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RDGENNEWS

WITH FOUR PHOTOS

Newtown Remembered -

Class Is Out, But Memories Abound With Hawley Grads of the '30s and '40s

B Y A NDREA Z IMMERMANN

Marilyn Monroe came to shop in Newtown ... Lorretta Nichols fell down the coal

chute by Edmond Town Hall ... High school students learned to make beds in

nursing class ... And - Oh! - those handsome Flying Eagle bus drivers!

These and other memories tumbled out when friends from Hawley High School's

Class of 1946 gathered last week for a reunion. A lot of giggles and knowing

looks also passed between the five attendees: Velma Kovacs of Newtown, Mary

Crouch George of Bethel, Anna Krafcsik Schoenfeldt of Fairfield, Lorraine

Wheeler Mehvren of Southbury, and Marie Stanton Bell of Bethlehem, NH.

"We enjoyed our lives; we found things to do," said Velma. "We didn't know

about drugs or what liquor was... We went to a lot of dances at Edmond Town

Hall. We called it the ROMP - Recreation Opportunities For Modern People."

None of them had cars during high school, so they usually had to walk home.

"People thought we were too noisy walking home at 11," said Lorraine. She was

the first girl in her class to get a car - a green 1946 Plymouth - and that

was when she graduated.

With a car, the group of friends could take excursions, like driving to

Dodgingtown to ride horseback.

"I lost a horse in the woods and it took them one or two days to find it,"

laughed Velma. "He threw me. And then got his reigns tied around a tree so he

couldn't go anywhere."

The friends rode their bicycles "miles and miles" to visit one another. Two of

them worked picking strawberries at Bachman's farm off High Rock Road one

summer for three cents a quart.

For fun in the winter, the friends would throw their sleds in the back of a

truck and go sledding on the Newtown golf course.

"It was a different time," said Anna. "We used to have blizzards and stay home

for two weeks. In the 1930s, a blizzard was so bad our fathers had to shovel

the roads by hand - they couldn't get a plow through. We had twelve-foot snow

drifts."

Two of the women became acquainted with and later married bus drivers, who

worked for the Flying Eagle line.

"I worked at the Sandy Hook Diner - it was just a little coffee shop then. The

drivers used to stop in," said Mary, who now waitresses at the Trellis

Restaurant in Danbury.

Marie was a soda jerk at the Flagpole Fountain in the building opposite the

flagpole on Main Street. Nicknamed "Hungry Smith's" by the girls who worked

there, the soda fountain was a place where Hawley students congregated.

"I met Marilyn Monroe [there]. She had a bandana on and was just as beautiful

without makeup," said Marie. "She was shopping in town. She lived on Route 67

in Roxbury - at that time she was married to Arthur Miller."

Another one of the girls got to talk with Marlon Brando when he stopped to ask

her directions to the Newtown home of film producer Elia Kazan.

Velma and Lorraine worked for the telephone company, then located in the

second house on Main Street north from the corner of Church Hill Road.

"When there was a fire, everybody in town would pick up the phone and ask

where it was - even the volunteers would find out that way," said Velma. "The

board would light up like a Christmas tree!"

Now, when the women get together, they share pictures of their children and

grandchildren. And, because their graduating class was so small, "getting

together means writing a note," said Velma.

Class of 1936

Just around the corner from where the reunion was held in the restaurant, one

member of the Hawley School Class of 1936 and two from the Class of 1935

reminisced about growing up a decade earlier.

"I had to walk to school," said Doris M. Leahy, who moved here from Bridgeport

and was shocked that people had outhouses (or "Chick Sales" - so nicknamed for

the humorist who wrote about them). "I made a lot of friends over the years

just walking to school. They thought I was very radical because I came from

the city and from a socially aware family."

Lillian M. Ermisch grew up on The Boulevard, but her family also owned a

cottage on Lake Zoar. She was a member of the first Girl Scout Troop, which

formed in 1929, and is still a registered scout.

"I remember the Congregational Church Young People's Group had dances with a

jukebox in the barn or annex to the Hawley Manor," she said. "We had Sunday

School picnics. and on Class Day, we went to Putnam Park for a picnic; that

was a big deal."

Her grandmother was a widow who earned her living driving a jitney, or taxi,

in Newtown. During leisure time, Lillian's family would listen to Bamberger's

radio station.

"We ate baked beans and brown bread, Indian pudding, and liver - nobody eats

liver any more," said Lillian. "Those were Depression years."

"We were Depression babies," said Grace Murphy Rooke. As a young girl, she

worked at the Hawley Manor six and a half days a week for $20 a month (plus

tips). "We had to do waitressing, and make beds. But I made some very nice

friends there," she said.

"It was a very sedate country inn," said Doris, who married at 18. Her husband

was PGA golf pro at the Newtown Country Club, which was then managed by her

mother. "As a young bride I lived in one of the guest houses."