Jan Leitch is an artist, and it shows in her garden.  In the applied principles of scale responsible for the perfect balance of open space and structural mass, in the lines supplied with paths and suggested with gates and arbors and benches, in the shapes of the multiple trees that provide permanent structure, the textures that offer constant interest, and in the repetition of features to ensure rhythm, the ingredient necessary for consistency and comfort. These elements are accentuated with strokes of color from leaves and from flowers, all the more appreciated in their subtlety.

Jan’s garden is one of natural “rooms”. Upon entrance, a split rail fence visually divides the driveway from the yard, lush rhododendrons on the descent, a sparkle of deutzia clustered at the end in the shade of a ‘Kousa’ dogwood, its ivory bracts in full bloom in June. On the opposite side, a shore of juniper sculpts the driveway, anchored by a “star” magnolia which provides bright white blossoms in early spring.

South of the house, tomatoes grow in raised beds, fenced and fortified with wooden stakes, the area decorated with a unique collection of watering cans. On the other three sides of the house, the flowering year unfolds. Wooden gates lead to the garden, the perfume of a mock orange beckoning. The house itself is nestled within various evergreens, hollies and azaleas, skirted with an assortment of hostas and underscored with a brick path leading to the front door and to an iron bench. A rest here provides the visitor with a view of a pool of pale and deep purple iris in the front lawn, bearded and Siberian, frequented by hummingbirds. Birds are everywhere. A cardinal perches in a white paper birch while several varieties stream through the air. The garden is generously supplied with birdfeeders and bird baths and bird houses and the plants which attract them. A handmade feeder designed and made by Jan’s husband Bob, which holds a special recipe and is equipped with built-in perches, has successfully attracted orioles this year.  The benches, the paths, real and perceived, and the birds suggest an unhurried pace, an invitation to the visitor to rest a spell.  Along with places for people to sit and for birds to perch, there are hanging baskets and urns overflowing with flowers, lending charm and color, and pollen.

Another bench sits beneath a crab apple, pink buds opened to pure white earlier this spring, as well as a rare, yellow magnolia. In a far corner, a textured garden of finely needled and silvery prostrate evergreens, blades of ornamental grasses, and leathery hostas, with spurts of color from irises, hosts a bench which swings in the shade garden, offering the ultimate in relaxation and a view of their home and gardens. An iron bench tucked a little further back into a sea of glossy pachysandra is sheltered from the road with a row of sweeping pines, another restful spot.

A grotto, of sorts, is carved into another corner, a miniature replica of an island. A lighthouse serves as its centerpiece, and Bob built a small shed, where a sea gull perches, and a building for whale oil which would have been its original purpose. With a scale of one inch equaling one foot, stonewalls and walled terraces are constructed with miniature rocks, and wooden stairs descend to a “dock” and to the ocean of grass. The island is planted with a variety of mosses, thymes, sedums, and creeping veronica; among these ground covers, a small American flag waves. The garden at large, and this grotto in particular, and Shelby, the beautiful Corgi who escorts us through the tour, makes visitors feel as though they’ve stepped into the pages of a Tasha Tudor storybook.

A picket fence, striped with mauve tradescantia, separates the front from the back yard. Passage through an arbor brings visitors to a circular garden where an urn in the center, brimming with colorful annuals, is surrounded by perennials – the deep blues of centaurea, Siberian iris and baptisia and the pale blues of amsonia and Jacob’s ladder, golden coreopsis and sparkling white daisies, Asiatic lilies spurting their sunrise hues now, the trumpets of summer lilies later, one of the most impressive collections of lupine I’ve ever seen with mauve, primrose, pure white and raspberry blossoms, and luscious peonies all flourishing under the arch of a flowering plum.  The house, which also serves as a wall for ornamentation, marks the southern border of the garden and hosts a bench and a fountain. The northern border is delineated with a shed, an ornament in itself. A painting of the shed in the midst of these flowers recently won a prize in a competition.  The garden has served as an inspiration for several works of art.

