of a three-book series published this year by the University of Massachusetts Press.

To some of the women, she is “The Knitting Whisperer.” To others, “The Goddess of Knitting.” Whatever they call her, the women who are part of the weekly knitting group that meets at Mocha Coffee House in Sandy Hook are indebted to Maggie Mahony for her enthusiastic energy and knitting knowledge that she so willingly shares with them.

 Early in 2006, The Bee received word that Vice Admiral Joseph Stewart, superintendent of the United States Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, N.Y., during the homecoming reunion of 2005, recognized Bob Tynan of Newtown with the award for Outstanding Technical Achievement. Mr Tynan, who graduated from Kings Point in 1950, died in 2006.

The Merchant Marine has been a dream job for Newtown resident Ken Moliver for more than 25 years as an operating engineer for the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association (MEBA). Mr Moliver’s job has taken him to the Far East, from Singapore to the Japanese islands. He has visited Korea, Borneo, Ecuador, the South American west coast, northern Europe, the Mediterranean, and Puerto Rico. He has traveled to Hawaii. He works on average 90 days of the year and he takes the summers off .

The history and adventure of the Merchant Marine experience were all a part of Ken Moliver’s story this year.

As a producer of films, National Geographic Channel series, children’s science series, musicals, the first AIDS benefit Comic Relief in 1985, and numerous documentaries, Victoria Cummings has had the opportunity over the past 30 years to tell many stories. The story she tells in Teachings Of The Horse (TeachingsOfTheHorse.com), her e-book published in 2005, though, is of a more personal nature. Ms Cummings visited with The Bee earlier this year to share her experiences writing the e- story of her experience as a first-time horse owner and the tale of a teacher with four legs and a very soft nose.

When self-taught artist and Newtown resident Cindy Manning started creating jewelry from glass beads, gemstones and crystals four years ago, she quickly realized that she would need a partner to help her with the production, marketing, and selling of her designs if she wanted to move from a cottage industry to a mainstream business. Joining forces in June 2003 with her neighbor Nancy Metzger, a former art student before she earned her nursing degree, they founded Chics and Stones, a home-based jewelry company. Chics and Stones is just one of many home-based art businesses that thrive in the creative Newtown environment.

For most people, there are six degrees of separation. For Karen Pierce and Karen Pierce, it is a lot less than that.

“Hello? Karen Pierce? This is Karen Pierce.” It is not uncommon for phone calls to go this way for the two Newtown women, because one Pierce looks like another in a phone book. Ever since Karen Pierce moved to town in 1999, Karen Pierce has been fielding her phone calls and vice versa. A story featuring Karen Pierce #1 created a new slew of confusion and laughter for the two good-natured residents. They have learned to take misplaced phone calls in stride.

It is the glitz and glitter of the theater that comes to mind when one hears of a life in show biz. Bright lights and late nights, chic people and parties that last until dawn are the general impression when theater life is mentioned.

Newtown resident Walt Murphy knows about all of that. But as production carpenter at the prestigious Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City, he is more aware than most of what it is that makes the lights shine on Broadway. Mr Murphy gave Bee readers a look behind the scenes at one of New York City’s most prestigious theaters.

Karen Whippie, Carla Spencer, Alana Wenick, Alyssa Schankman, Dana Metzger, Andrea Hoyt, Elisa Van Buskirk, and Liz Cole all graduated from high school in the spring and said goodbye to seven years of reading books that ranged from classics to fantasy to required high school reading material in the mother-daughter book group founded by Alana and her mother, Diane Wenick. But as this mother-daughter book club closed the cover on its final chapter, another club began its journey into the world of words.

Suzy DeYoung and her daughter, Quincy, 12; Valerie Fallon and her daughter, Cassie, 11; Mary Braga and her daughter, Victoria, 12; and Sarah Burns and her daughter, Katie, 11, have been gathering at each other’s homes once a month for the past year to read and discuss books. They are just one of many examples of parents and children finding ways to spend quality time together.

Sponsored by the Points of Light Foundation in Washington, D.C., April 23 to 29 was designated 2006 National Volunteer Week in America. Residents need only to look to the long list of volunteer organizations in The Guide To Newtown to realize the impact volunteers have on all that makes it “Nicer in Newtown.”

FISH, an organization that provides rides to medical appointments for those otherwise unable to do so, is one group. Another one of the largest consortiums of volunteers to be found in Newtown is that of the emergency services. The Junior Women’s Club, the Newtown Lions Club and Rotary Club, the Newtown chapter of the Salvation Army, and many other clubs in town exist primarily as a means to help others in need. Food Assistance Immediate Temporary Help (FAITH) volunteers assist at the St John’s food pantry. The volunteers greet and help the people who come in.

Thanks again to the efforts of volunteers, The Animal Center helps find homes for abandoned, lost and neglected creatures, and Canine Advocates of Newtown makes sure that the pound dogs are walked regularly and socialized by volunteers before placement in a new home. Volunteers staff the Spay and Neuter Association of Newtown, an organization that helps pet owners find affordable solutions to the overpopulation problem.

If the graphics on some of his board and card games make you a little nervous as a parent, that is a good thing, says game inventor and Newtown resident Curt Covert.

“That’s the one that might engage your teen,” he claimed in an interview in June with The Bee. Tying teens back into the family is one of the goals Mr Covert aims for when designing the games his company, Smirk and Dagger, publishes.

