Tag: oral history

Mrs. Margaret “Peggy” Henkel moved to Westport in 1965 and was part of a group of locals who revived the largely-defunct Westport Historical Society (now Westport Museum for History & Culture). Created in 1889, the Society changed names and iterations several times, petering out and restarting over the course of the century meeting in members’ homes. By 1965, it was largely a memory. Peggy was instrumental in helping the Society obtain its current headquarters, the Bradley-Wheeler House on Avery Place. Today the vibrant 93-year-old lives in Stratford. 

“I was born in China, but didn’t live there long. My parents met in Peking—now it’s Beijing of course. My father was working for an American company and my mother was taken there on what was to be an around the world trip by two aunts and an uncle. Before she left her mother told her “No smoking, no drinking cocktails, and no getting married.” Well she got married in a town called Titzen (sp) and then moved to WuHu, on Yangtze river, where I was born. 

I grew up in Marietta, Ohio, where my mother’s family was from. Marietta was the first settlement in the Northwest Territory. I spent my first 12 years in my grandmother’s house there and then moved to Columbus. After college, I worked in Columbus as a fashion coordinator with Lazarus Department Store where I did displays, hired models and put on fashion shows.  I even met my husband at Lazarus. He came there to do publicity. Later we had our baby in Columbus—Elizabeth. 

We traveled a lot with my husband’s job and eventually we moved to Pittsburgh and then to Connecticut when he joined a big ad agency in New York City. After a lot of house hunting, we chose Westport. When I got to Westport, I thought, “This is a very interesting town, it must have a lot of history but where is the historical society…?” 

On Reviving the Society & Buying Wheeler House 

When we moved to Westport in 1965, I became part of a group that revived the historical society. One thing led to another and lo and behold I ended up being put on the board and then eventually I was elected president. I began to start putting together ideas to make us more well-known and one thing led to another. 

At one point, before my time, the Society met at Adam’s Academy because we had no building. Eventually, we were able to meet in the house across the street from the current headquarters—the McClury House. For the first time we had someplace to have activities and, it was in that house that I asked Martha Stewart to do exhibits. It was a riot. 

One of the things that Martha did was contribute a square to our bicentennial quilt, which was my baby. We publicized the idea and got signups. A teacher taught volunteers to make appliquéd and quilted squares and the lessons were taught in the basement of Christ & Holy Trinity Church, where I attended. We organized the group of people who did the squares. We publicized that we would do it. It was done in time for the bicentennial and we had a huge part at the McClury house and invited the town. I think that was when people came to really know that we were there and we were doing things. The funny thing was we couldn’t keep quilt there at the house because the ceilings weren’t high enough! That’s when they decided to put it in town hall.  

The whole time we were at that little house across the street a group of us kept looking longingly at Wheeler House [the Museum’s current headquarters.] How we eventually were able to get the house is a funny story: 

At the time, Charlotte D’Arby owned the house. She had been the Houskeeper for Dr. Wheeler and he left it to her. I became friendly with Mrs. D’Arby and used to make her cherry pies which were her favorite. She often said “everyone will be very happy when they see whom I left the house to”. At that point, I was too shy to come right out ask and for the house for the Society. Well, in the end she left the house Christy & Holy Trinity—my church. 

I wasn’t president then, but a group of us got together and met with the Church. Mr. Kennedy was the rector and I knew him very well. We presented to them our proposal that we would like to buy the house from them if they would let us use it as a headquarters while we were fundraising. We had this big fundraising committee-Eve Potts was involved, Dottie Fincher was there and I was heading up the committee. We met in our “meetings room” which then was turned into a gift shop, [and is today, again, a meetings/programs room]. We realized we had a big job ahead of us, so that’s when we decided we’d create a newsletter to let people know about the Society and what we do for the town. 

When we bought that house, there was only one piece of furniture left by the previous owners—a cabinet. Everything else that was in those rooms was acquired later. We had decided to create period rooms to the best of our ability because we visited a lot of historical societies and learned that, in those days, that’s what historical societies did.  

 
I think that as a society we are too impatient, that’s why we need functional historical societies and museums to remind us. That’s why I got involved [with Westport Historical Society] way back when and spent a lot of time and money when I should have been working–because I felt it was important. I mean that I’m proud of the Westport Historical Society and what it does today. I think that’s good they changed the name– we always wanted to be a Museum first. I think that the things they are doing now are of the moment and that’s as it should be. 