A path beneath crab apples wanders toward a water garden. Lined with astilbes, lily-of-the-valley, hosta, trillium, and Jack-in-the-pulpit, it eventually leads to a large arbor covered with the ivory lace of a hydrangea vine and the vibrant spurs of honey suckle, providing another cool spot to rest. The path from the arbor spills into a circular lawn, demarcated with a row of forsythia, a bright golden wall in spring, and bird houses, and beyond, an impressive assortment of pines, the remains of a Christmas tree farm, enormous now, through which a tunnel appears. The trees are too dense to permit entry, though it’s an enchanting visual suggestion.

A deck extends across the back of the house, multiple tiers hosting multiple tables and chairs. Each level is lined with wands of Solomon’s seal and the splayed leaves of hostas, the whole shaded densely with a maple and with pines. Calla lilies filling urns lend a relaxed, tropical air, while a water fountain produces a relaxed, soothing sound. Tucked into the sheltering plants, it’s one of the many places here offering an oasis for visitors, and for the birds who frequent the Leitch’s garden.

Dayna McDermott

Long established as one of Tanglewood’s most anticipated and beloved evenings, John Williams’ Film Night returns on August 24, with Boston Pops Conductor Laureate John Williams introducing the festive evening, which features the Boston Pops and Conductor David Newman performing a program celebrating the music of Hollywood and more.

The $50 fee for Hampton residents includes a concert ticket and transport on a luxury bus, departing at3PM and returning at mid-night. Pack your picnic and beverages, lawn chairs and blanket and join us.

Reserve your seat by emailing hamptontownactivities@gmail.com.   Payment by August15; mail check to: Hampton Rec Commission, Town Hall, Box 143, Hampton, CT 06247. For information contact Juan Arriola 860-455-0160, or Gay Wagner, 860-455-9875.

Grand Opening!

The Fletcher Memorial Library will host a “thank you” party to celebrate the grand opening of the sunroom addition on August 28 from 5:30- 8 p.m. There will a ceremonial ribbon cutting at 6:30 p.m. as well as live music, with Julie William and Donna T., and refreshments. The new addition provides a long-needed, fully-accessible space for the library’s programs as well as a quiet comfortable room where patrons can read, meet with friends, or use the library wifi. In addition to opening the function room, the special night will showcase a new water feature in the butterfly garden, donated by the Joan Dupuis Memorial Fund for Children. The water feature will enhance the environmental impact of the garden as well as providing a charming focal point for visitors.

Fletcher Memorial Library, grateful for all the donations and support that have enabled this project, looks forward to showing everyone the results of their generosity.

Local Republicans and Democrats met last month to endorse candidates for the Municipal Election. They are as follows:

Republican Slate

First Selectman: Al Cahill

Selectman: Dan Meade

Board of Finance: (6 year term): Judy Buell, Kathy Donahue, (2 year vacancy): Lisa Sanchez

Board of Education: (4 year term): Juan Arriola, Perry Matchinis, Russ Moffitt, Neal Moon, Dan Postemski, Jr. (2 year vacancy):  Dayna McDermott

Planning and Zoning Commission: (2020) Gary Decesare, (2019) Susan Hochstetter

Board of Assessment Appeals: Wesley Wilcox

Zoning Board of Appeals: (2020) Zach Burdick-Chapel, (2019) Wesley Wilcox

Constables: Matt LaFontaine, Dan Postemski, Jr.

Democratic Slate

First Selectman: Joan Fox

Selectman: Stephanie Bayne, Bob Grindle

Board of Finance: (6 year term): Diane Gagnon, Alyssa Languth, (2 year vacancy): Joy Becker

Board of Education: (4 year term): Rose Bisson, Mark Becker, Matt Flegert, Marilynn “Sam” Higgins, Lisa Siegmund, (2 year

vacancy): Michael Jacobson

Planning and Zoning Commission: (2020) John Tillinghast, (2019) Pat Cascio

Board of Assessment Appeals: Wesley Wilcox

Zoning Board of Appeals: (2020) Aaron Tumel, (2019) Linda Serretny

Constables: Christopher Bayne, Jeff Smith, Sr.

The Board of Selectmen thanks the citizens of Hampton for passing the General and Hampton Elementary School budgets at the July 9^th referendum, and for supporting the Little River Open Space acquisition. The new ordinances approved by voters that established procedures for bidding contracts and increased options in the method of collecting taxes should perpetuate more efficient governance.

