A Bunch of Bankers

This happy-looking group of people is actually a sort of Who’s Who of Ridgefield’s business community during the last half of the 20th Century.

The photograph by Clarence “Korky” Korker was taken in July 1975 at the Silver Spring Country Club and shows a gathering of the directors and corporators of the Ridgefield Savings Bank (now Fairfield County Bank).

From left, starting with those in front and going back, sort of in rows: Town Clerk Ruth Hurzeler, bank Chairman Carleton A. Scofield, President Charles Coles, and May Piser (bank treasurer?); Octavius “Tabby” Carboni, Robert A. Lee (bow tie), Abraham Morelli Sr., and Judge Hjalmar Anderson of Redding; D. Harvey Valden (no tie), Dr. Philip L. Martin, and Judge Reed F. Shields; N. Donald Edwards, Robert Wilder, unidentified, Walter E. Evans (in dark shirt), former first selectman J. Mortimer Woodcock, and Ralph B. Crouchley; Paul S. McNamara (shaded glasses), Judge Joseph H. Donnelly, Lawrence W. Hoyt Jr., and Edwin B. Allan (shaded glasses).

Incidentally, Paul McNamara is one of only two people in this picture still living (the other is Larry Hoyt; we don’t know about the status of “unidentified.”) 

McNamara just retired last July after 31 years as chairman of the board of the bank. According to a press release at the time, “Mr. McNamara has seen the bank grow from 2 to 17 branches and from $98 million in assets to $1.5 billion.  Capital has grown from $8 million to $200 million over his tenure. He orchestrated the Ridgefield and Fairfield County Savings Bank merger along with the bank’s expansion into insurance with the Carnall Insurance acquisition (Fairfield County Bank Insurance Services today) and the introduction of investments with the launch of Fairfield County Financial Services.”

In May 2019 he and his wife, Dewey, are slated to receive the Ridgefield Library’s “Hope H. Swenson Visionary Award.” Said the library: “As chairman of Fairfield County Bank since 1987, McNamara spearheaded over $1 million in donations to local organizations annually. Throughout his long career he has been instrumental in creating economic growth and opportunity in this area and beyond through the development and support of individuals, local entrepreneurs and businesses.”

Peter J. Wick: 

Artist, Athlete and Advocate

Peter Wick seemed like a man of contrasts.  Tall and burly, he was a former boxer and champion wrestler who became a prolific artist, painting countless scenes of the Connecticut countryside, the New England shoreline, old sailing ships, and tropical islands.

What’s more, Wick was also a veteran New York City police sergeant who, as both a cop and a Ridgefield prosecutor,  was an advocate of intelligent treatment of wayward teenagers.

Peter John Wiczkowski was born in New York City in 1902, the son of immigrants from

Poland. (As a young man, he shortened his name to Wick.) After working as s store clerk, he joined the New York Police Department in 1924. But he was also deeply involved in athletics.

“Peter Wick was a great sports figure who enjoyed wrestling and boxing,” said his family on a website created in his memory. “He sparred with famous boxers such as Jack Dempsey and worked with Gene Tunney at the West Side YMCA in New York City. He coached young boxers and one of his best-known pupils was middleweight champion, Rocky Graziano.

“Mr. Wick later became the national amateur wrestling champ of the U.S., going on to win four AAU medals.”

He continued to box as late as 1947 in police leagues.

Wick passed on his love of those sports to city kids. In the 1920s, he became one of the

organizers of what was to become the Police Athletic League, which still provides many programs for New York’s youth.

Wick became interested in art in the 1930s, and eventually studied painting under  Howard Chandler Christy, a noted portrait artist, and Gordon Grant, who famous for his maritime scenes. In a 1945 Christy mural, which depicted negotiations between the United States government and the American Indians, Wick modeled as an Indian chief. The mural is in the Ohio State Rotunda.

When he and his wife, Henrietta, and family moved to Ned’s Mountain Road in 1940, that wild area of Ridgebury helped foster a love of nature and the countryside, and inspired many of his paintings.

He retired from the NYPD in 1953 after 29 years.  He wasn’t rich, said his grandson, Bert Fortin. His pension at the time was about $500 a month. So to bring in extra money, he began selling his paintings at shows throughout the area. In 1959 he opened a gallery on White Street in Danbury.

He later had a studio in Westport.

    Some of his paintings sold for as much as $300 ($2,700 today), helping considerably with the retirement income.

    In the 1950s Wick became involved in town government, serving as a grand juror. In 1959, he was appointed a prosecutor in the town’s Trial Justice Court, a job that wound up sparking some controversy a year later when a case he was prosecuting against two teenagers had to dropped for lack of a complaint. 

    The youths had been caught with an automobile distributor they’d stolen from a wrecked car parked at Pamby Motors. The police arrested the boys, but the owner of the wrecked car refused to press charges — a fact that Wick did not know until the last moment. Carleton   Scofield promptly quit as town justice, complaining that Wick had not properly prepared the case and maintaining that prosecutors should be attorneys. The two had argued over prosecutions in the past. 

Wick also resigned. He said that he had not gotten timely information from the police, but also did not want any further clashes with Scofield. Scofield immediately returned to his job.