On COVID-19  

There has never been a period of time that felt like this. I think this pandemic is a very, very unusual occurrence.   I think about living through World War II versus this pandemic: I was in high school during the war, so of course I remember Pearl Harbor and what a shock that was–and everyone wondering where in the world was Pearl Harbor? I lived in Ohio, far from the coast, but I did take a course in plane-spotting.  It was something we had to do, so that was interesting.  

My mother had a victory garden, I remember the rationing and my mother grew a lot of foods and that’s how we got along. I don’t recall hoarding but I may not have known, I knew there were shortages and we had to curtail certain foods. I do remember rationing books. When we graduated in 1944 the yearbook said some of the boys were going to the army and that seemed so foreign– to me at least. 

Even during the War, it was more possible to feel like life was somewhat normal. There wasn’t a constant feeling of danger at least where I lived, like we have now with the virus. You could almost forget there was a war on. 

We would get news about what was happening in war, but it seemed so far away, it really didn’t hit America. Since I lived in the Mid-West although there wasn’t too much danger. I did see planes fly over that I did recognize from my plane-spotting. We did have a sense that feeling that we would win and eventually the war would end because the whole country was converted to war time status. We worked together and we kept getting news of victories–wherever they were–and the American spirit prevailed.  

 We can only pray that things will get better and I’m trying to be hopeful and positive. 

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Michael Friedman is originally from Great Neck, NY.  He attended Yale University as an undergraduate where he studied history. After school Rabbi Friedman, spent fifteen years in Israel and New York before coming back to Connecticut to take a position six years ago at Westport/Weston’s Reformed Jewish Temple, Temple Israel.  He and wife, costume designer, Hayley Lieberman are parents to 2-year-old twins George and Goldie. 

“Our community is based around face to face interaction and because of COVID so much of our world these days is digital, interacting through screens. We view our role as providing an antidote to that because that’s what people crave. If you ask our congregation  what’s most important, “community” is the term you hear most often. When something comes along that limits that interaction, it’s difficult. 

As public institutions, we’re already used to being charge of people’s health and safety. Safety is particularly important especially in this day and age in in the Jewish community. We are used putting that first so in that first week of March when it became clear we couldn’t do biz as usual and make sure people are safe, we had to start limiting programming.  

This year, the Purim carnival was scheduled for march 8—the  2^nd Sunday in march,. It’s our largest event of the year, other than the high holidays. The largest number of people gather for Purim. At first, we scheduled a delay but then it became clear to us early on that it was just not a responsible thing to go forward with the event and we cancelled on the Wednesday prior. At the time a lot of synagogues were talking about limiting their celebrations for the same date and we were among the first to cancel—not just in Westport but throughout the Metro area. People were surprised and called and asked “what are you doing?” To us, it was the obvious decision. To us, it was the right thing to do. As the days passed that week, Wednesday into Thursday Into Friday and Saturday others temples and organizations canceled their events. I’m proud we were ahead of the curve there in a number of ways.  

By the 2^nd week of march we seriously limiting a lot of meetings and events. We follow the schedule of the public school so it was a question of watching the schools and seeing what they did. As soon as schools closed, we closed the synagogue. We had a contingency plan to do it. I’m really proud of our community here in that there wasn’t push back because they understood it was for everyone’s safety. 

The first stage in this new situation was triage: Figuring out how to move as much as we could online and pastoring to  everyone’s sense of crisis.. During that first month we were trying to figure to what degree could we run a nursery school online>. How are the schools getting online?  Our religious schools for older kids  started providing a supplement. Our worship services had to get online. Then as I said, there was the dealing with trauma: We quickly set up a system where every member in congregation, got a check in from our board or clergy o ra  volunteer to say “We are here thinking about you.” In that process, we got a lot of good feedback. 

That lasted to Passover, during which a lot of families had ZOOM seders and congregational seders. That was hard because Passover is a big family gathering on Jewish calendar. Then after Passover it was a new state of being, it was no longer about crisis, and it occurred to us all that this will be new normal for long time to come. We shifted from triaging crisis to figuring how to we help congregants deal with long term. 

We know people are yearning to come back to their Jewish home and with respect to reopening,  we have a task force of lay leaders and professionals creating those plans for us. Health and safety is still the top priority that will never change.  

The milestones that people are looking at are beginning of school year for the nursery school and then the high holidays. There’s a range of contingencies we are planning based on this. We have no particular date to open het , we are looking at different factors to guide us including the successes of other businesses, the state guidelines and how similar institutions are proceeding. We are lucky in many respects in that we do not have the same pressure to reopen the building because of the revenue model of synagogues versus many other religious institutions.  