The Board of Finance set a 25.82 mill rate that will fully fund the Budgets. The Grand List of property grew by 5.5%, or more than 7 million dollars, in the corporation of Hampton. This increased value along with fewer students assessed from Regional District #11 allows for a reduction in your taxes from a mill rate of 28.50. Even after draws from the Unassigned Fund Balance to pave Kenyon Road and to address Capital Projects at the elementary school and at the Town Hall through the new “Municipal Reserve Fund” (also approved at the referendum), our General Fund remains healthy at 12%. All this after the 500K funding of the Hampton Volunteer Fire Department’s building addition.

As First Selectman and Chairman of NECCOG, I have visited Hartford several times this month to advocate for Hampton and Northeast Connecticut.

Enjoy our Summer.

Allan Cahill

As students of today look forward to a new school year, we look back — recognizing our great fortune in the recollections of those who received their education from one teacher, with siblings and neighbors, in the one room schoolhouse.

Our town was once divided into seven sections with each district responsible for its own school. According to an article by Pearl Scarpino, in 1899 a committee of members from each district was formed to determine the advisability of consolidating some schools, but it wasn’t until 1909 that “a town meeting finally voted to take over responsibility for the several school districts and assumed their indebtedness. Upkeep of the schools was left to a newly elected school committee of nine members.” Efforts to further unify the schools weren’t documented until 1927, when voters approved the following resolution:  “That we are irrevocably opposed to further consolidation of our schools whereby such consolidation means a furtherance of the whims of state paid supervisors; that it is high time that we the tax payers of the town commence to study and pay closer attention to the present conditions of our schools with the view of applying the necessary remedies for their much needed betterment from within the town, rather than to delegate our birth-right to outside influences whose own pecuniary interest, and the masters they serve, come first.”

In spite of this staunch opposition, the seven schools eventually consolidated into three – Bell School for primary grades, Center School for grades four, five and six, and Clark’s Corners for seventh and eighth graders. There’s only one person still with us who remembers a school other than these, Margaret Easton, who recalls the ABC Schoolhouse:

My first two grades were in Howard Valley School. I think all of my sisters went there, too. I had eight sisters. Viola, Amy and I were there together. There were eight grades and one teacher. There was no place to play games, no place for baseball, only room for something like jump rope. So the older kids would take us for a walk up and down the road at noon time. At Howard Valley we had to get a bucket of water from the family across the road and we all had to drink out of the ladle – dipped it in, drank from it, put it back in. Amazing we all didn’t get sick.  

One disadvantage of district schools was too few students in a given grade. In Hampton Remembers, Wendell Davis recalled:

When I was in the fourth grade at the Center School I was the fourth grade, lock, stock and barrel. So I got promoted so there were three in the fifth grade, my bother Merriam, Barney Pawlikowski and me…We had one book and w’ed open it up, y’know. Barney’d run his eyes down one page and down the other, turn to Merriam and say “Shall I turn?” and Merriam would say, “No, I’m still there,” and pretty soon he’d finish and they’d say to me “Where are you?” and I’d point at the top of the first page. So finally Barney’d say “Listen, get your heads in here, I’ll read it to ya’. Very soon I was demoted to the third grade.

One advantage of eight grades in one room was the responsibility older students assumed. In an article on “The Center School in the 1930’s”, George Howell wrote:

The furnace was a large pot belly stove. On the top of the furnace was a large pan for water. In wintry weather the pan was filled with water before we went home. The reason for a full pan of hot water in the morning was to prime the large upright hand pump outside of the school building. During the deep snow and wintry weather, this was a big chore relegated to an older boy. With coat, hat and most importantly heavy duty gloves, without which his hands would get wet and freeze to the handle, he was responsible for the only plumbing in the building …We had outhouses in the back of the school house, the girls on the right and the boys on the left. In the winter, getting there presented several problems, deep snow and snow drifts. Older students helped small children dress for the trip to the outhouse and cleared a path for them by shuffling their feet through the snow.

