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THE WAY WE WERE

DECEMBER 21, 1973

Heavy ice coated everything on Sunday night during a storm which has been

called the worst in the past 30 years. The weight of the ice brought great

damage to trees and power lines and parts of Newtown were without lights and

heat for close to three days. A combination of snow, freezing rain and sleet

coupled with frigid temperatures caused chaos in the streets, loss of heat in

homes, closing down of schools and businesses and a lot of emergency work from

Monday through Wednesday. The Alexandria Room of Edmond Town Hall was made

available as a shelter. FISH provided food for families to needed a warm place

to stay and Civil Defense provided cots and blankets. Twenty-five people took

advantage of the service and stayed the night.

At a special meeting on Tuesday evening, December 18, members of the Board of

Education heard First Selectman Frank DeLucia read a letter which may prove

the December 11 referendum on the Boyle site was illegal. The letter was drawn

up by three Newtown attorneys: David Chipman, C. Harold Schwartz and William

Lavery. The letter says that according to State Statute 8-24, a town meeting

"may not acquire, sell or abandon municipal property unless the proposal has

been referred to the local Planning Commission." This is called mandatory

referral, something which was done before the first referendum three years ago

but not before the latest referendum. The letter also said Section 10-22 of

the state statutes says that local boards of education "shall have the care,

maintenance and operation of buildings, land, apparatus, and other property

used for school purposes." This control cannot be impaired by town legislative

action, the attorneys said, and the Boyle property on Boggs Hill Road,

purchased for a new elementary school site, cannot be disposed of by a town

meeting over the objections of the Board of Education. The Board of Education

and the Board of Selectmen plan to meet again to discuss the issue and to seek

a legal opinion.

Following the Board of Education meeting on Tuesday evening, Lyman D. Rogers,

a member of the Boggs Hill Group, announced the group holding the option on

the Allen property would continue to hold the option for at least 30 more

days. But the board, following an executive session, passed a resolution

stating that it had considered the Allen property on Whippoorwill Road in the

Taunton section three times and was definitely not interested in the site

because of the opinion that it is not the right site for an elementary school.

Newtown's newest bank, Connecticut Bank and Trust, opened on December 20 on

Church Hill Road. Branch Manager Ched Markovich said CBT is a commercial bank,

distinct from a savings bank mainly in that it can handle checking accounts in

addition to savings accounts. The hours of operation will be Monday through

Friday from 9 am to 3 pm. There will be no evening or Saturday hours but the

bank will have a drive-up window. The bank will offer the convenience of a

Master Charge that will provide overdraft protection so that customers can

avoid paying $3 to $5 for a bounced check.

The Democratic Town Committee December 13 endorsed Fred Marchionna of West

Street to fill the party's vacancy on the Board of Finance. He defeated Peter

Shaw and David Chipman in a three-way contest for the endorsement. Mr

Marchionna has been a resident of Newtown for eight years and is employed by

Perkin Elmer as manager of program analysis and administration in the optical

division. Subject to Board of Finance approval, Mr Marchionna will fill the

vacancy of Mrs Pauline Knibloe who resigned last month after 22 years on the

panel.

George McLachlan, chairman of the Police Commission, denied an accusation this

week that police officers have been ordered to pick up stray dogs in one part

of town and transport them to another part of town before letting them go.

Leilani O'Neil, an organizer of Newtown Animal Welfare society and former

assistant dog warden, said that a society member had told her she witnessed a

policeman letting a dog out of a police car. When questioned, the police

officer reportedly told the society member that there was an order in effect

to do so. Ms O'Neil also said calls to the police to pick up stray dogs have

gone unanswered. Mr McLachlan said stray dogs are being picked up and

transported to Dr Russell Strasburger's office. There are two strays dogs at

Dr Strasburger's office this week.

A town planning consultant told a special meeting of the Conservation

Commission, to which representatives of other town boards were invited, on

December 13 that he could prepare a complete open space plan for Newtown with

recommendations for implementation in less than nine months for about $10,000.

The planner, David M. Portman of Frederick Clark Associates, has been in

consultation with the commission without pay for the past six months.