So, our priority lies not in re-opening, our priority lies in how do we serve our congregation in very best way even if we can’t be in the same room. How can we use wisdom of Jewish tradition and ritual to guide people through this unprecedented time? How do we help human beings thrive in a time of unprecedented dislocation and isolation? Our building doesn’t need to be open to give people the things they want from synagogue. 

I often hear people making comparisons to circumstances of isolation or separation in Jewish history but I don’t think it helps others to think, say, “Anne Frank made it through four years in an attic,  so you should tough it out.”  What I’ve learned as a rabbis  that each person’s struggle is their own struggle—it has nothing to do with comparison. The tsouris [trouble]each person has is real and valid. I think, psychologically, it’s not helpful for that person to draw a comparison to others in worse circumstances but I absolutely believe that the resilience and creativity of the Jewish people thorough history in times way, way worse than this is one  is one hundred percent an inspiration. 

It’s helpful to remind ourselves we are strong and we know how to deal and the most difficult situations 

There’s a specificity for Jews that we have a strong connection to our ancestors and our people and we think of the Jewish community through time as our family, our community, our tribe who have done great things in the face of much greater struggles. 

Some small things that we’ve done that I believe fall within that tradition of creativity out of adversity is that  

We’ve been wanting to reshape elementary school age Hebrew learning, when everything was moved online it forced us to experiment with online learning, which were considering but we wouldn’t have been forced to experiment with. Now we are seeing which teachers are effective in this medium and  who it benefits. It was a forced learning lab for us.  

COVID is going to force us to rethink high holidays: When and how we celebrate them. We knew we wanted to live streaming in general but we weren’t ready and didn’t have infrastructure. Now, there’s no going back because we are going to live-stream going forward. This is cutting edge right now for synagogues– the crisis forces us to take steps that we would have taken our time doing. 

We’ve also, traditionally, really thought of our programming in terms of people showing up in person at the synagogue. Who is going to show up when for what? This new-normal helps normalize participating without necessarily being in room, even if others are. We envision a community where some are in room and others aren’t. You don’t have to be in room and you shouldn’t feel “less than” for not being there. In the past, we’d accommodate a couple of people who couldn’t make it using propped up iPhone. It wasn’t a regular accommodation but that will change. 

Right now, all services are on Zoom including Family Shabbat, our Friday evening service. Tora study and Saturday morning services are on zoom as well as Saturday evening service. None of us have been back in building to date. 

I’ve conducted Bar Mitzvah’s and funerals as well as baby naming ceremonies on zoom. I’ve given a lot of thought about how do you conduct life cycle rituals if you cannot be together? Particularly mourning rituals—and I was inspired to write a piece about that for our blog.

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I used to assume, that if people wanted to hear what we had to say they’d come Friday night—that’s our primetime. In winter,  we started to podcast our sermons and make available to download and listening to make it available for those who might not be able to come. And I realize in this time, even that’s not enough. I’ve been writing a weekly message to the congregations—lots of rabbis do this—but I realized there is a need for inspiration from Jewish tradition on a weekly basis. We are seeing greater numbers, engaging in this way. Even in the future, many are not going to come, it needs to be a push more than a pull. Getting the message in your inbox is part of that. 

In many ways, people have nothing else to do, so they are coming to more virtual events—, of course, I’m aware that not all this engagement will continue once the world gets back going 

Rahm Emmanuel, the former Mayor of Chicago and President Obama’s chief of staff said  “Never let good crisis go to waste. It provides an opportunity to do things that were not possible before.”  

I love this quote. It describes how we are thinking and planning differently. We are planning multiple high holiday contingencies, different scenarios, because I don’t feel comfortable making decisions for three months out,. But what we start now gives us opportunities to even rethink what does a new schedule of services look like—even if things are re-opened? Not everyone will want to just come back. This part is what’s most exciting. IT forces me to say how would you do a 2 hour Rosh Hashana service in 1 hour? Now I think down the line…maybe next hear if, god willing, we can do in person services maybe we can do an alternative 1 hour service. So if you want to come 1 hour or 2 you have options.  . We’d never have thought that before. 

I think about a traditional Jewish phrase said at Passover “Next year in Jerusalem” Here’s the amazing and crazy thing: Next year in Jerusalem was said by for millennia by people who could never ever hope to ever really go there. It was a statement of hope: Next year, the world will be better, we’ll be able to be home. And then all of a sudden we could go to Jerusalem, it was actually possible. This dream was kept alive until that it became a reality. Whatever your “next year in Jerusalem” i it’s a flame of hope to be kept alive and I think people are tapping into that feeling with respect to a post-COVID future. 

