Richard E. Venus: 

Historian and Storyteller

Every era has its grand storyteller, and for the last third of the 20th Century, Ridgefield’s was surely Dick Venus, historian, postmaster, town official, dairyman, and raconteur extraordinaire. 

Venus came to epitomize the way Ridgefield was during most of its 300 years — a small town of mostly kind and gentle people who participated in all aspects of their community, who enjoyed their fellow townspeople, and who loved a good story and knew how to tell it. 

Born in 1915 in a Main Street house still standing at the north edge of Casagmo, Richard Edward Venus was named for Father Richard E. Shortell, the longstanding and popular pastor of St. Mary Church. 

He grew up listening to the many stories of adults, tales told in an era before radio or TV and tales he never forgot. He became a master storyteller, enchanting countless people with his recollections of the days when Ridgefield was dotted with the summer estates of wealthy New Yorkers and of the many fascinating people who worked as their servants, gardeners, and chauffeurs. 

Many of those anecdotes are recorded in his monumental series, Dick’s Dispatch, 366 columns published in The Ridgefield Press between March 1982 and November 1988 (which have been collected, bound and indexed, and which are available at the Ridgefield Library). 

As a boy, he had a large newspaper route to help with the family income. In 1928, only 13, he went to work on Conklin’s Dairy Farm before and after school, and later worked full time. “I always loved horses and drove a team, plowing fields and mowing hay,” he recalled. 

When tractors took over from horses, he moved to the retail part of the milk business. 

Later, he became superintendent for many years at Dr. Royal C. Van Etten’s 87-acre Hillscroft

Farm on St. John’s Road.

In the 1950s, he operated Dic-Rie Dairy (named for Dick and his wife, Marie), delivering milk to many households. 

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed him postmaster of Ridgefield, a job he held for 21 years, longer than any person before or since. He was also the last Ridgefield resident to serve as the local postmaster — every postmaster back to Joshua King in 1789 had lived in town, but none since 1982 has.

“In the post office Dick Venus was always a smiling, friendly fellow, ready to greet and talk to anybody who dropped by,” Press publisher Karl S. Nash once wrote. “He knew everybody in town and, better than that, where they lived. In fact, Dick made it a point of pride never to return a piece of mail as undeliverable just because the addressee had not reported a change of address. The problem

arose most frequently at Christmas time — some years Dick had 5,000 pieces of mail with expired addresses or insufficient ones. He took these home with him and worked on the problem there, and rarely got any thanks for his effort.”

A lifelong Democrat, Venus served three terms as a selectman and ran twice unsuccessfully for first selectman against the popular — and Republican — Leo F. Carroll. In one of those runs, he lost by only 208 votes. He was a longtime friend and supporter of U.S. Senator Thomas Dodd and later his son, Senator Christopher Dodd — Chris Dodd attended Venus’s funeral.

He served on the Historic District Commission, the Zoning Board of Appeals, and was a leader in or member of many community organizations, including Kiwanis and the Boys Club.

In the mid-1980s, the governor appointed Venus as Ridgefield’s first official town historian. He was active in the Ridgefield Archives Committee, later the Ridgefield Historical Society.

And if that wasn’t enough, Venus was a musician. Around the age of 10, he taught himself the harmonica and played it so well that he gave a concert at age 11 on WICC radio in Bridgeport. Starting in 1928, he was a drummer in the Ridgefield Boys Band and later was drummer for his own

Mayflower Swing Band, organized in 1934, which played throughout the area.

A longtime member of the Knights of Columbus, Venus was a devout Catholic. In fact, his belief in his faith’s tenets led him decline to perform a celebrity wedding in his capacity of justice of the peace. It was 1941, and the notorious millionaire and socialite Tommy Manville wanted to marry his fifth wife — Venus turned him down because divorce violated Catholic doctrine. (Manville went on to amass 13 marriages to 11 women before his death in 1967 at the age of 73.)

In 2000, the town renamed the old Ridgefield High School the “Richard E. Venus Municipal Building.”  It was just one of many honors that also included Rotary Citizen of the Year in 1974.

He died in 2006 at the age of 91. A year later, a section of Route 35, West Lane, from the Cass Gilbert Fountain to Olmstead Lane — where he had lived — was named the Richard E. Venus Memorial Highway. 

His wife, Marie Bishop Venus, former chair of the Democratic Town Committee, died in 2011 at the age of 92.

Dick Venus saw the town change a lot from his childhood, but he never stopped loving it and its people. 

“It’s grown too fast,” he said in 2000. “We weren’t prepared for it ... There are a lot of nice people who have moved into Ridgefield, and there are others — it’ll take them a little time to get acclimated. My mother always taught me to tip my hat and smile at people. With some, if you do that, they’ll glare at you like you’re crazy, but they’ll get along. They’ll get the swing of things before they’re through. Most everybody who comes through Ridgefield stays, if they can. Ridgefield is a great town.”

