Bob Gustafson: 

Ridgefield’s Cartoonist

Several nationally known cartoonists have lived here, but none has taken up Ridgefield as a subject for his art as Bob Gustafson did. The Ridgefield Press’s cartoonist for more than 40 years produced literally thousands of cartoons for the newspaper. Some teased town officials for their actions or inactions, others illustrated community problems,  many promoted good causes in a good-natured way, and a few were just good gags. 

 A native of Brookline, Mass., Robert D. Gustafson was born in 1920. He  was a paperboy as a youngster, served as a pilot in the U.S. Army, pitched semi-pro baseball in the Boston area, played drums in a band, and studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School. 

Before he was 21, he was sending cartoon gag ideas to The New Yorker, and several were purchased and used. He later did cartoons for magazines like Good Housekeeping and Saturday

Evening Post.

“You have to come up with something you like and let everybody judge it,” Gustafson said in a 1991 interview about his work. “Sometimes it flops. It’s not like being a plumber — when you go in and fix a pipe and turn the faucet on and the water comes out, you know it’s OK.”

After working for a Boston magazine and a newspaper, he got a job with King Features, ghosting several comic strips and eventually taking over the nationally circulated strip, “Tilly the Toiler,” which had started in 1921 when he was only a year old.  He later worked for Mort Walker on both Beetle Bailey and Hi & Lois. And on the side, he did cartoons for The Press.

“Cartoonists never stop learning,” he said. “They’re always observing.” 

Although he lived in Ridgefield only from 1954 to 1960, Gustafson continued to “observe” town affairs at his Greenwich home through the pages of The Press, which he read thoroughly for ideas. He’d also chat by phone each week with the Press’s editor, looking for ideas on timely issues — and giving the editor hell if he had changed a word or two in a caption the previous week.

Gustafson had several favorite subjects, including the Cass Gilbert fountain. He was aghast at suggestions that the landmark be moved from its island at Main Street and West Lane, complaining repeatedly about that work of art’s being sacrificed to “the almighty automobile.” In cartoon after cartoon, he dealt with the issue. Saddened by cars all too often crashing into the monument, he’d offer entertaining suggestions for protecting it — one shows the fountain, raised on a mound and a

tunnel running under it to carry the traffic. But one week, seemingly giving up hope, he drew another showing the fountain, well-protected from cars by big railings, being hit by an airplane.

He also attacked vandalism, often portraying vandals as evil-looking thugs. Being a senior citizen himself, he encouraged help for Ridgefield’s elderly, and would offer suggestions on how to

improve their lot. He supported many town organizations, but especially the Community Center — he was active in the center in its early years and, as an accomplished photographer, used to take publicity pictures for them.

One of his favorite subjects in the 1950s and 60s was Leo F. Carroll, the colorful and charismatic first selectman and former state police leader. Carroll, who lived directly across Wilton Road West from Gustafson, was often teased for his pronouncements such as when he declared that

Ridgefield’s dump was “the most delightful dump in America.”

Though most of his Press cartoons were very local in nature, some captured wider attention. When controversy erupted over a new gas station’s need to cut down some large trees to make access to the highway safer, Gustafson drew a cartoon showing a couple of giant trees like the redwoods in California with a big opening so people could drive through them. Shell Oil Company offered to buy the cartoon. 

A gag, playing on the idea that we’ve all seen supermarket shopping carts in strange places,

showed an Arab on a camel in the middle of a desert coming upon a shopping cart. Grand Union later bought it.

Gustafson won many awards for his work including commendations from professional cartoonist organizations and from the New England Press Association. 

For relaxation, he enjoyed golf and following the Boston Red Sox. For many years he loved teasing Yankee fans, but by the late 1990s had come to enjoy watching the Sox’s arch enemy — he especially admired Derek Jeter.

Bob Gustafson died in 2001 at the age of 81. 