For me, for example,  it’s a devastating possibility that school wont’ be in session because of what that does to the economy and how people are struggling, and balancing childcare and earning a living. So, I need to believe and hope that school will be session. 

Personally, I have realized how much I thrived on the in person and interaction of other human beings and responding with body language and emotion and proximity. I am not as good on zoom, it is not the same. We are doing the best we can and having some success but I am not the same rabbi on zoom. I wonder if any teacher or doctor regarding telemedicine would say they are same practitioner. We are doing the best we can, but I’m not same. I deal with a total life cycle– I can have a morning funeral and an afternoon meeting with bar mitzvah students.  We are really missing the celebrations: The bar and bat mitzvah’s are being put off, all of the weddings are postponed, the baby namings postponed. Funerals can’t be postponed because of the Jewish tradition so now I’m largely dealing with that single aspect of the lifecycle. And we dealing with a community dealing with loss, hardship and sadness, no one is celebrating–there is nothing to celebrate. I think that I desperately miss the balance of joyful and difficult that is generally part of a rabbi’s life. There is still joy to be found but the balance is different. 

In terms of hope, as a rabbi I would hope that people really appreciate, see and understand how Judaism and how Jewish community can provide hope and comfort in a tumultuous world on the one hand. On the other hand, I would hope that people really value the joy and wisdom that tradition can bring to their lives even when things go back to normal or a new normal is reached.” 

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The Patton family moved to Westport eight years ago from Simsbury. Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton is the Pastor of Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC. Founded in 1832 by former members of Green’s Farms Congregational Church to service those living in “Saugatuck Village” (today’s downtown Westport) the church  is an important historical site. It has been closed since early March with worship services and other gatherings moved on line. Craig D. B. Patton is a freelance social media consultant and trainer focused on LinkedIn. He is part of the team at Post Road Consulting, which is owned by Westport resident Sandra Long. Son Tobey is a 2020 graduate of Staples High School and son Ian a rising sophomore at the school. 

“Being a pastor is all about people. Walking with them. Sharing with them. Supporting them. Teaching them. Learning from them. Worshiping with them. Praying with them. Identifying and executing mission work to do together. On and on. So, on the one hand, it’s challenging not to be able to gather in-person to worship, learn, grow, and work together. On the other hand, the building is not the church and never has been. The early Christian church gathered in homes and also public spaces when it was safe to do so. We find echoes of that all around us today. It’s also worth noting that Saugatuck Church has recent experience with being a displaced faith community. The fire in November 2011 forced us to improvise and live differently for several years. 

There is also a creative streak in this congregation that serves us well in times like this. New and different ways of doing things are embraced or acknowledged as worthy experiments. Living through the pandemic compelled us to be creative, learn new skill sets, and reengage with how we live out our mission as the church. But Zoom meetings and inventive video productions only get you so far. It’s still hard. It’s hard not to see each other. It’s hard not to sing together. It’s hard not to pray in the same space. We miss our friends. We miss watching the children growing up. We spend too much time apart. One interesting upside is that moving so much of the church’s life online has allowed people with physical and health limitations to participate more frequently. It has also allowed people in other parts of the state and country to reconnect with or discover us. Online Bible Study draws more people than the in-person version did. The weekly Online Worship services reach more people.   

For Craig, the primary impact has been the cancellation of in-person seminars and trade show events. A major event in Philadelphia was an early casualty. However, because we work online in the world of social media, much of our business has not been severely disrupted. Most of Craig’s work over the phone or the Internet, pre-pandemic and now. I’m grateful to be working in an area that has an easier time continuing than so many other industries.

We continue to feel very grateful to be at low risk in many ways. None of us have underlying health issues or are in other risk categories. Alison’s job is not at risk. Craig’s is in a sector that has reduced impact. We live in a parsonage, so we don’t have mortgage payments or rental fees. We often remind ourselves that we have advantages that others do not. We feel more settled, more balanced now. Looking back, we can see the waves of energy, fatigue, positivity, and grief that were hard to understand while they were tossing us. We’re much more adept at using Zoom and video editing tools we’ve had to learn. We feel apprehensive about the reopening efforts, both locally and nationally. Alison also feels energized by the new possibilities for ministry and the creative conversations that we’re having. 