We usually associate the tribulations with trudging for miles through five feet of snow, neglecting the daily trials of primitive realities, like plumbing. Charlie Halbach reminded us of this in “School Days”:

The wood for heating was located on the boys’ side, so it was our job to bring it in. We were also responsible for keeping water in the water fountain, which was a three gallon crock with a spigot. We would fetch the water from the Jewett property across what is now Route 6, using a couple of pails. The method of drawing water from the well was unique. There was a wooden structure on a platform well cover. It measured about four feet high and one to two feet wide. The crankshaft had a sprocket over which a chain traveled and small buckets were attached to the chain. When the crank was turned the small buckets dipped into the well water below and were filled with water. When the buckets reached the top, they tipped releasing the water into a sluiceway and into our waiting pails. Probably 24 to 30 buckets holding about two cups each were needed to fill our pails.

Teachers were responsible for educating students in all grades and in all subjects. However, one musician started her teaching career when she was hired to provide music instruction in all of the schoolhouses, and continued to offer lessons here for the rest of her life:

Catherine Ameer Wade taught music lessons starting at the Bell School.  Ray Pawlikowski took violin lessons, so I wanted to, too. The whole class took music lessons with Catherine – there were only six kids – two boys and four girls – Joyce Mason, Joyce Pearl, Nancy Stocking and Carol Macmillan, who, like me, went on to a career in music. Later on, I took piano lessons with Catherine. She would have supper with us after the lesson. 

Paul Fitzgerald

Some students remember moving from one room schoolhouses to the consolidated school. Gloria Burell started first grade in a one room schoolhouse and transitioned to the consolidated school half way through the year. It was that experience that she, understandably, remembers. Others do as well. Kathleen Fitzgerald recalls:

I attended the Bell School for grades one through three and Clark’s Corners School for grades four and five. We moved to the new consolidated school in fifth grade. We brought our lunch to school and at recess, we played baseball. Alfred Vargas drove the school bus. My father, Ed Fitzgerald, also drove a school bus in Hampton for 18 years. Mrs. Woodward was our teacher at Bell School, and my Aunt Viola was our teacher at Clark’s Corners. Her son and daughter, my cousins Jimmy and Barbara, and my brother Paul were in school together with Viola as our teacher, so none of us could misbehave. 

Barbara Fitzgerald O’Connor doesn’t mince words in describing what it was like having her mother for a teacher:

I went to the Bell School first. It was a huge shock, coming from a parochial city school, St. Joseph’s in Willimantic. The Bell School had an outhouse and a well. There was a big stove.  If you sat close to it, you roasted. If you sat a distance from it, you froze. Our teacher, Lois Woodward, was also still “citified”, and didn’t like the antiquated set-up either. I then went to Clark’s Corners school where my mother, Viola Navin Fitzgerald, was the teacher. That was hell. I couldn’t even roll my eyes! She was afraid of showing favoritism. There was no well there, so we went to my grandmother’s house, but when Paul Navin married, Margaret didn’t want to continue that arrangement so we went across to Ambrose’s. When we ran out of cups we used arithmetic paper, and there was a way of folding it to make a flat, pointy cup. One year during the Christmas break we moved to the consolidated school.

With its completion in 1950, the consolidated school housed all students in grades one through eight, and the era of the one room schoolhouse ended:

Seventy years ago, the last six students graduated from Center School –Arthur Fitts, Jimmy Rodriguez, Herbert Kemp, Nancy and Sue Macmillan, and me. We had a ceremony at the Grange Hall. We were the last ones to use that venue for graduation. It took two men and an army to roll up the curtains on that stage.

John Russell

Their histories preserved through those who remember, one in particular was memorialized when Doris Schmeelk Buck won a national award for her poem based on the Bell School, a nostalgic retrospect of “The One Roomed School”:

I have fond memories of the one room school,

the sound of the bell in the belfry,

ringing out over the clear October air,

young arms tugging on the bell rope.

The entry ways with the pegs to hand coats and sweaters,

with shelves over head for caps, mittens and hats,

boots and rubbers lined up on the floor.

The large stove to throw warmth into the room on chilly days.

The rows of windows on each side of the building.

I sit at my desk and daydream out of the window.