Sam and Joseph Farruggio:
The Murderous Brothers

The early 1930s was a wild time on the national scene. Prohibition had created crimes and criminals, murders were commonplace and the Depression was sparking social unrest.
Involved in all of these problems were three brothers—Sam, Joseph and Calogero Farruggio—who spent their childhood in Ridgefield. 

In May 1934, two of the brothers made big news: “Desperate Man Hunt Centers in Ridgefield for Alleged Murderers of New York Cop,” screamed the front-page headline in the May 10 Ridgefield Press. In the New York Times, it was “2 Fanatics Named as Police Slayers.” 

On their way to burn down a church, Sam and Joseph Farruggio had shot and killed a New York City policeman and a passerby, and seriously wounded another officer.

The shootings occurred on Friday, May 4, around 3 a.m., when the Farruggios were stopped by Patrolmen Lawrence Ward and William Brennan as the brothers were walking on East 101st Street in Harlem. One brother was carrying a two-gallon can of gasoline.

The two were on their way to “burn the first Roman Catholic Church they came to,” police said.

When the patrolmen tried to question the pair, they ran into a building at 322 East 101st Street where they lived with their other brother, Calogero, and “their aged mother.” Calogero was on the stoop, and Officer Brennan held him outside the building while Officer Ward chased the other two brothers. 

A shot rang out. Ward was hit in the shoulder and fell backward down a staircase, breaking his back. He died shortly afterward. 

Brennan released Calogero and chased Sam and Joseph up the stairs, over a rooftop, onto

another building, down more stairs, out a door, and down a street. The Farruggios began shooting; one bullet hit and killed bystander Ernest Krahenbuehl, whom the brothers apparently mistook for a detective, and another shot felled Officer Brennan, who was seriously injured but survived.

Sam and Joseph escaped, prompting the manhunt in New York City and Fairfield County. Calogero was held in jail as a material witness.

Hundreds attended the funeral of Officer Ward, who had been married only three weeks earlier. The Times described his widow weeping as the coffin was carried into the church, and the police band played “Nearer My God to Thee.”

The Press story reported that two New York detectives were working with Lt. Leo F. Carroll, head of the state police in Ridgefield, in trying to track down the brothers. The two were “well known to Lt. Carroll” and were “said to be religious and social fanatics.” The Times quoted New York Police captain Edward Mullins of the homicide squad as saying they were “inflamed by Communist literature and atheist pamphlets.”

Captain Mullins said, “It was plain from Calogero’s story that the brothers were obsessed with the idea that they were haunted by ‘evil spirits’ and that the only way they could rid themselves of the spirits would be by setting fire to a church—any church.”

Police were checking out the pair’s former haunts in both Ridgefield and Bridgeport. They were aided by information provided by Calogero, whom detectives described as “dull-eyed and not overly bright.”

Some six months later, on January 18, 1935, two New York City transit policemen picked up “several suspicious-appearing individuals on the Astoria elevated line,” the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported on January 20. They included the Farruggios, who were “carrying brown paper bags which, they said, contained bread....As they were led to a patrol wagon by Patrolman Thomas Connors, they ripped the bags open, and drew revolvers from them. Firing away, they fled down a Brooklyn street. Police returned the fire and the pair dropped. They were taken to St. Johns Hospital, where they died.”

The Eagle’s account was buried at the end of a long story that recounted six murders and shootings over the previous day or two in New York City.

The origin of the Farruggio brothers (also spelled Farruggia) is unclear. The Times said they were the only surviving offspring in a family that once numbered 24 children and that they came from “a remote corner” of Sicily. Citing Connecticut State Police, the Times said they had entered the country without passports.

However, in Ridgefield Town Hall are birth records that indicate the Farruggios were both born in Ridgefield—Salvatore “Sam” Farruggio in 1913 and his brother Giuseppe Liopoldo “Joseph” Farruggio three years later. They were listed as the sixth and seventh children of Calogero and Cyrenna Norata Farruggio, who, the records said, had come to this country from Parma, Italy. Calogero, the father, was listed on both birth certificates as a laborer.