Professionally, Alison has had to learn to run a virtual church. Ministry is all about the people, and she’s never with the people, so using other methods to reach out, nurture community, and even expand community has been a significant change. She quickly became the Zoom expert in the house. Tech support is now part of her pastoral care ministry to congregation members as she equips them to use various online platforms. In some ways, she feels like she has more regular contact with many members than before the pandemic. She’s also pastoring a community in grief over the separation from one another, canceled events, altered lives, lost opportunities, lost jobs, and more. 

 Meanwhile, Craig has poured much of his time and energy into helping the church create its weekly Online Worship services, which is basically like creating a short film every week. In our daily lives, the most significant change is that our teenagers have been home every day since mid-March with no break for any of us. Thankfully, we get along very well. We play a lot of board games, and all-family basketball games in the driveway have recently started. 

We both come from grounded, humble families. None of our parents are ostentatious, extravagant, wasteful, etc. Alison’s parents are clergy and engaged with social justice issues nationally and globally all their lives. Craig’s parents, while comfortably middle class, have always been frugal and carefully plan for every eventuality they can imagine. So we both grew up in households where we understood that we have more than many others and that we shouldn’t take anything for granted. We have some perspective. That helps. Our family also values adaptability, flexibility, and a sense of humor. That helps.  

We’re all campers, and campers don’t mind a little adversity, and they don’t worry if they look a little unkempt. That helps. The fact that both of us, but particularly Craig, have a great deal of life experience with information technology and video production has helped us quickly adapt and make a positive contribution to our community. We are both comfortable talking about our feelings and are intuitive by nature, so we have generally been able to process with each other how we’re doing. It was harder early in this period when we went from what we thought would be a 2-week shutdown to a process that would take many months and alter the complexion of our lives for a long time. Depression and grief impacted us more then. 

Generally, we feel that the community has coped quite positively with the pandemic. I Early in the shutdown, Alison wrote an article reflecting on all the positive energy, acts of kindness, and creative thinking taking place here. Communication from the schools and the town officials has been excellent. Grocery stores have adapted as our understanding of what was needed to evolve. People embraced social distancing and the sacrifices involved for weeks on end. We have a lot of creative, hard-working neighbors who have worked hard to move much of our lives online.  

We do think this next part is harder for our community. Fatigue has settled in with this whole social distancing lifestyle. The direst predictions of what might happen haven’t come to pass, so there’s a temptation to think the risk was overblown or has ended. Craig has observed much more cavalier behavior by people in stores and elsewhere than a week ago. Some people are ignoring instructions. Doing what they want, when they want, and waving off corrections. Others are genuinely fearful, convinced the virus is lurking in every inch of the town, waiting for a chance to infect them, their family, or their neighbors. So, like the rest of the country, Westport appears torn about what the appropriate balance is between public health concerns and economic or personal liberty concerns. Every layer of our society seems to be in confusion, overruling what other parts have said is the “right” thing to be doing. 

We hope that people have learned from the pandemic that changes in human behavior can have a measurable, positive impact on the environment. Skies cleared worldwide as businesses figured out how to drive their companies without driving to an office. The pandemic also highlighted structural inequities that continue to plague this country. The United States has suffered a disproportionate number of casualties from the Coronavirus compared to other countries, and a disproportionate percentage of our dead are people of color. It’s not their fault. It’s our society’s fault. 

We want everyone who has been working on the front lines during this time to know we sincerely appreciate their work on our behalf. Their stress level far exceeds ours. So, thank you to the service workers, delivery people, sanitation workers, hospital staff, and anyone else who has endured weeks of heightened exposure, often for low wages. Thanks also to educators of all kinds and the administrative teams who support them as they have worked so hard to keep school going online for our sons. And we’d like all of you to know we’re glad to be here with you in Westport. We’re fine, and we’re looking forward to seeing everyone in person once it’s safe to do so. 

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A life-long Westporter who has lived in town for fifty years, having moved here at age one, David Waldman owns David Adam Realty, a commercial real estate brokerage, management and development company , founded in 1991.   

I and my wife and three kids (15, 17 and 23) were quarantined at my home down by the beach from early March . As a developer: I spent the last 30 years developing projects which were designed to be interactive with the community–to be active and crowded. For example,  I always loved driving by the Spotted Horse and no matter when I did, it was always crowded with people enjoying each other and living life.  To see our world shut down and realizing very quickly that this “invisible enemy” was not going away any time soon, I began to really worry about my business and quickly began to feel the pain of how Covid-19 was going to change my immediate future and potentially long term future.  National tenants stopped paying rent, restaurants and stores which were thriving are now struggling to stay afloat.  [At the time of this interview] It is now [late] June and things have begun to get better in terms of my business.  Of the 150 tenants I have across my portfolio, I made deals with over 100 of them to date, which has collectively cost me over $3 million in lost revenue. And while rent has been paid and I can again pay my obligations, I am afraid the entertainment aspect of our very social lives is going to take some vaccine to bring back what we have now all lost.  

