Newtown’s Young People Stand Tall, Drawing Attention Through Good Deeds & Efforts

By Nancy K. Crevier

Newtown’s youth continued to stand out in 2006 as they have over the years. Not only in scholastic achievements, but also in areas that required fortitude and stamina, curiosity, teamwork, and motivation, young people from town made a name for themselves. A little fun, a little excitement, and a lot of energetic activities — some more positively perceived than others — gave The Newtown Bee much fodder when it came to reporting on the activities of Newtown’s young people all last year. Here are some of the highlights gleaned from the pages of the last 12 months:

As part of an integrated program combining history, reading, and math, home schooled students from the Newtown area met with docent Patty Graves at the Matthew Curtiss House on February 16 for a peek into life as it was during the colonial days.

Growing up in Newtown, Kelly Coney and her family had always owned pets. So when the 2003 graduate of Newtown High School went off to Ithaca College in New York to study physical therapy, leaving her pets behind was as difficult as saying goodbye to her mother, Susan, and older brother, Kyle.

After a long, freshman year without any four-footed companionship, she discovered that there was an answer to her yearning. Puppies in training from Guiding Eyes For The Blind in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., could be fostered by Ithaca students living on campus. Vasco, a yellow lab pup, became Kelly’s companion as she guided the young dog so that he could one day, in turn, guide a human companion.

Newtown residents supporting the record-breaking opening of the new 20th Century Fox movie from Blue Sky Studios, Ice Age: The Meltdown, on March 31 detected something vaguely familiar about a few of the voices on the soundtrack. Thanks to their fathers, Bruce Anderson, production manager for Blue Sky Studios, and Ron DeFelice, color stylist at the studio, four Newtown youngsters contributed to the production of the blockbuster.

Emily Anderson, 14, and Caitlin Anderson, 12, students at Newtown Middle School, Connor Anderson, 9, a student at Head O’ Meadow, and Nicole DeFelice, 12, a Reed Intermediate School student, provided the scratch recordings and later the actual sound recordings for the voices of Beaver Girl 3 and Glypto Boy Billy (Caitlin), Rhino Boy and Beaver Boy (Connor), Start Girl (Nicole), and group voices (Emily).

What started out as an ordinary day for four Newtown Middle School students quickly evolved into quite an extraordinary afternoon on May 30, when they met with Bill Weir, co-anchor of the weekend edition of Good Morning America, at the Danbury Fair Mall food court.

Sam Kent, Lauren Powers, Alex Israel, and Nate Crevier were caught a little off-guard when Sam’s mother, Katie Kent, called them at school to tell them that ABC was requesting their presence at the mall that afternoon, but it was not a total surprise. The four eighth graders had been on pins and needles for two weeks awaiting the call.

“The segment was originally featuring Eric Schlosser’s book, Chew On This,” said segment producer Jason Stine. “We decided we wanted to do more than just an author interview. We wanted to do an experiment: What do kids eat on a regular basis?” The middle school students offered their opinions to Mr Weir and the nation in the brief segment that aired in June.

A chair that affords a bird’s-eye view of the world, a chance to be outdoors soaking up the rays and working on an enviable tan — the perks of being a lifeguard make the job look pretty sweet to the average person. But P.J. O’Dell, head lifeguard for Treadwell Park, said the job is far from cushy. A lot goes on behind the scenes and behind the RayBans to make the pool a fun and safe place to while away a hot summer day.

Like all lifeguards in town, P.J., who has been a lifeguard for four years, had to take the 40-hour-plus Red Cross-certified course and pass a written and practical exam, and receive CPR certification and first aid certification, as well. Every year lifeguards renew their CPR certification and weekly training sessions are held at the pool. Like the Newtown teens who volunteer with the ambulance and the fire departments, the lifeguards are willing to take on the responsibilities of ensuring Newtowner’s safety.

It was fun and adventure for several Newtown high schoolers, some of whom traveled a little further than others to find a thrill. “The thought of biking, running, and then jumping into a pile of mud sort of appeals to every boy’s fantasy,” said Steve Ashbolt, who along with fellow Newtown High School junior Kevin Hoyt, indulged that fantasy right after the school year ended in June. For Steve and Kevin, Muddy Buddy answered the call of the wild for them. Muddy Buddy is a six-mile trail run and mountain bike ride with teams of two people switching on and off as they overcome obstacles in a timed event that culminates in the biggest mud bath ever.

Grime was no stranger to Dana Van Buskirk this summer, either, who revisited Philmont, a Boy Scout high adventure camp in Cimarron, N.M., after an impressive 65-mile hiking trip there last summer with nine other members of his Newtown scout troop. This year, though, Dana went solo, meeting up with eight other young people from all over the United States for a much more intensive session of backpacking, hiking, shooting, and rock climbing from June 20 to July 9. “This year, I hiked about 250 miles,” said Dana.

Caitlin Weber is a junior majoring in biology and English at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va. “I just lucked out,” she said of her summer commitment with the Seeds of Success program. A poster hung in the biology department of the college piqued her interest last spring and she checked out the website for the project that collects seeds for the Millennium Seed Bank in Kew, England. The Seed Bank’s worldwide collection program is committed to collecting and conserving ten percent of the world’s 24,000 species of flora by the year 2010. In case of fire rehabilitation or restoration needs, seeds will be available thanks to this Royal Botanic Gardens program.