Adding to the mystery is the fact that the birth records appear to have been supplied by the Connecticut State Police sometime after Sam and Joseph were killed. What’s more, the birth years appear to conflict with the ages published in the Times, which had said Sam was forty and Joseph forty-two.

State police described Joseph as a “transient factory worker who settled down in Ridgefield as a small-time merchant and bootlegger” who had operated “an alcohol cutting plant.” Salvatore, they said, “is a similar cut from the same cheese. He beat the war cloud out of Italy.”

The Times said that Joseph and Salvatore had been arrested in Ridgefield in 1931 on a charge of receiving stolen goods and were sentenced to one to three years in state prison. “Their Ridgefield job was bad,” Captain Mullins said. “It wasn’t professional. They’re not too sharp. It was the only crime on their record.”

After they moved to New York City, police said, the brothers eked out a living peddling hot dogs from a hand cart along Third Avenue. Calogero did most of the work, with Sam and Joseph helping out.

“They seldom made more than 35 or 50 cents a day,” the Times quoted police as saying. —from “Wicked Ridgefield,” The History Press, 2016.

James ‘Jimmy Joe’ Joseph: 

The Victim and the Legend

Robberies occurred occasionally in and about town, but only one involved a Mickey Finn, flappers and a man who became a Ridgefield legend.

On Friday, Dec. 5, 1924, James “Jimmy Joe” Joseph was working at his small grocery store on the Danbury Turnpike, predecessor of today’s Route 7, in Georgetown. A car carrying two young men and two young women pulled up. The Ridgefield Press described the women as being “of the flapper species.”

The foursome seemed a friendly bunch, striking up what was later described as a “jolly” conversation with Jimmy Joe. Soon Ferris Hajjar, one of the men, pulled out a bottle of whiskey and offered Joseph a drink. “James is known as a man who never indulges in intoxicants and declined the invitation,” the Press reported. 

Then one of the women produced a bottle of lemon soda, poured some in a cup and offered it to Jimmy Joe. He took a drink and moments later, passed out. The quartet grabbed $135 — about $1,900 in today’s dollars — and took off.

• • •

James Joseph was an old-fashioned success story, both in his life’s work and his life’s length. He died March 6, 1972, and since his birth certificate seemed to say he was born Jan. 1, 1858, he was apparently 114 years old. He would have been around 68 when he was slipped the Mickey and robbed. While the date on the birth certificate may have been misread, or wrong, he certainly was a very old man at his death.

Born in Lebanon, then part of Syria, of an ancient Druze family, James Joseph came to the United States in 1903, and joined his brother, M.C. “Joe” Joseph, in operating a store in Danbury. They also sold fruit and vegetables on an auto delivery route through Ridgefield, which attracted them to the town. 

In 1918, Joe Joseph began operating Joe’s Store near the corner of Main Street and Danbury Road while Jimmy Joe opened a similar store in Georgetown. (The first Joe’s Store in Ridgefield was in a brick building on Danbury Road that has been recently used as a candy shop. Soon, Joe Joseph moved to the corner of Main Street and North Salem Road in the building now occupied by Country Corners. To this day, this intersection is called Joe’s Corner.) 

In the early 1940s, Joe Joseph died, and Jimmy Joe took over the Ridgefield store. 

He became a citizen in 1958, but could not become a voter because he couldn’t pass the literacy test — though he was well read in Arabic. 

When the Supreme Court banned literacy testing as a voting requirement in 1970, Jimmy Joe Joseph, well over 100 years old and a resident for nearly 70 years — walked into the office of Town Clerk Ruth Hurzeler to be sworn in as a voter. 

“He had tears in his eyes,” Hurzeler said later.

So did she.

• • •

Arthur A. Smith, a carpenter who lived near the Georgetown store, drove by around 4:30 that afternoon in 1924 and saw Joseph “jollying” with a group of people. A little while later, Smith returned to do some shopping, and found Joseph lying on the floor, unconscious. 

