Winning Women—

NWC Members Sweep State Competition

By Kaaren Valenta

“I think artists are extremists,” says Joan Berquist. “If I wasn’t a writer, I think I’d be a landscaper or a chef.”

Or maybe a potter, or a painter, or a photographer.

Although Mrs Berquist speaks tongue-in-cheek about an obsession to “do it all,” her first-place awards in poetry and one-act plays and a blue ribbon in photography at the General Federation of Woman’s Club’s recent state competition reflect a woman of many talents. Several other members of Newtown Woman’s Club also won awards as the club swept all the awards in the literature category and took first place in several others.

Mrs Berquist, who has lived in Newtown for 37 years, started college shortly before her third child was born.

“When I look back I don’t know how I did it – it must have been an obsession,” she says, laughing. “I had a husband, a house, two children and a baby to take care of. Fortunately, [my husband] Carl has always supported me in whatever I wanted to do. I had almost a double major, in literature and art. Our son John was five when he came to my graduation in 1981 at WestConn.”

Her first piece, “The Interview,” a short story, was published while she was still in school, in Conatus, WestConn’s literary magazine. After graduation she wrote pieces for magazines and the Connecticut section of The New York Times. But she has always preferred to write for herself.

“I don’t like sending things out [to publishers],” she said. “I don’t like writing query letters. I guess I need an agent to do the work for me.”

After she won her awards in the statewide competition, Mrs Berquist was off to a week-long course in abstract painting at Wooster School in Danbury.

“I consider myself a very good writer, a good photograph and a painter, well, I think in another five years I may be good. I’ve done a lot of watercolors but I’m beginning to fall in love with oils.”

A potter’s wheel in her cellar is a reflection of the time, 27 years ago, that she was “into” pottery and sculpture, and won an award for it in the state competition. But after she earned her bachelor’s degree, she started work on a master’s.

“I love to learn,” she said. “I’m a Capricorn – a lifelong learner. I took course after course. If you added up all the credits after my bachelor’s degree, I’d probably have a PhD. I began to think it was ridiculous until I won the awards.”

Mrs Berquist is working on a book called Anatomy of a Writer, partially autobiographical. “I think it should be an e-book,” she said, something that could be downloaded by today’s computer-minded readers. Her winning poem, a poignant memoir of a visit with her Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother on her 86th birthday, is somewhat out of character. “My poems are usually funny – people like the satire,” she said.

Her award-winning one-act play, Mama Mia, is a story about four generations of women at the grandmother’s funeral. She took first-place in black and white feature photography for “The One That Didn’t Get Away,” a photo of a man, a fish, and a small boy.

“I know you can’t have it all in life, and certainly not all at the same time,” she said. “All I want to do from here on is to travel and to do my art.”

“A Winter Walk”

Kay Ozanne worked for 34 years as secretary to the principal at Sandy Hook School; it wasn’t until after she retired in February 1997 that she took up writing. Her short story, A Winter Walk, was the first she had ever written.

“I joined a writing group under the persuasion of Joan Berquist,” she said with a wry smile. “It is called the Romance Writers of America, Connecticut chapter, but I don’t plan to become a romance writer. I’m about five pages into a book. It’s a story about a daughter in a family and there’s a murder in it.”

Like Joan Berquist, Kay Ozanne has other talents. A framed oil painting of a barn hangs on her living room wall. “I painted it in 1983,” she said. “But I had to give up painting because the fumes bother me. Acrylics do too. And I’m just not a watercolorist.”

Mrs Ozanne came to Newtown in 1948 when her husband accepted a job teaching French at Hawley School. “In those years, Hawley had the whole system – kindergarten through 12th grade,” she said.  “Newtown was a small town. Queen Street was still a dirt road.”

She had graduated from the liberal arts program at what was then Katherine Gibbs College, and also studied at Brown University. She worked as a secretary until she moved to Newtown.

“In 1948 Newtown was part of a new regional high school district, with Dr Carroll Johnson as the superintendent,” she said. “They dissolved the district, and I got pregnant, so I didn’t work again until after our daughters, Adele and Denise, were in school.”

It was 1963 when she was asked to help out because the secretary at Sandy Hook School had resigned. “I went in to help out for two weeks and retired 34 years later after serving under four principals,” she said.

One day last January Kay decided to appease the friends who had been encouraging her to write by writing a short story for the Women’s Club competition.

“It was a snowy day,” she said. “I sat down and wrote it in one afternoon. It just kind of came. But I was surprised that it won, especially when I learned that many had been submitted.

“Writing requires a lot of self-direction,” she said. “I’m afraid I don’t have that. But it is also a good relief for me. For so many years I functioned as a secretary – copying other people’s words. Now I have to find my own words.”

Other first-place winners in the state contest included Coke Cramer for a black and white scenic photograph of the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland; Nancy Larin for molded paper note cards; Virginia Chiarmonte for an adult costume for a play; and Marion Thompson for a knitted blue and white doll outfit.