The Hampton Gazette began and ended its publishing year with the important topic of budgets. The Town’s boards reported on proposed spending plans, and we reported on the Town Meetings where they were discussed. We also published reports submitted by officials serving on the Ad-Hoc Committee charged with studying the governance, programming, and costs of combining Hampton and Scotland Elementary schools under a cooperative agreement, and reported on the Town Meeting called to present the committee’s findings, field questions and address concerns raised by residents. In the end, Scotland approved the proposal to merge the schools by nearly the same margin that Hampton defeated it.
In other news, we published the Pride Month Proclamation adopted by the Board of Selectmen, reported on the Planning and Zoning Commission’s decision to seek alternative affordable housing options in response to public opinion, announced the Gazette’s initiation of a scholarship, and compiled a retrospect on the impact of Covid 19 from the perspective of citizens of various ages.
But the really “big news” was the town’s return to “normal”. We announced the return of Trick-or-Treating on Halloween, Arbor Day at the school, concerts at Fletcher Memorial Library, the Congregational Church, and Organic Roots Farm, senior luncheons and programs at Goodwin, Trail Wood and Joshua’s Trust. Our town celebrated Walktober by sponsoring nine events, and after a two year hiatus, the Fall Festival, renamed Hampton Harvest, returned to feature farms with fresh produce, local artists and artisans, and several organizations – scouts, our nature preserves, the library, the historical society, the fire department and the Gazette, where we introduced our 2023 calendar, “Hampton Hearths”, with photographs and paintings of local artists Pat Donahue, Mark Davis, Ethel Engler, Juan Arriola, Brian Tracy, Christina Mazza, Caspian Halbert, Bob Leitch, Janice Trecker, and Eleanor Linkkila, whose photographs, along with Ruth Halbach’s and Pete Vertefeuille’s, graced our front page this year. We also conducted a Covid themed poll at the festival, with questions like What Did You Miss the Most? and On a Scale of 1 – 10, How Much Did Your Life Change? and sponsored a Community Poem, where participants completed the phrase “I’m grateful for…” This was one of 19 poems we published this year.
Our most exciting announcement was our Town’s commemoration of Memorial Day, complete with the parade, the traditional ceremonies at the Town Hall and the Little River, breakfast at the Congregational Church, and the chicken barbecue and band at the Community Center. We were proud to publish Vietnam War Veteran Jamie Boss’s Memorial Day Address on our front page. We said farewell to Korean War veteran James Rodriguez and the last of our World War II veterans, Thomas Gaines and Clarence Thornton. These were among the 18 obituaries we published this year, including a front page tribute to the legendary Peggy Fox.
As in every year, we recognized residents for their personal accomplishments — publishing an article on artist Lula Mae Blocton, also featured in The New York Times, and Jacob Greene for “Hiking the Appalachian Trail” — and for their contributions to society — reporting on resident David Foster’s receipt of the Northeastern Connecticut Chamber of Commerce’s Humanitarian Award, “a perfect reflection of his life principle: to help those in need and those who help others”. We began 2023 by naming Mr. Foster “Citizen of the Year” for his generosity to our Fire Department and beyond, and recognized the humanitarian endeavors of neighbors Dr. Perry Mandanis for sharing his expertise on a national scale, and Aman and Susannah Fisher for their volunteer efforts in Ukraine.
We continued the series “Our Rural Heritage” and “Remembering”, relying as always on the oral traditions recorded in Alison Davis’ Hampton Remembers. Along with the history of Trecker’s barn on North Bigelow, and the Thompson and the Haldas barns on Main Street, and Boss’s article on “Living in a Renovated Barn” on East Old Route 6, we featured: “Our Horses” last Memorial Day, with a remembrance of some memorable ones; the “Greatest Generation” this Memorial Day, with the remembrances of our veterans; “Swimming Holes” in the summer; the “Teacher’s Ledger” for the start of school, with a remembrance of our one-room schoolhouses from former student Marion Halbach; “Haunted Houses” in October, with a poem of the most infamous of these from William Jewett, “the Farmer Poet of Hampton”; “The Holidays” at Christmastime with “Santa Comes to Hampton”, a poem written by Pearl Scarpino in 1942; and “The General Store” when we announced the reopening of this venerable institution in November. Other businesses we featured were “Vintage Revisited”, a Hampton shop, the expansion of “Organic Roots Farm”, “Living our Best Life”, a holistic approach to healing from a resident nurse, and Bright Acres Farm in the first of a new series titled “The World We Live In”.
History has proven to be a popular topic in town and one of interest to most residents. Such was the case with Mary McMillan’s article on the remedy for “vampirism” in New England, and possibly in Hampton, explaining the practice of disinterment and burning of a body which, according to an account in Johnathan Clark’s Journal, was the fate of deceased resident John Durnham in 1798. Along with the “Remembering” which corresponded with “Our Rural Heritage”, we continued with the journal entries of Miriam Peabody, who described turn-of-the-century life on Hampton Hill, re-printed Tom Gaines’ 1990 editorial “A One-Voting-Booth Town” and “News of our Soldiers” from a 1944 town newsletter, one of Peggy Fox’s “attic treasures”, and published Kit Crowne’s “Vehicular Escapades”, the sort of remembrance familiar to many of us.
Kit Crowne is one of our regular humorists, along with Auntie Mac, who monthly enlightens and entertains us, Angela Fichter, whose variety of subjects included “Old But Good”, providing comic relief for another popular topic, given our particular population, which was also explored by humorists Jamie Boss in “The Challenges of Growing Old” and Mary Oliver in “Aging Gracefully – The New Superpower: Invisibility”. These were some of the writers who contributed to our “April Fools” issue, a tradition we started in 2018, and continued due to popular demand, which also included “interesting” news items, and a perennial favorite, “The Reluctant Gardener”.
Our editor continued her monthly column with a visit to the beautiful gardens of neighbors Geri White and Beth Regan, a series on the garden’s seasonal splendors, and a tribute to her daughter. Other regular columns included “Baby Boomers & Beyond” by Andrea Kaye and Peggy McKleroy, and with an increasing need to address the concerns of our increasing elderly population, a column from Agent for the Elderly Jane Cornell. Neighbors contributed to the “Recipe of the Month”, and the Firehouse Dog kept us entertained and apprised of the heroics of our Fire Department at large, and its individual members, in “Smoke, Mirrors & Spotlights”. Deb Andstrum and Janice Trecker listed Fletcher Memorial’s new books and special programs, as well as Top Shelf displays, and scout leaders Michele Mlyniec, Melissa Telford, and Rob Rondeau informed us of the activities and accolades of our local troops. We also learned of the academic accomplishments of our Town’s youth, publishing Honor Rolls, Dean’s Lists, and graduations, and our elementary school supplied us with student art, poems and essays students wrote.
Lastly, we published 21 letters of opinion this year, every one we received, mostly political, some complimentary to townsfolk, always welcome. Because it’s your voice, through opinion pieces, poetry, recipes, columns – on our volunteers, for our senior citizens, news of the town, its government and its organization, and articles of human interest, history, and humor, which makes the Hampton Gazette a town newspaper. Thank you, one and all, for your contributions to it.
Juan Arriola, Chairman