“Judging that the man was in serious condition, he telephoned to Dr. Charles Ryder, who quickly diagnosed the fact that the man was suffering from the effects of some powerful drug,” the Press said. “He ordered his removal to his home where he was given constant attendance during the night, but he did not fully recover consciousness until a late hour Saturday morning.”

Joseph did not see the car that carried the group of robbers, but he could give state police from

Ridgefield a detailed description of the quartet. His information must have struck a spark of recognition in the officers, for by Saturday evening, Sgt. John Kelly and Officer Leo F. Carroll were in Danbury, rounding up the robbers. 

They first arrested Tony Howard, 28, proprietor of a “coffee house” on River Street, Danbury, who apparently told police the whereabouts of his accomplices. A little while later, Mrs. Gertrude Conners, 29, Miss Isabelle Chambers, 23, and Hajjar, 29, all of Danbury, “were gathered in on the street,” the Press said. Hajjar was described as the ringleader of the group. They were jailed after failing to post $2,000 bond each.

• • •

Wilton Town Hall, used as a courtroom, was packed on Monday, Dec. 8, with friends and families of the Danbury suspects. Lawyers managed to get bond reduced to $1,000 for Connors and Howard, while Chambers had the bond lifted because, her lawyer maintained, she was in “ill health.” Hajjar remained under $2,000 bond. 

The three were unable to post their bonds and were returned to the jail in Danbury. However, they soon managed to scrape together the money, made bond and were released.

“Jimmy Joseph is again able to conduct business at his grocery and is being congratulated by many friends and patrons, not only on his complete recovery from the effects of the drugs, but because he has recovered over $50 of the roll that afternoon,” the Press said that week.

In early January before another large crowd in Wilton Town Hall, Hajjar and Connors pleaded guilty to theft, were fined $25 and costs of $92.01 each, and got 30-day suspended jail sentences. Chambers and Howard pleaded guilty to receiving stolen goods and were fined $15 and costs of $82.01, and given 15-day suspended sentences. 

The sentences may have been suspended because the foursome had already spent time in jail. However, one wonders whether they would have gotten off so easily if the four had drugged and robbed one of the town fathers instead of a humble immigrant from the Middle East. —From “Wicked Ridgefield, Connecticut” published in October 2016 by The History Press

Fred Jones: 

Dog Detective

One day in the 1950s, Fred Jones’s telephone rang. He picked up the receiver and a very angry woman’s voice began demanding that he do something about the two peacocks fighting in her yard.

“Madam,” he replied patiently, “I am not the peacock warden. I am the dog warden.”

Though born in Canada in 1908, Fred B. Jones spent most of his life in Ridgefield. He was one of the town’s last old-time farmers,  caretaker of the working farm at the Brewster family estate, The Hickories, on Lounsbury Road for nearly 60 years. 

But he was also Ridgefield’s dog warden in the 1950s and 60s, and an expert lapidary. 

In 1960, The New York World Telegram and Sun called Jones “the best darned dog warden in Connecticut” and described how he tracked down the owners of a lost collie by contacting authorities in Long Island, Michigan and Florida, and mailing more than two dozen letters. 

The paper also told how one day, a Ridgebury recluse died while walking home from Danbury and his two dogs refused to let police or the medical examiner approach the body.   Jones talked to the snarling dogs, then walked into the dead man’s cabin. The dogs followed him and he locked them inside, telling authorities he had just employed some simple dog psychology.  (Jones and veterinarian Dr. Jordan Dann tried for six weeks to tame the dead man’s pets, but were unsuccessful and the dogs had to be put down.)

Perhaps it was more of that psychology — or just a good knowledge of the breed — that Jones employed when a wealthy guest at the Stonehenge Inn reported his two valuable beagles had run off. “Solving this case was child’s play for Fred Jones,” the New York newspaper said. “He knew beagles, so he went off into the Farmingville swamp and found the two dogs chasing rabbits.”