In the spring, the Labor Day Committee announced that Patricia Barkman, a strong supporter of a variety of topics promoting the preservation of Newtown’s heritage, had graciously accepted the position of grand marshal for the 2006 Labor Day Parade. Mrs Barkman, a well-known artist who has recorded Newtown through her paintings, was the ideal selection for the theme of “Wide Open Spaces.” She is also a member of the Pootatuck Watershed Association, vice president of the Open Space Task Force, a college professor for 30 years, a member of the Taunton Lake Landowner’s Association, and an avid supporter of Al’s Trail in Newtown. A 39-year resident of the town, Mrs Barkman’s dedication to the preservation of the environment shone through as she handed out saplings to paradegoers on Labor Day.

Dawn Adams has gone to the dogs. From visualizing, designing, and sewing clothing and costumes for people of all shapes and sizes since she was 7 years old, this Newtown seamstress has turned to designer duds for designer dogs. Specifically, Ms Adams new business, Greyhounds Puttin’ On The Glitz, is a showcase for velvet-lined collars and Czech fired-glass bead necklaces for sight hounds, such as her own two rescued greyhounds, Ginger and Guinness.

She is the epitome of health today, but three years ago Liz Gilbert was so sick she could not function well as a wife, as a mother, or as a senior level human resources employee at Citigroup in White Plains, N.Y. It was not until a naturopath ordered blood allergy tests that she was diagnosed with multiple food allergies and was able to combat the stomach, skin, and energy problems that had plagued her, and begin to rebuild her life. Several hundred experimentations later, Ms Gilbert believes she has come up with a line of allergen-free baked items that deliver flavor and satisfaction to herself, her family, friends, and a number of customers of her new business, Gilbert’s Gourmet Goodies.

Laughter is also good for one’s health, and Andrew Kennedy shines in that department. The Sandy Hook resident spent one week in Montreal in early summer, making his second appearance at The Just For Laughs Comedy Festival, then made his Treehouse Comedy Club debut in July, and followed those milestones by taping his own episode of Comedy Central Presents.

Gary Zemola is against chewing tobacco. He is not a big fan of people smoking tobacco, either, but it is chewing tobacco and the diseases associated with that habit that he doesn’t want people to think he is endorsing with the replicated advertisement he put on the side of his restored antique barn in Sandy Hook during the summer. The early 19th Century barn of post-and-beam construction that is the centerpiece of Mr Zemola’s property at 4 Jeremiah Road has become a paean to one form of Americana that is quickly disappearing. It is also the homeowner’s way of honoring one painter in particular.

In August two of Mr Zemola’s friends painted a traditional Mail Pouch Tobacco sign on the side of Mr Zemola’s barn. Paul Hellrigel and Eric Uhrynowski spent a few days working in Sandy Hook, continuing the transformation of the antique barn into a beautiful work of art.

Newtown resident Joe Williams is nowhere near ready to take it easy. He is a long-haul truck driver, a ballroom dancer who has shared the delights of fancy footwork with hundreds of students over the years, and he has chronicled stories he made up for his boys when they were young. He is an artist who has studied at Wooster School, Silvermine Guild Art Center, and with the artist Richard Schmid. He is a Pentacostal minister and a storyteller. He is 69 years old, but while others his age are beginning to watch their steps, he has branched out, literally and figuratively. Hauling himself up into the tops of trees, 100 feet or more above the ground, Mr Williams has revived a skill he nurtured as a young man in Pennsylvania: taking down and tending to trees.

Sometimes Newtowners let loose their creative energy when nothing else seems to suit their needs. St Echinacea will not be found in any theological books, nor does her visage adorn medals sold in Christian bookstores. She is the creation of twin sisters Liz Arneth of Newtown and Patsy Thurber of Coventry, who determined one day this fall the need for an ecumenical saint to watch over Ms Thurber, who has undergone a heart ablation for atrial fibrillation.

Dr Bob Berthier and Frank Gardner, who became good friends after judging an area photography contest two years ago, returned in mid-October from a two-week trip to Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, where they captured frame after frame of that region’s natural beauty. They shared with The Bee and its readers the fruits of their efforts in a recent article.

Earlier this month, the author Justin Scott released his latest book… and his grip on a secret. Mr Scott, it turns out, has been writing thrillers and mystery novels under his own name since 1973. He also, it turns out, is the man behind books “written by” J.S. Blazer and Paul Garrison.

Mr Scott celebrated the release of the latest Ben Abbott mystery, called McMansion, this month with a trio of public programs. The first was at C.H. Booth Library and featured special guest and fellow resident Brigette Sorensen, who did the artwork for the new book’s cover (and has subsequently been tapped to create covers for the rereleases of the first three Ben Abbott mysteries, HardScape, StoneDust, and FrostLine).

For some Newtown residents, the call of 2006 was one of a more somber nature. “You don’t always get a chance to ‘pick your poison,’” Sgt Bill Flynn said. That is why he volunteered for the Army National Guard mission that deployed him to Iraq. The Iraq mission will bring him the closest to a war zone he has ever been in his 20 years of service. The thought of going to a war zone bothered him more when he was younger and the possibility of going to the Middle East loomed over him during the Gulf War. “Now, I’m more confident,” Sgt Flynn said. With 2006 behind them, Larry and Audrey Flynn, his parents, are already looking forward to Christmas 2007, when they expect Sgt Flynn to be stateside at last. 

No doubt, 2007 will also be a time of discovering many more intriguing tales from Newtown’s citizens.

Associate Editor Shannon Hicks contributed to this article.