The teacher calls my name, I don’t hear

doing art work, making maps.

The smell of white paste used for art,

ink wells at each desk to dip our pens in,

chalk squeaking on the blackboard,

clapping chalk erasers together outside,

watching the white dust billow and float away on the cool air.

Sounds of children’s voices playing in the school yard,

and the singing of songs in the one room,

youthful voices drifting out over the air.

Yes! I have fond memories of the one room school.

There was a closeness between the teacher and students.

Dear! Dear! One Room School.

When I was a cadet, I searched for women role models and found one in LCDR Dorothy Stratton, the leader of the SPARS, the Coast Guard’s women’s reserve during the Second World War. In LCDR Stratton, I invested all manner of worry about my place at the Academy and in the Coast Guard. At the time many men, at every rank, questioned whether a woman should serve in the military, and sometimes they laced the question with aspersions aimed not simply at my character, but my nature. In those moments, Dorothy Stratton was my North Star.

What my women peers and I were doing in the mid-1970s was new and unheard of: women attending a military academy. My own grandmother questioned my father’s willingness to let me go. Although she was very proud of me when I was commissioned, before I left for New London, she complained, “women will ruin” the academies. The situation was little different for the women in the World War II reserves. In more than one household, a father pronounced, “no daughter of mine will join the military!”

Against this backdrop, Hampton should be proud of its history during the war, for in the 1940s, a town of only 535 people produced four young women who volunteered to serve in our military. I find that number extraordinary. Today I would like to honor those women.

No one from Hampton joined the SPARS, but Dorothy Howell Johnson joined the WAVES, the naval women’s reserve on which the SPARS were modeled. Dorothy was a farm girl. In the early 1930s, her father moved the family to Hampton from the Bronx after her mother died. Dorothy was only ten, but soon she was responsible for household chores, caring for her four younger brothers, and helping her father run a chicken farm. Dorothy graduated from Windham High School and started at UConn in the hope of studying medicine some day, and then the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The military had to expand, and quickly. In four years, the Navy grew from a quarter of a million to over three million enlisted men, and it needed to send those men to sea. Women were recruited to take over the men’s military jobs stateside, and Dorothy enlisted, becoming one of 100,000 women who served in the Navy. In 1943, she left Storrs for Hunter College, where enlisted WAVES completed basic training. At the war’s outset, the Navy imagined women would serve as yeomen, radiomen, and storekeepers, but by early 1943, the service realized they needed women to serve in less traditional industrial roles, such as machinist mates. Dorothy demonstrated technical proficiency, and the Navy selected her for the rating of Aviation Metal-Smith and sent her to Specialist training in Norman, Oklahoma. The majority of the WAVES completed their specialist training in women-only units located at colleges around the country, but the women who went into aviation specialties, like Dorothy, trained at naval air stations alongside enlisted men. At a time when most of American labor was highly segregated by sex, Dorothy’s training in the WAVES was very unusual. Moreover, Dorothy held the same rank as the men with whom she’d graduated, and she received the same pay. After earning her Specialist rate, Dorothy was assigned to Naval Air Station Quonset Point, Rhode Island, where she served until April 1945. After the war, she returned to Connecticut, married, and raised three children, and like most veterans, she corresponded for the rest of her life with the friends she’d made in the WAVES.

Of the 350,000 women who served in the military during the Second World War, 74,000 were nurses, and two of those nurses came from Hampton. One was Ruth Burchnall, whom Jo Freeman remembers as a no-nonsense woman: “[she] wasn’t afraid to speak up in defense or support of what she believed.” I am a great-niece and a sister of Army nurses, so well I know they are direct, confident, and steely in dicey situations. In war, they confront great human crises, mass casualties that require quick and efficient triage on one hand and sympathetic care for the wounded and dying on the other. Military nurses also are commissioned officers. Ruth Burchnall was senior to the enlisted Corpsmen and Pharmacist Mates she worked with, so at a time when there were few places in the civilian world where women supervised men, Ruth and her sister nurses had to learn to give men orders in a way that did not arouse the men’s resentment or defiance. The nurses had little to guide them but their own good sense and knowledge of human nature. Unlike the women in the WAVES, WACS, or SPARS, Army and Navy nurses were assigned overseas, meaning they were put in harm’s way. Thirty thousand nurses served in Europe, and 1,000 served in the Pacific theater. Among the latter, 77 were captured by the Japanese on Bataan and Corregidor and were interned in a brutal POW camp for three years. These nurses now are known as the Angels of Bataan, and they were the first American women to become POWs.