He also found a famous dog.  Morgan, a basset hound that had wandered away from its

owner, TV and movie producer Dick Gordon, was well known to television viewers in the 1950s, appearing regularly on the Garry Moore Show and in several sitcoms.  (In 1973, the Altman Department Store Christmas catalogue in New York featured a “Huggable Morgan” stuffed animal complete with a squeaker nose.)

Roaming and usually unlicensed dogs were a serious problem in the mid-20th Century, when there were still farms with livestock that could be attacked. Jones was tough about licensing dogs, so much so in 1954 that he conducted door-to-door surveys of the town to make sure dogs were licensed. 

In 1959, when roaming packs of dogs were attacking livestock and wildlife, he pointed out, under state law, that the town has to pay for chickens, sheep and rabbits that had been killed by stray dogs.

In 1961, the town was having problems with dog packs killing deer, which back then were relatively few in number to start with. Jones warned the public in February of that year that he had the right under law to shoot and kill dogs that were attacking deer.

Under Jones’s guidance in 1954, the town built its first dog pound to hold strays the warden had captured. It had six runs. First Selectman Leo F. Carroll said in 1959, when many of the state’s pounds were being criticized as cruel canine prisons, Ridgefield’s pound has “heat, light, meals, and each guest has his own private runway where he takes his exercise at his leisure.” 

Sometimes even high-class impoundment did not sit well with locals, however. In 1957, Police Chief John F. Haight reported that some local children broke into the pound and “liberated” a beagle that had escaped from its Danbury owners.  Chief Haight said the children felt sad for the dog being locked up, but warned that “sometimes vicious dogs are kept at the pound, and any child gaining entrance to the building via a window might run the risk of being badly mauled or bitten.”

By the early 1960s, the pound was overcrowded and was housing two dogs per run. It wasn’t until 1973 that the town tore down the 1954 shelter and built a new 14-run building. By then Jones had retired.

 Especially later in his life, Jones became well known an expert lapidary, a person who cuts and polishes gemstones. And to get the gemstones, he had rocks. Lots of them. “The quantity of rocks in and around the Lounsbury Road home of Mr. and Mrs. Fred  B. Jones might lead one to believe that the couple was planning to build a house of stone,” said a 1974 Ridgefield Press interview with Jones. “Not so. These are not ordinary rocks, they’re semi-precious stones in the rough.”

“A rock hound, Mr. Jones is hooked on the beauty which can be wrought from rough stones.”

  By the 1970s, he and his late wife, Ruth, were traveling 25,000 miles a year, acquiring and selling rocks in a business called as Fred’s Gem Den. 

Fred Jones died in 1999 at the age of 91.

Over his years in office as dog warden, Jones put in some long hours and was on call 24/7. Once he told a woman whose dog had run off to be sure to let him know if it returned. Two days later, his phone rang. “I wanted you to know that Rover just came home,” the woman reported. 

It was 2:30 in the morning.

Dr. Francis Woodford: 

‘Country Doctor’

Every town had its “country doctor,” the kindly, beloved physician who had a gentle voice and would come to your home at any time of the day or night to cool fevers and soothe pain. 

That certainly describes Dr. Francis Woodford, about whom someone once said: “All I have to do is call him to feel better.” 

Born in New Haven in 1897,  Francis Bowditch Woodford graduated from Yale College and Medical School, was a lieutenant in the Army Air Corps in World War I, and came to Ridgefield in 1926. 

His first home-and-office was at New and Gilbert Streets, a rental. He moved in at the same time the state was converting Main Street from a dirt road to a paved road. That turned out to be an unusual benefit for the new doctor, who’d just hung out his first shingle. 

“People had to detour right past the house and it was so bumpy that they had to travel very slowly,” ‘Fritz’ Woodford said in a 1970 interview with Sally Sanders of The Ridgefield Press. “About the only thing they had to do was read signs.” People did, and soon nearly everyone knew there was a new doctor in town.

A year later, Woodford and his wife, Julia, moved to a house down Main Street across from the Community Center, where he was to remain for the rest of his career and life.