Ralph B. Crouchley: 

Mentor of Boys

Ralph Crouchley was a man who worked in international commerce but came back to his hometown and, as one man influenced by him as a boy said, “He was a father figure for many kids. As a result of the respect kids had for him, a number of boys turned out well — where they might have had teenage problems.” 

Crouchley was the director of the Ridgefield Boys Club during a period when it went from a small operation in an old house to a modern, well-equipped building on Governor Street, before it became the Boys and Girls Club.

Born here in 1904, the son of a selectman and grandson of a first selectman, Ralph Bishop   Crouchley graduated from the private Ridgefield Boys School and Colgate University, and studied at Harvard Business School before joining the Corn Products Refining Company. 

In 1930, with no knowledge of Spanish, he was sent to Mexico to open and operate a factory. He learned the language and succeeded at establishing and running the factory, but by 1936, travel was taking a toll on his family life and he decided to return with his wife and children to his hometown to run his father’s paint and auto store on Main Street. 

In 1942, the Boys Club had been closed for several months because of personal and financial problems. Francis D. Martin approached Crouchley and asked him if he’d be interested in reopening the club. He was. 

Crouchley began as the part-time director, but the job soon became full time. 

The club back then was located in the old rooming house about where the Fairfield County Bank drive-in is now on Governor Street. However, interest in the club under Crouchley’s leadership soon increased enough that money was raised to build a modern clubhouse farther east on Governor Street, site of the present building.

His influence on two generations of young men of the community was almost legendary, and he won much praise and many awards for his work. 

He retired in 1969, but continued many other community interests. Over the years he was a president of the Ridgefield Volunteer Fire Department, member of the Board of Assessors, served on the Ration Board in World War II and was disaster chairman for the Red Cross, became the town’s first zoning enforcement officer, was a charter member of the Kiwanis Club, and was named an incorporator of the Ridgefield Savings Bank. 

He died in 1981 at the age of 76.

Crouchley’s name  lives today in the fond memories of many ex-boys for whom he was a mentor. It’s also recalled each year in the Ralph B. Crouchley Boys and Girls Club scholarship,  awarded at Ridgefield High School.

The Bulkleys: 

The Home on the Hill

In 1902, Jonathan and Sarah Tod Bulkley established one of Ridgefield’s many grand estates. More than a century later, Rippowam is the only remaining estate that is virtually unchanged in acreage and in use from that “Golden Era” when many New Yorkers built their country homes here.

What’s even more amazing, Rippowam is still owned and occupied by the same family.

Descended from the founders of Fairfield, Jonathan Bulkley was born in 1857, graduated from Yale in 1879 and joined the paper manufacturing firm of Bulkley, Dunton and Company, which his father had established in 1833. The company still exists; it calls itself  the largest paper company in North America providing paper products to magazine, book, and catalog publishers. It’s also one of the oldest continuously operating businesses in New York State.

Bulkley was also a director of various other companies, a member of New York social clubs and an influential man in the life of the city. 

The home he and Sarah built at 600 Park Avenue in 1911 is considered one of the city’s architectural treasures. The mansion was designed by James Gamble Rogers, whose many major projects included Sterling Memorial Library and a dozen other buildings at Yale and more at other universities, including Northwestern, Columbia and NYU; the Federal Courthouse in New Haven; Presbyterian Hospital in New York; Butler Library at Columbia; and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York. 

The Bulkley home was the scene of one of New York’s costlier burglaries. According to an account by New York City building historian Tom Miller: “On Feb. 22, 1927, Sarah Bulkley left the house at 3 to attend a tea. Around her neck hung a pearl necklace valued at $50,000 and her fingers were weighed down with several expensive rings. It was a fortunate choice of accessories for Mrs. Bulkley.
“When she returned at 6:30 she found her safe opened and empty. Gone was all of Sarah’s jewelry – diamond bracelets, diamond and emerald rings and a lorgnette chain with 97 diamonds valued at $20,000. ($20,000 then was equivalent to $275,000 in today’s dollars.)
“Bulkley and his sons, who were 29 and 27 years old at the time, had been home all afternoon; none of the servants knew the combination to the safe other than Sarah’s personal maid, Ida Kaemfer; and police called it an ‘inside job.’ All circumstantial evidence pointed to Ida.
“Mrs. Bulkley, however, insisted that the maid was ‘above suspicion.’  The case was never solved.”

Both Jonathan and Sarah were involved in many in philanthropic and social endeavors. He was president of the East Side House Settlement, one of New York’s oldest organizations helping the poor (it still exists today in the South Bronx). Sarah was vice president of the New York Y.W.C.A and active in the the Girls Service League in New York. 