We should remember that women like Dorothy Howell Johnson and Ruth Burchnall volunteered to serve in the military. In fact, so many Registered Nurses volunteered to serve that Congress and the civilian medical community feared a devastating shortage of nurses at civilian hospitals and clinics. To address this likelihood, in 1943 Congress established the U. S. Cadet Nurse program, through which the government would agree to pay student nurses their tuition and a small monthly stipend in exchange for the students’ guaranteed service as nurses for the duration of the war, either in the military or the civilian community.

Longtime Hampton resident Eva Loew applied for the program with the intent of joining the Army Nurse Corps and being sent to Europe. Many of you know Eva’s remarkable life story—her family’s escape from the Nazis and her long residence in town, where she and her husband Ernst ran a farm and raised their six children. Time does not permit me to tell her full story. Today I want to emphasize that this woman who gave so much to Hampton was, when she joined the Cadet Nurse Corps in 1943, a new citizen of the United States. She had been naturalized in 1941, and was the first naturalized citizen to join the Cadet Nurse program. Eva’s story teaches us something important about the gratitude so many immigrants have felt for the liberties our country bestows and their willingness to put their lives at risk to protect those liberties.

Of course, anyone who knows much at all about the military knows that its dangers are leavened with what Readers’ Digest has long called “humor in uniform.” Jokes and laughter inevitably relieve the pressures of service. Jean Surridge reminds us of this. She grew up in Hampton and completed her nurses’ training at Hartford Hospital. Like many veterans of the Second World War, she did not talk much about her service, but her son remembers her being amused that anyone considered her a veteran. He writes that during the war, “she simply [felt] she was going to nursing school.”

Hampton has not stopped producing young women who go to war. During Vietnam, Caroline Filupeit and Laurie Burrelle volunteered, and in the post-9-11 years, Laura Gibbings graduated from the Coast Guard Academy and served five years in the Coast Guard, and today, Tanya Cuprak, also a Coast Guard Academy graduate, is serving in a Coast Guard logistics center in Alameda, California, managing maintenance for area cutters; Captain Gabrielle Frissel, U.S. Air Force, stationed at Seymour Air Force Base, Johnson, North Carolina; and LT Mimi Lieu, a U. S. Naval Academy graduate, stationed as a physician at Naval Medical Center, San Diego, California.

What connects this bucolic town to military service, we might ask. I surmise it has something to do with the demands of rural life. We learn on farms and in isolated areas that we are dependent on one another, as the Howell family depended on one another to run a farm, but we also learn self-reliance. Everyone has his or her own farm to run, so one cannot expect neighbors to solve all problems. The military demands the same set of characteristics. As I taught the cadets, when you’re at sea, you can’t call 9-11.

I admire our little town, and you, my neighbors and friends, for these characteristics of interdependence and self-reliance. We have much to be proud of on this Memorial Day and many people to thank for the quality of life we enjoy here. I am grateful to the Memorial Day Committee for offering me an opportunity to speak about some of these people, the women from Hampton who have served in our nation’s armed forces.

1. A. Flammang, Captain, USCG

Captain Anne Flammang was among the first women to attend a federal service academy, graduating from the U. S. Coast Guard Academy in 1981. During her thirty-year career, she served as an engineer aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Rush; as the Twelfth Coast Guard District Training Officer; and as a Professor of English at the Coast Guard Academy. In 1990, she became the first woman selected for the Coast Guard’s Permanent Commissioned Teaching Staff. After earning her Ph.D. in English at the University of Iowa, Captain Flammang returned to the Academy where she served as Associate Dean of Faculty and chair of the Humanities Department. Captain Flammang’s personal awards include the Coast Guard Meritorious Service Medal and the Legion of Merit. She and her husband Scott, a professor at Quinebaug Valley Community College, have lived in Hampton since 2003. 