However, the case also involved how tough the town should be on teenagers. Scofield was upset that the teenagers got off scot free but Wick — who had spent many years helping young people in New York City — took a different tack, saying he did not believe in being “too harsh on

young first offenders who commit misdemeanors.” A police record, he said, can considerably affect a boy’s future school and job opportunities.

In an interview in the Bridgeport Post, Wick favored reorganizing how the police handled youth cases, feeling that the police should be encouraged to “adjudicate instead of arrest,” The Post said.

 “Ridgefield is growing, and modern methods must replace some of the outmoded ones,” Wick said. “A good policeman doesn’t arrest everybody brought to his attention.” 

He recommended that the town name a committee or commission to deal with teenagers before and after they commit minor offenses.

In 1984, Wick retired to Lakeland, Fla., bringing along with him a truckload of paintings he had done in Ridgefield. He died five years later at the age of 87.

In 2015, his family offered 200 of Wick’s paintings to Lighthouse Ministries, which  provides food, clothing, shelter, and various programs to the homeless communities of Central Florida. Lighthouse scheduled an auction of his paintings that year that raised more than $16,000.

Note: A 29-page color catalogue of his paintings can be viewed here: https://issuu.com/eringeiger/docs/charity_art_catalog

Carleton A. Scofield: 

A Good Investment

Around 1925, a young man, fresh out of high school, went to work for The Ridgefield Press. Carleton Scofield assisted editor David W. Workman with writing news and setting the printing type by hand. Pretty soon, Scofield was doing much of the weekly’s work, especially when Workman was out fighting forest fires in his capacity of state fire warden or policing the town when he was on duty as a local constable.

The value of the energetic young Scofield was not lost on Samuel Keeler, then owner and publisher of The Press. Karl S. Nash, who would later own the paper, said Keeler saw Scofield “as good protection for his investment in the printing and publishing business.”

Scofield, however, had his eye on a better opportunity and applied for a teller’s job at the Ridgefield Savings Bank. Keeler, a bank director, did not want to lose a good printer and journalist, and opposed the hiring. “We can run the bank without him,” he confided in an associate.  “I’m not sure I can make a profit at the Press without him.”

The bank’s directors overruled Keeler, Scofield was hired, and eventually he became the eighth president of the institution, now the sizable Fairfield County Bank.

He also became one of Ridgefield’s most active and involved citizens.

A native of Ridgefield, Carleton Avery Scofield was born in 1905 and graduated from Hamilton High School on Bailey Avenue in 1925. After four years at the Press, Scofield began his banking career. He studied at the American Institute of Banking, at the Graduate School of Banking at Rutgers, and at Columbia. He began as a teller in 1930, the year the Art Deco bank on Main Street was built. He was named an incorporator in 1933, a director in 1942, secretary and treasurer in 1946, and president in 1955 — a position he held until his retirement in 1972. He was chairman of the bank’s board until 1981.

He was also active in regional and national banking affairs, serving as an officer of the Mechanics Bank Association of America and president for four years of the Savings Bank Guarantee Fund of Connecticut, a predecessor of the FDIC.

Scofield was a prominent public official. In 1926 at the age of 21, he was first elected a justice of the peace, an office that then wielded some power in Connecticut. People who were arrested by constables, state police, or fish and game wardens were tried before a justice of the peace in the town hall. The arresting officers decided which justice to bring their case to, and some justices were more popular than others. Scofield was among the popular ones and got a good deal of the business, Nash reported.

When the state established the trial court system in 1941, Scofield was named a trial justice, presiding over Ridgefield’s court in town hall.  He held that post until 1961 when the local trial courts were merged into the circuit court system. However, he did quit briefly in 1960 when he became enraged over the fact that 10 boys who’d been “engaged in a gang fight at Lake Mamanasco” and two other boys caught stealing auto parts all got off in Town Court on legal technicalities. He called it a “circus-like treatment of justice,” but he soon returned to the job.

For 11 years, Scofield served on the Police Commission, including periods as its chairman. He was treasurer of the Connecticut Police Commissioners Association, a director of the Connecticut Public Expenditures Council and a member of Governor Thomas Meskill’s task force on housing.

Locally, he was a president of the Lions Club, secretary of the Ridgefield Library, treasurer of Ridgefield’s Salvation Army unit, an incorporator of the Boys Club, treasurer of the Fairfield County YMCA, and active in other organizations, including an antique car group. In 1930, he was a leader of one of Ridgefield’s first Boy Scout troops.

During the 1950s and 60s, he dabbled in real estate development in town. A bit of his name lives today in Scodon Drive, a road at the 57-lot Scodon development that he and savings bank lawyer Joseph H. Donnelly subdivided in 1958.

Banking was not only a business but a hobby. Scofield and his second wife, Irma, were widely known for their extensive collection of mechanical and cast-iron toy banks. By 1970, he had more than 250 mechanical models and 600 “still” banks — many were exhibited in the Ridgefield Savings Bank’s several offices. Some dated back to the 1700s.

Scofield died in 1983 at his retirement home in Florida. He was 78.