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THE WAY WE WERE

JANUARY 5, 1973

Mrs Barbara Parker this week announced that she does not plan to run for

reelection as town clerk because the job has become "too much pressure and too

much work." The past year was "the year to end all years in Newtown -- the

redrawing of the voting districts created an impossible situation for us," she

said. Mrs Parker, who has been town clerk for six years after ten years as

assistant town clerk, suggested that her successor be a man, one who is a good

administrator and understands politics. Her assistant, Mrs Richard Eddy, said

she didn't want the job and she agreed that it wasn't a good job for a woman.

Mrs Parker said she will leave her town clerk's job at the expiration of her

present term on July 1.

In the annual Year in Review, The Bee noted that 1972 was one of sadness for

the town with the deaths of many prominent residents including First Selectman

Timothy Treadwell, killed in a fire in his home. Others who died during the

year included Selectman Seligmann, Roads Superintendent Richard Monckton, Dog

Warden John Sedor, Otto Heise, Raymond Fosdick, Sydney Blumberg, and Mrs James

Brunot.

At its monthly meeting on January 2, the Board of Police Commissioners voted

to reinstate private duty for members of the Newtown police department. Last

year, private duty was ruled out for the men by the commissioners, first

totally, then reinstated partially for civic or town functions. When it was

reinstated partially, Police Union President Fred Kasbarian said the men would

not work private duty in a limited manner. The original action was taken when

Public Act 85 was enacted. This act, which has since been amended, originally

ruled that any public employee who worked over 40 hours had to be paid time

and a half. The pay for private duty for the police officers is $5.75 per hour

with 75 cents going to the town and $5 to the men hired. The only exception is

for traffic duty at local churches on Sunday, which pays $4 per hour.

A new program to alert Newtown parents to the dangers of smoking marijuana was

announced at the Kiwanis Club meeting on December 28 and plans for putting it

into operation were to be worked out at the club's business meeting on January

4. Under the leadership of Rev Donald D. McGrath, pastor of Christ the King

Lutheran Church, members will organize small coffee-and-cake parties in their

homes and the homes of their friends, at which Police Youth Officer Robert

Taylor will show a film, distribute brochures and answer questions about how

to find out whether your children or their friends are smoking marijuana, and

what to do about it if they are. Police Chief Louis D. Marchese said there is

a marijuana problem in Newtown but it is not an alarming one at the present

time.

Benson Snaider, attorney for the Boggs Hill group which is seeking to stop the

town from using the Boyle property on Boggs Hill Road for an elementary school

site, filed for a new trial on December 29. The motion will be heard in

Superior Court in Bridgeport at a date yet to be announced. The action was

taken after the recent death of the judge who was presiding in the court case.

Newtown's newest peace group, the Concerned Citizens of Newtown, was scheduled

to meet on Thursday evening, January 4, in Edmond Town Hall to organize

continuing pressure to end the Vietnam war. Rep Ronald Sarasin, R-5th

District, told an anti-war delegation from the group on December 29 that he

had supported President Nixon's policy in Vietnam until the recent bombing of

Hanoi and Haiphong and now he was questioning it. "I think this is a lousy war

and we never should have got into it, but we're there now and how do we get

out?" Rep Sarasin said. "I'm not pleased with the way we've been going, and

I've never tried to defend it. I don't think we'll ever do it again; the days

of that kind of flag-waving are over."

JANUARY 2, 1948

The winter's first major snowstorm dumped 18 inches on Newtown in less than 36

hours, beginning before dawn last Friday morning. Every available piece of

snow-removal apparatus was pressed into service. Fortunately there were no

power outages and no calls for the ambulance or fire companies during the

storm.

A score of young people, with the Rev Paul Cullens as their leader, left

Sunday following the big snowstorm for a skiing trip to Francestown, N.H. This

Wednesday evening, Hawley Warner and Nelson M. Curtis of Sandy Hook, Newell

Tiemann of Storrs and a friend left for a weekend of skiing at Stowe, Vermont.

Dr J. Benton Egee and son, David, and Mortimer B. Smith and son, Stephen,

determined to see the Madison Square Garden tennis match on December 26, left

Newtown by motor car at the height of the storm for Bridgeport, from whence a

seven-hour train ride -- much of it heatless -- brought them to Grand Central

Station in time to bring them back to Bridgeport at 6 am the following

morning. They missed transmissions of the match produced by local television

sets while they were en route to the city.

In its annual "Year in Review," The Bee noted that during 1947 the Newtown

Kennel Club held its first dog show in the Edmond Town Hall gym; famed soprano

Grace Moore, who has lived in Sandy Hook for the past ten years, was killed in

a plane crash in Denmark; at the largest and longest town meeting on record,

voters decided to withdraw from the proposed regional high school district by

a 27-vote margin.

The Middlebury Congregational Church was the site of an unusually pretty

wedding last Saturday afternoon when Elizabeth Ann Harper, daughter of Mr and

Mrs Charles P. Harper of Middlebury, became the bride of Donald Hopkins Smith,

son of Mr and Mrs Horace A. Smith, Sr, of Dodgingtown district. After a

reception at the Lift-The-Latch Inn in Middlebury, the couple left for an

unannounced wedding trip, Betty Smith wearing a brown wool, two-piece dress,

muskrat coat and an orchid corsage. Don Smith is a state milk inspector. The

couple will reside in Dodgingtown.

The Newtown Congregational Church was the site on December 31 of the wedding

of Miss Mary Ann (Pat) Bowen, daughter of Mr and Mrs William A. Bowen of the

Hawley Manor, and Donald W. Moxley, son of W. Royden Moxley of Greenwich and

the late Mrs Moxley. After a reception at the Hawley Manor, a New Year's Eve

party was given by Mr and Mrs Duncan Stephens in their home at Fairfield State

Hospital for the immediate family of the bride and groom and their close

friends. Mr and Mrs Moxley then left for their wedding trip in a house trailer

which later will serve as their home until both have completed their courses

at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, where Mrs Moxley is majoring in

home economics and Mr Moxley is studying for the diplomatic service. Mr Moxley

was a member of the Army and served for three years in the European theater of

operations.

The program of the first meeting of the Parent Teacher Association for the new

year will dramatize, under the title of "Education for Democracy," the

relationship of economic principles to education. William Scholz, Jr, of the

public relations staff of the General Electric Company in Bridgeport, will

conduct the meeting at Hawley High School on January 6 at 8 pm. Mrs Russell

Strasburger will preside at the meeting.