The Women’s Reserve was established on July 30, 1942.  The Women’s Reserve was an integral part of the Navy and was involved with numerous duties that included taking over jobs that were solely done by men.  The idea of women serving in the Navy was not necessarily supported by the Congress at that time.   Through the efforts of the Navy’s Women’s Advisory Council, Margaret Chung, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, women were allowed to serve. The women entered fields that were previously held by men causing some workplace hostility from male counterparts.  My mother was one of those women who enlisted in the Navy around early 1943 and joined the ranks of the women who served. A new and separate women’s auxiliary called Women Appointed for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES) was established to serve in many positions around the U.S, and since this new term – WAVES — was coined in 1943, my mother was most likely one of the first women to join this new established group within the Navy.

Born September 11, 1921, my mother, Dorothy, was the eldest of five children. She was an extraordinary woman who lived during some very turbulent times in history.  She was brave, kind, adventurous, intelligent, talented, and had a gift for writing. Sadly, during January of 1931, she lost her mother, my grandmother, Thelma Dunn Howell, who succumbed from a kidney infection at the age of 31 when they were living in the Bronx, New York.

My grandfather moved his five children to Hampton, Connecticut where they lived in the basement of what was the beginning of a larger home built later on.  My mom helped raise her four brothers.  They attended school and worked on the chicken farm built by my grandfather.  It was the era of the great depression with life being meager and tough.  Nevertheless, my mother excelled at Windham High School, including the French language, and attended pre-med at the University of Connecticut before enlisting in the Navy.  Moreover, three of her brothers served in the military — John, George and Tom. Her dad served in WWI.

Dorothy, “Dot” as she was called, did her boot camp in Norman, Oklahoma and then was sent to the Navy Air Station Quonset Point, Rhode Island.  Her desire was to go into the medical corps.  Instead she ended up working in mechanics.   She made many friends and they would go to Boston on furlough.  She corresponded throughout her life with some of the women she met in the Navy.

There is also a beautiful love story that emerged between November of 1944 and March of 1945 between her and my father, a member of the French Navy.  He went back out to sea. It was reported that he was a casualty of war.  It is difficult to decipher given the communications of the time. The story unfolds in his 40+ letters (all written in French) that he wrote to her while at sea.  They corresponded for many months.  The letters stopped after June of 1946.  As a small child, I remember her sitting on the floor re-reading his letters. Tears would swell up in her eyes.  She would carefully put them away as she experienced the emotions of losing someone she dearly loved.  It is a WWII mystery as to what really happened to him.  A book in the making.

Mom was discharged from the Navy in April of 1945.  She raised three children and lived in Connecticut most of her life until she died from cancer at the age of 67, May 3, 1989.

Alexandra J. Zani

Thumbs Up: to everyone who contributed to our Memorial Day traditions: the parade participants — the Fire Department and Ambulance Corps, the farmers, the officials, and the veterans,  the scouts,  and the Parish Hill marching band; the Memorial Day Committee for organizing the parade and the ceremony; the Congregational Church for providing breakfast; We-Lik-It Farms for donating ice cream; the Historical Society for their Open House; the Recreation Commission for sponsoring the Turnpike All Stars; and to all who assisted us with the Gazette’s barbecue: Morris Burr for delivering the chicken and the charcoal, the Patels for storing everything at their convenience store, Thayne Hutchins, Carl and Wendell Kauffman, Dan Meade and Brian Tracy for helping  prepare the chicken, Lulu Blocton, Susanna Fisher, Cathy Greene, Angelika Hanson, Judy Kauffman and Elaine King for serving the meals, India Arriola and Kathy Donahue for cashiering, and Diane Becker, Renee Cahill, Kathy Donahue, Susanna Fisher, Linda Gorman, Linda Grindle, Angelika Hansen, Sue Hochstetter, Kaye Johnson, Judy Kauffman, Penny Newbury, Kathi Newcombe and Laurie Pribble for baking those wonderful homemade desserts. Lastly, to all of our patrons – thank you!