As a father, I was petrified from the first 30 days.  I am a Type 1 diabetic, as is one of my children so we locked down our household and tried to limit our potential exposure:  No people inside the house; grocery shopping in masks (horrible) and gloves and then wipe it all down.  This went on for 30-40 days. As my wife and I watched the hospitalizations and deaths continue to decrease, we began to allow our kids to see their friend groups, allowed them see one another outside, at the beach etc.  The biggest change in my mind, and in particular my fear,  came after the protests began (and still go on).  While I understand the circumstances which prompted these protests, I was pissed that after shutting down mine and my family’s life for 45+ days and following the guidelines put forth by our leaders,  thousands of people decided they were done and this was a worthy cause to go out into the world, not socially distant and paying little to no attention to the reasons we stayed home for so long.   

[As downtown opens up again] my fear is that it comes back and our government tries to shut our lives, stores and restaurants down again.  With that said, I am so pleased with the initiatives and creative ways businesses are trying to make a go of it.  Having tables and chairs spread out on sidewalks is great and makes people feel safer.  My favorite new “creative” outlet for social gathering is the Remarkable Theater Group’s Drive in theater on Imperial.  It opened to a sold-out crowd (67 cars) and again the next Saturday. It was full of families and adults seeking social interaction in a safe and controlled manner. I pray these initiatives continue after COVID. 

I would like to see the state of CT “capitalize” COVID.  What I mean is, COVID has accelerated Millennials’ desire to leave big cities for the suburbs to raise families. In the past 60 days over 10,000 people have migrated INTO Connecticut and Westport. Prior to COVID we were losing people and corporations on a daily basis. CT needs to become a more business-friendly State. The exodus from big cities is going to continue (unlike 9-11 where it was short lived).  As for our town, my wish is that we stop creating “plans” which never get off the shelf and start doing things.  We need a theater downtown.  We need a public playground, we need our streets and landscape beds to look full of life and color and not just weeds.  I really hope that people begin to realize how nice it is to be able to live in a place like Westport, where the community cares about one another and where the Town supports (financially) the catalytic things needed to allow Westport and Downtown to thrive.

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A recognizable figure around town, Ed Gerber has lived in Westport for 10 years although his roots go much deeper. With a passion for historic preservation and the arts, Gerber has been instrumental in creating a renewed interest in the artistic legacy of local artist George Hand Wright, who is largely considered the “grandfather” of the Westport Art community. 

“I was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut and divided my youth between North Haven during the school year, and a cottage on Fairfield Beach in the summers. The majority of my family never left the state, so I had and have a number of cousins in the Bridgeport metropolitan area. However, I spent most of my life in Washington, DC, but after more than 40 years, I returned to Connecticut, settling in Westport. My reason for doing so was to save a historic house – the Sturges–Wright House on Cross Highway. It was built in 1764, and occupied continuously by the Sturges family until the artist George Hand Wright bought the property in 1907.  Ownership passed at Wright’s death in 1951, to his nephew Frank Boylan, who was my dad’s best friend, my namesake (Edward Frank Gerber), and my godfather. His widow Constance was a dear family friend and my adopted godmother. When she died in 2010, I stepped forward and purchased the house from her heirs in April of 2010.  

I think my passion for historic preservation began with family trips to the charming and very historic town of Woodstock, Vermont. In the evenings after skiing, I spent my time in the library researching how Woodstock managed to protect so much of its historic core. When I went to college at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, I found myself living in Georgetown, which I still believe to be the most beautiful and successful historic district in the USA. Imagine what it was like for a boy from the suburbs of Connecticut to find himself walking on Georgetown’s pre-Revolutionary War sidewalks, gazing into federal style homes, many only recently owned by members of the Kennedy family and their circle.  For a liberal democrat like me it was like finding heaven.  

After graduating, there was no question that I would stay in Georgetown. I quickly became involved with DC’s preservation groups, initially Historic Georgetown Inc. which interestingly was created to preserve several late 18^th Century commercial buildings in Georgetown and to prevent Georgetown University from expanding into the residential area. So, I became involved with town and gown disputes on the side of the town!  