Sarah was also president of the Garden Club of America from 1932 to 1935 and traveled widely in the United States and in Asia promoting the aims of the club. At one point in the 1930s, Japanese Prince Fumimaro Konoye came to Ridgefield to visit Mrs. Bulkley at Rippowam. When she later went to Japan on behalf of the garden club, the prince entertained her. (Konoye went on to become prime minister of Japan, but resigned shortly before Pearl Harbor. In 1945, he was closely involved in efforts to stop the war.) 

Sarah Bulkley, who summered in Ridgefield for 40 years, was a charter member of the Ridgefield Garden Club, serving as its president in the 1920s. Along with her daughter, Sarah Bulkley Randolph (1897-1982), she was one of the founders of the Ridgefield Boys Club. 

Rippowam, which is situated on Rippowam Road near the top of West Mountain, overlooks Lake Rippowam in Lewisboro and includes land in that town. The cave of Sarah Bishop, the legendary post-Revolutionary-era hermitess, lies within the estate’s bounds. 

The Ridgefield Press noted in 1939 that Rippowam was well-known for its “swinging bridge” which Sarah designed around 1920. The bridge extended from the edge of a 60-foot-deep wooded ravine some 50 feet out to the top of a large oak tree to which it was fastened and from which it swung from side to side a few inches from its anchorage. The bridge eventually deteriorated and was removed.

The family allowed kids from the Boys Club to use a pond on the property many years ago.

Jonathan Bulkley died in Ridgefield in 1939 at the age of 82. Sarah Bulkley, a native of Cleveland who grew up in Brooklyn, died in 1943 at the age of 72.

While the family still owns the Ridgefield home, it sold the Manhattan residence three years after Sarah’s death to the Royal Swedish Government. Today it is the residence of the Swedish ambassador to the United Nations.

Clifford A. Holleran:
Beloved Principal

For 36 years,  Kip Holleran was principal of Ridgefield High School and over all that time, he could knew each and every student by name. 

“Whenever a graduate would return to the halls of his secondary school learning, he or she would first stop at Mr. Holleran’s office, not because he had to, but  because he wanted to,” The Ridgefield Press said in an editorial about the principal. 

Born in 1895,  Clifford Ambrose Holleran grew up in Watertown, Conn., and graduated from Bucknell in 1920. A year later, he was hired as both a principal and a teacher at Hamilton High School, the original Ridgefield High School, then located on Bailey Avenue. 

The late Dick Venus, town historian, told this story of Holleran’s first day in a classroom in Ridgefield: 

“He wanted the names of each of his pupils. He asked that each one arise and give his or her last name as they were called on. 

“My brother Joe sat in one of the front seats and when Mr. Holleran pointed to him, Joe dutifully arose and said his name was Venus. The new principal blinked at the rather unusual name and then called on the next student, who declared his name was Romeo (probably Fred Romeo). 

“With that, Mr. Holleran called a halt to the proceedings as he had a feeling that he was being taken advantage of. In a loud voice, he said, ‘Some of you think you are pretty smart but if the next one who gets up tells me his name is Juliet, there will be trouble.’ 

“When the two boys were able to prove that their names were actually Venus and Romeo, Mr. Holleran had a big laugh over it.”

In his early years, he spent more time teaching than principaling — he taught geometry, trigonometry, science, chemistry, physics, and mechanical drawing. 

When he arrived at the school, there were no organized athletic teams, and he created baseball and basketball squads. For 20 years, he coached both, transporting them to out-of-town games, running magazine drives to pay for them, and sometimes winning championships.

Occasionally he’d even referee the games — because of his reputation for fairness, opposing teams didn't mind. 

After World War II, when the school grew large enough to hire an athletic director to take over, football was finally added and Holleran became a full-time principal — and twice was acting superintendent of schools.

“Mr. Holleran [was] a very kindly man,”  Elsa Hartmann, longtime teacher of history and German at RHS, recalled in 1983. “Even so, he was a strict disciplinarian and woe betide any student who got out of line. 

“On one occasion he heard a noise in the hallway and opened the door to see what was going on. Jim Sullivan had been sent to a window at the rear of the hall to clap the chalk dust out of some blackboard erasers. Lawrence Brundage opened a door at the other  end of the hallway and Jim promptly threw an eraser at him. Of course, the eraser was returned with gusto and soon the air was flying erasers. 

“As the door between the two combatants opened, a balding head appeared and caught the full force of an airborne eraser. When Jim saw what he had done, he clambered out the window and ran as fast as his legs could carry him.”

Holleran retired in 1957, but like many educators of the first half of the 20th Century, he lived here, was active in the non-school community, and remained so in retirement. 

He was a founder and the first president of the Rotary Club, served on the Ration Board during the war, and was a director of the Boys Club for 14 years. He loved golf, and his favorite partner was Tabby Carboni. 

In 1947, he married his longtime sweetheart, Grace C. White, after her retirement following 44 years of teaching here. She died in 1963 at the age of 79, he in 1971, age 78.