Commission Chairman Ted Whippie said the town's open space policy currently

consists of some random property that the town hopes to acquire and an

outdated section of the Plan of Development. He said the town needs a standard

set of data on which to base open space policy that would be useful for not

just the next five years but for 25 years.

First Selectman Frank DeLucia has returned from a conference sponsored by the

National League of Cities and the United States conference of Mayors in San

Juan, Puerto Rico, December 1-9. Mr DeLucia served on the 60-member City

Policy Leadership Issues Task Force. He said the 2,684 delegates attending the

conference were unaware that a demonstration urging independence for Puerto

Rico was peacefully taking place outside the hotel. There were about 10,000

demonstrators shouting "Yankee Go Home" and "Liberty Now," he said.

DECEMBER 24, 1948

Among the pieces of legislation which will doubtless come before the next

session of the General Assembly in Hartford is a bill for the dissolution of

Regional High School District No 3. This bill is being introduced by Newtown's

representatives, George M. Stuart and Newton M. Curtis, and was delivered to

the secretary of state on December 21. The proposed regional high school would

serve the towns of Newtown, Southbury, Woodbury and Bethlehem; a site has been

purchased in Southbury and architectural drawings are under contract.

Several members of The Bee staff are leaving at the end of the week, just

prior to Christmas, to take up pursuits elsewhere. George Sweet and Robert

Stephens are getting out of the weekly newspaper business to start a job

printing plant of their own in Wakefield, R.I., George's hometown. Mrs James

Cavanaugh is leaving to take up her duties as a housewife on a full-time

basis. The Cavanaughs recently completed the construction of their home in

Botsford.

The annual ski excursion to Francestown, N.H., by the youth of Newtown will

begin on Sunday, December 26. Some 30 young people will make the trip this

year by private car with their skis, skates, food for outdoor lunches, extra

blankets, portable victrola and records. The young people will stay at the

home of Mr and Mrs Norman Stewart in Francestown and ski at Peterboro about 12

miles away. They will return to Newtown on Wednesday evening. This is the

sixteenth such excursion to be undertaken by the outdoor enthusiasts.

The population of Newtown seems to swell significantly at this time each year

with the steady return of young men and women from colleges and private

schools around the country. John McCarthy, son of Mr and Mrs John T. McCarthy

of Main Street, just out of the hospital after an appendectomy, had not

returned to his classes at Cheshire Academy when the Christmas season began.

Some early arrivals included Mary Cullens, daughter of the Rev and Mrs Paul A.

Cullens, home from Dana Hall, and Gloria Rasmussen of the Dodgingtown

district, home from Larson College.

Alice Van den Broeck, French actress, and Valentin Parera, husband of the late

Grace Moore and former resident of Newtown, were married were married Saturday

at the Redding home of Milton Diamond, a lawyer. The bride met Miss Moore and

Mr Parera on the French Riviera in 1946 and had become a protege of Miss

Moore, appearing in many French movies. Mr Parera has been a Broadway producer

and Spanish actor. The Pareras, both of whom have been married twice, plan to

motor to California for their honeymoon. Miss Moore, the famed soprano who

with her husband owned Far Away Acres on Bradley Lane in Sandy Hook for more

than 10 years, was killed in a plane crash in Denmark while on tour in January

1947.

The first selectman's office reported that the storm on December 19 which

brought an estimated nine inches of light snow required 27 hours of work by

the town road crews to clean up from start to finish. A total of 221 man hours

were required to plow the snow, widen the roads after it stopped snowing, then

sand the roads. The cost to the town was $703.47, which included $295.47 in

wages, and most of the rest in contracted services including two bulldozers,

an extra truck and three farm tractors used for plowing.

An event occurred in Newtown last Thursday evening which, if the acclaim of

the townspeople is a fair indication, might well be repeated from time to time

in the future. It was the winter concert presented by the Hawley chorus in the

Edmond Town Hall theater, the first such appearance of the group. Conducted by

William Jones, music supervisor in the Newtown schools, the chorus is

comprised of 100 voices. It was formed by Mr Jones last February to stimulate

interest in music at the high school.

Friends of Judge Paul V. Cavanaugh will be pleased to know that he is steadily

improving at St Vincent's Hospital in Bridgeport where he was taken on

December 18 after suffering a heart attack. It is expected that he will be in

the hospital for about another two weeks.