I purchased a house in Georgetown, with the stipulation that I put a scenic historic facade easement on it, effectively preventing the university from destroying it, altering its use and/or modifying it, without the approval of a board of preservationists. At roughly the same time I became involved with the Woodrow Wilson House Museum, a property of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the last home of President Wilson. I was asked to join its Advisory Council while in my 20s, which was very unusual at that time. Now many years later, I am still on its Advisory Council.  

Preserving Georgetown as a living breathing community should be of great importance to the current and future generations. At one time I volunteered weekly to give walking tours of the neighborhood to raise money for the legal expenses of the Citizens Association of Georgetown, the official watchdog of the area. This was logical, as I had become chair of its Historic Preservation Committee!  There were, and continue to be, pressures from developers to change Georgetown, unscrupulous landlords who allow buildings to deteriorate in order to then have them declared unsafe and unsanitary so that they may be demolished. Because the preservationists prevailed in so many cases, Georgetown continues to attract scores of tourists interested in its history, architecture, dining, and shopping, as well as investors who see it as a prime residential location. I still enjoy giving walking tours of Georgetown, and I believe it is important to give factually accurate tours, based on my own experiences there as a student, a preservationist, and a property owner. 

When I moved to Westport and bought the Sturges-Wright House, I was well aware of its history and importance to the town. The property was maintained by generations of the Sturges family as a working farm, until 1907, when George Hand Wright and his bride Ann Boylan Wright moved in. Wright had intended to move to Paris to pursue his career as an illustrator, but after visiting an artist friend in Westport, he and Ann fell in love with the Dutch Colonial farmhouse, along its large plot of 30 acres, three cows, a horse and several out-buildings, one of which became his studio. Wright doubled the size of the house by adding a new kitchen, increasing the living room’s size, and adding two bedrooms and baths. The Wrights entertained and encouraged artists to move to Westport. In short order George became known as the Dean of Westport Artists, while Ann became involved in the women’s suffrage movement.  

When I moved in 2010, I had all of the rooms plastered and painted, installed central air conditioning, remodeled the kitchen, added a bluestone patio, and removed several layers of asphalt roofing shingles and replaced them with more appropriate cedar wood shingles. I greatly enjoy showing the house to anyone interested in history; I opened it for the former Westport Historical Society’s house and garden tours five times since 2010.  

I think it is important for Westporters to see that historic houses are livable and town treasures. In order to ensure its future, I had my property declared a Historic Landmark of Westport, and recently I gave a preservation easement on it to the organization Preservation Connecticut, and had it added to the National Register of Historic Places.  None of these designations are designed to make it into a Williamsburg-style house museum, as alterations will be considered by the Local Historic District Commission, and the staff of Preservation Connecticut, whose Board I joined after my terms as President of the former Westport Historical Society and Vice-Chairman of the Westport Historic District Commission ended. 

It continues to give me pleasure when passers-by stop to relate how they have admired the house and gardens for many years, and to thank me for my efforts.  

I think that I have lived an interesting life, although compared to “young” people today mine has been fairly routine. I have only lived in Connecticut and Washington D.C. Professionally my life was most interesting during two periods: one was when I was Vice-President of a minority-controlled Savings and Loan Association in DC, founded in 1968 immediately after the civil disturbances following Martin Luther King’s assassination. Our goal was to combat “red-lining” in lending. In my first job out of college I worked for a conservative commercial bank, where I saw a map of DC marked with a very obvious red line separating the city into parts in which the bank would lend money to would-be home owners, and other areas of the city that were considered credit risks, largely along racial lines. The Savings and Loan where I worked did not do that, and it was a profitable institution for many years. 

Later, when I worked for the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation during the infamous S&L crisis of the 1980s, I organized nationwide teams that closed insolvent thrift organizations. I learned a great deal about crooked banking practices, and was glad to participate in resolving the crisis and helping countless people who had lost part or all of their savings. I learned the importance of “people skills” at this time as well. 

I was in DC during the civil disturbances in 1968, which were the product of systemic racism. We smiled when we saw expensive shops in Georgetown with plywood covering their windows and signs saying “Soul Brother.” The protestors were mostly African-American, while the shopkeepers, whose property was destroyed, were all white. From the tallest building on the GU’s campus, my friends Michael Moore, John Donohue and I saw fires throughout our downtown commercial areas. One elderly British Jesuit who joined us remarked that the blazing horizon reminded him of London during the Blitz. There were very few black-owned businesses in DC, and nearly all of them were untouched. One famous black-owned eatery that is still very popular today with a multiracial clientele is Ben’s Chili Bowl. Its owners fed rioters and police alike through the long weekend.  