Newtown sophomore Matt Taylor loves extreme sports. Downhill skiing, extreme downhill mountain biking, and dirt biking occupy a lot of his free time, as does snowboarding. This summer, Matt had the opportunity to experience a new thrill: summer snowboarding. Naturally, he had to travel just a little outside of New England to find a venue for this experience. He joined his older brother, Chris, in Oregon to take on the glaciers. “Snowboarding in August is pretty cool,” he said.

Melissa Fitzsimons took her snowboarding dreams even a little further from home. From late July to mid-August, Melissa joined ten other American students in Europe as part of the America’s Adventure and Ventures Everywhere (AAVE), a teen summer adventure travel camp.

Summer thrills were found in a less physically demanding environment for Christopher Giacolone, a political science major at Trinity College in Hartford. He found just the outlet for his interests as in intern in the Government Affairs and Public Policy department of Boehringer-Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals.

A couple of new fads caught the attention of some of Newtown’s young people in 2006, as well. Sudoku is an addictive logic and reasoning puzzle that grabbed the attention of people from coast to coast this year. The game is a seemingly simple one. Each cell of a 9 by 9 grid of 3 by 3 subgrids, some prefilled with various numbers between 1 and 9, must be filled with a digit, again only 1 through 9. Each row, column, and section can contain each number only once. Using logic, reason, skills — scanning, elimination, marking, or analysis — and some patience — the entire grid is completed. The Bee responded to the interest in this challenging game with the addition of a Sudoku puzzle to each week’s puzzle page.

Part Beanie Baby and part Neopet, Webkinz are a line of stuffed animals that come with a secret code allowing the purchaser to enter into an online fantasy world starring that pet. The Webkinz line debuted the spring of 2005, and according to Susan McVeigh, communications manager at Ganz in Toronto, by October 2006 there were more than 700,000 registered Webkinz owners, up from 150,000 reported in the spring of 2006. Some of those Webkinz owners are Newtown kids who gave the plush playmates a big thumbs-up. The Webkinz line is sold by several Newtown businesses hoping to see the new craze extend into the new year.

 “Every year we give a donation to the fire department, but I have never seen the passion these young kids have.” Newtown resident Mary Beth Hemingway was referring to her teenage daughter’s friend, Ryan Clark, who is a member of the Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire Department, and the other young people who make up the town’s junior firefighter teams.

Having seen firsthand the young man’s dedication and love of the volunteer association, Ms Hemingway was disheartened to hear from Ryan that there are presently no underclassmen serving on most of the fire departments. None of the departments in town actively recruit junior firefighters, relying instead on word of mouth or encouragement from involved family members to spark an interest.

Without new junior members, it will cut down on the support staff available at emergencies. While they cannot enter a burning building, the department counts on the trained younger members to do backup work at the scene. To volunteer, all of the leaders recommend stopping in or calling the departments. For Dodgingtown, call 270-4386; Hook and Ladder, call 270-4383; Sandy Hook, call 270-4392; Botsford, call 270-4388; Hawleyville, contact Chief Basso at the firehouse on Route 302.

The 1960s icon Andy Warhol predicted, “In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” For four Newtown High School students, the future was more like five seconds of fame. A clip from a dance video made by Steph Soder, Libby Feltch, and Carly Doherty, juniors at NHS, along with Laurelton High School sophomore Meagan Kelly, for a dance contest appears twice on a DVD included with the November 7 re-release of the indie/alt rock band OK-Go Oh No CD. But with a winner still to be announced for the dance contest, they are keeping their fingers crossed and hoping that when OK-Go makes that final decision, that it will be Steph, Carly, Meagan, and Libby of Newtown, Conn.,, who join the ultra-dance group in the spotlight.

Newtown Middle School eighth grade student Jane Moran is adding to the pile of books at her bedside. She was selected late this fall from over a dozen applicants from all over Connecticut as one of two student readers to serve on the Nutmeg Teen Book Selection Committee for 2009.

The Nutmeg Book Award is sponsored by the Connecticut Library Association and Connecticut Educational Media Association to encourage children in grades four through eight to read quality literature. Each year, students across the state read from a list of ten nominated titles and vote for the book that they think deserves the Nutmeg Children’s Book Award. Teen committee members help adult book selection committee members refine a list of 80 books down to the top ten nominees.

It is hard enough for adults experienced in public speaking to get up before an audience to present information gleaned from experience and noted sources. So for the 11 young people who stood before an audience of more than two dozen friends and families in the meeting room of C.H. Booth Library on December 10 to share their original poetry and prose with not a trace of trepidation, it was an impressive feat. The writers were part of the fourth annual Young Writer’s Salon sponsored by the library’s Young Adult Council.

To list the many accomplishments of Newtown’s young people this year would be quite a feat, and the fact that so much of it was positive news is a tribute to Newtown and the adults who make an impression on the youth of this town.