Approximately 75 residents attended the Annual Town Meeting on June 25 to address the 16 items on the agenda. After First Selectman Al Cahill was nominated to serve as Moderator, residents rapidly approved items authorizing the Selectmen to borrow, expend, and accept money from the State, as well as the 5 Year Capital Improvement Plan. Kathy Freed, as the sole nominee, was elected by acclamation to serve on the Regional District 11 Board of Education, replacing Rose Bisson who is retiring after several years of service, including as the current Chairman.

The agenda items that generated discussion at the Town Meeting will be decided at a referendum scheduled for July 9. These included the town government and elementary school budgets. Cahill reviewed changes in the municipal budget resulting in a 2.63% increase over last year, which mostly involve public safety, including funding for the fire department, the ambulance corps, and the highway department, with a $20,000 increase to the line item for tree trimming.  The budget also includes a 2% cost of living increment for all town employees.

The costs to taxpayers for both education budgets, however, were reduced. The RD#11 budget reduction of 3.39% was the result of a decrease in Hampton’s assessment due to a decline in students attending the regional school. The elementary school budget was reduced by the Board of Finance in accordance with the amount prescribed by the State to meet the Minimum Budget Requirement. School board Chairman Rose Bisson stated that the board would meet the following evening to determine where the $31,916 cut would be made. Lynn Burdick raised questions concerning the impact of the solar panels on the electric bill, and though the school’s Business Coordinator was not present to supply precise information, Superintendent Frank Olah estimated that the school saves $1,700 a month as a result of energy efficient measures.  Administrative costs were also questioned, including the principal’s raise, at 8%, or $7,484, with Bisson explaining that a market adjustment was necessary to bring the salary closer to the level of other area principals. Olah explained the necessity of the $12,350 increase for the Special Education Director, from one day per month to one day per week, in order to accommodate the needs of the 18% of the school’s students who receive special education services. Though Bisson did not have the figures available to answer Lisa Sanchez’s question regarding the adult to student ratio, documentation supplied to the Board of Finance on June 13 reveals the adult to student ratio to be 3.3:1, with an instructional staff to student ratio of 4.2:1.

While the transfer of money from the General Fund to complete the paving of Kenyon Road was approved at the Town Meeting,  the Selectmen are asking taxpayers to approve the transfer of $250,000 from the General Fund to a Municipal Reserve Fund at the referendum to cover the costs of several capital improvements, such as paving the elementary school’s parking lot and playground, the replacement of the school’s generator, repair of the town’s tennis courts, and the construction of a pavilion on the Town Hall campus.

The expenditure of $171,500 from the Open Space and Land Acquisition accounts for the Town purchase of 51 acres of land along the Little River will also be voted on at referendum.  The parcel, located south of Hammond Hill, has been identified as “highly desirable” by the Conservation Commission as a natural habitat for wildlife. Cahill envisions multiple purposes for the land, which might include open space, recreation, and the current uses: agriculture, fishing and hunting. Though multiple concerns were raised over using the property for hunting, which ranged from noise to municipal governance, Cahill explained that the purchase of the land was the first consideration; specific uses for the property would require a later discussion among residents.

Two ordinances will also be considered at the referendum. The Board of Finance is recommending adoption of an ordinance which establishes a bidding requirement and procedure for purchases and services by both the town and the school. Another ordinance will consider changing the position of Tax Collector from one of election to one of appointment, a recommendation of the Board of Selectmen after discussions with the Northeast Council of Governance over the course of the year. Cahill explained that the ordinance would allow the Selectmen the option of appointing a qualified person, or outsourcing the position to another town, noting that the towns of Chaplin and Scotland are already utilizing services Windham is providing. A collaborative arrangement with another town would not preclude office hours in Hampton a few times a month, Cahill said, and potential savings range from $8,000 to $20,000 annually.

The meeting culminated on a high note when Lynn Burdick praised the road crew for the “fantastic” paving of Kenyon Road, thanked First Selectman Cahill for moderating the Town Meeting so soon after knee surgery, quipping about the need for him to “get a leg up”, and encouraged residents to “meet the Mennonites”, who have “mastered the term community involvement”, noting their recent assistance in weeding the town gardens and paving the entrance to Town Hall.