All college classes were cancelled, and my friends and I left DC at 6:00 am in one of the few cabs operating. It was disheartening to see Georgetown’s commercial streets lined with National Guard Troops.  

A few years later I was awakened early one morning by the sound of helicopters overhead looking for anti-Viet Nam War protesters. I put a garden hose in front of my house for the marchers to wash the tear gas out of their eyes.  It was a scary time indeed. The anti-war protesters were almost all white. Even the demonstrations of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s were segregated. In contrast, I believe that the current Black Lives Matter demonstrations have been on the whole more positive in that they have attracted overwhelmingly multi-racial participation. This is as it should be.  

As I look around Westport today, I cannot help but wonder what my grandparents thought when they moved here from Bridgeport in the 1920s. My mother attended Bedford Elementary when it was in the Town Hall building, and had her First Communion at Assumption Church. But was moving to Westport a sign of upward mobility or not? Remember that the Bridgeport that they left was a thriving city. All Bridgeporters had to do was take a bus downtown for the best shopping, dining, amazing movie palaces showing first run movies, hotels, and the crown jewel – Seaside Park. There were many employment opportunities as well. In contrast, Westport comparatively had not much to offer. I guess my grandparents agreed with this analysis, because after five years they returned to Bridgeport. My uncle who wanted to finish his senior year in Westport at Staples, had to ride the trolley daily to do so. 

As I look at Westport today, it still does have a thriving arts scene, which George Hand Wright played a major role in establishing over a century ago. The number of artists here (led informally by everyone’s favorite Miggs Burroughs) heartens me. However, I regret that we continue to lose important buildings often because their owners have not agreed to designate them as historic. Sadly, Main Street, even with its stunning Bedford Square, continues to fight the commerce vs bricks-and-mortar battle that we see nationwide. I hope that small independent shops like Savvy and Grace will survive and prosper.  

I have been a volunteer with ABC – A Better Chance for several years. If you are not familiar with it, go to their website or call them. Briefly, they provide housing, wonderful meals and a safe studious but not boring environment for eight smart non-white boys from across the nation, whose local school systems do not provide an atmosphere in which they can thrive academically compared to the academic advantages they experience at Staples. They need all sorts of volunteers to help make these boys’ experiences in our town successful ones, so volunteer! 

New developments like our Museum of Contemporary Arts, the new format at the Westport Museum for History and Culture, and of course, our amazing Library are all positive developments. The Westport Country Playhouse has closed down for this season. My first experience at the Playhouse was during their “Summer Stock” productions as an usher at the age of 16. Since then the Playhouse has evolved into a year-round venue and offers Westporters theatrical productions comparable to any in the nation. I certainly hope that it will reopen soon. 

Another positive development in town has been the increasing number of international homeowners. I am surrounded by a fascinating collection including a Spanish wife and her German husband, a multigenerational Russian family, a Kenyan wife and Norwegian husband and a household led by a Swedish father and New Jersey born mother. Imagine how much their kids are teaching one another about the world. 

The current COVID pandemic has been a real challenge for me, because I like to go out to eat, go to movies, theater, New York, the beach and gatherings with friends. I have been advisedly cautious, but I was delighted when my barber reopened. I have not even been back to my second home in Washington D.C. 

I feel that Westport is a transient place as evidenced by the fact that every neighboring house to mine, but one, has sold once and sometimes as often as three times in my ten years back here. 

Contrary to popular belief there is much more residential stability in D.C. than here in Westport.  I had the same neighbors for 20-plus years in my last neighborhood in D.C. Sadly, it is especially hard to interest such a transient populace in our town’s history, especially now that most activities are by necessity on zoom. 

I wish I could say that I learned Spanish, which was a goal of mine during the lockdown. Instead, I spent a lot of time preparing my garden for the summer. My wonderful yardman Manny Mondujano worked with me on this project throughout the period.  I helped two non-citizens do everything required to become citizens during the lockdown.  It is an increasingly complicated and expensive process, but I can only hope that changes in the White House in 2020 will make it easier for longtime hard-working residents to become citizens. I organized and sorted files and renewed friendships with old friends. Due to a family emergency, I housed my cousin for two weeks, which was a wonderful opportunity to see her and help resolve the family problem. 

Perhaps most importantly I studied the roles and duties of Historic New England and was asked to join its Board of Overseers serving as one of its Connecticut ambassadors . Unfortunately the pandemic has delayed the actual start of my duties!

 I am ready to resume a normal life, but sadly do not see that occurring any time soon! 

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