Back in the 1920s, there was no need for appointments. “We’d have office hours beginning at one, and people would walk in and wait their turn,” he said. Office hours ended when the last patient was treated.

Obstetrics was a part of a general practitioner’s job then, and Dr. Woodford delivered as many as 35 babies a year – often in homes. During the Blizzard of 1934, he skied to at least one home for a delivery. Another time, during a 36-hour period, he delivered four babies. 

The deliveries could be hectic. “I was with one mother, who was having her fourth or fifth,” he recalled, “when Irene [Hoyt of the District Nursing Association] called to say that I’d better hurry over to help the mother she was with.” He rushed there, delivered that baby and returned to the first mother who had promised to wait for his return. She did, and Dr. Woodford delivered that child, too. 

Homes where deliveries took place were sometimes pretty primitive. He recalled one house that had no running water or electricity — just a spring outside and a lantern held by the husband. “Doc, we’re 50 years behind the times,” the husband said. But the baby still got the most modern treatment, among the first to get the new triple vaccine, protecting her against tetanus, diphtheria and whooping cough.

From 1940 until 1970, he was the town health officer, but also served many years as the school doctor and as the medical consultant to the Selective Service Board in Danbury. 

He loved nature, fishing, and hunting, During hunting season, Dr. Woodford often carried a shotgun in the trunk of his car in case he spotted some game while on his rounds. One day, he saw a pheasant and pulled the car over to the side of the road to get his gun. Just then, one of the District Nurses came over the hill and, caught in the act, Dr. Woodford was about the give up on the bird, but the nurse motioned him to go ahead. “I treed that bird,” he said. “But I completely missed my shot.”

He also loved reading – even out loud. noting that his father had always real aloud, especially Alexandre Dumas’ “Musketeers” series. “He skipped pages, going from duel to duel, leaving out all the padding between.” 

“I read aloud and my wife likes to listen,” he said.  Julia, who was his secretary throughout his career, was active in the community, especially conservation.

Woodford died in 1977 on the day before his 80th birthday. “He was kind and gentle and good,” said former first selectman Leo F. Carroll, who knew him for 50 years.

John C. Kelly: 

State’s Top Law Enforcer

John Kelly was a prime example of “local boy makes good.” He joined the Connecticut State Police when it was tiny but suddenly expanding agency, and wound up three decades later as head  of the entire state police force.

One of eight children, John Cornelius Kelly was born in Ridgefield in 1895. His paternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Kelly, were among the first Catholic families to settle here. 

When World War I broke out, he enlisted in the Navy and served on submarine chasers. 

Around 1920, he joined the state motor vehicle patrol, a motorcycle unit that enforced laws dealing with the increasingly popular automobiles, but more particularly, the increasing dangerous trucks. In 1921, the motor vehicle patrol became part of the rapidly expanding Connecticut State Police. 

The state police had been established in 1903, but had only five men covering all of Connecticut. The force wasn’t much larger than that by 1920, but the enactment of Prohibition that year meant a manifold increase in the need for law enforcement, particularly in Connecticut’s smaller towns.

Consequently, the state police force was greatly expanded, and “barracks” or local sub-stations established around the state. (Stations were called “barracks” because troopers ate and slept in them for shifts of five or six days.)

Kelly was quickly recognized as a leader and, in 1922, he was promoted to sergeant and given command of the new Ridgefield barracks, located on West Lane. In 1927 the barracks moved to a larger building on East Ridge Road — what’s now the Ridgefield Police headquarters.

By 1931, Kelly was instruction officer for the whole state and in 1945, he was made a major and executive officer of the state police department. Four years later, he was named chairman of the State Liquor Control Commission. 

In 1953, Governor John Lodge appointed him commissioner of the Connecticut State Police,

the equivalent of a chief of police, a command he held until 1955. He might have held the office longer, but Kelly was a Republican and by then the governor, who made the appointments, was Abraham Ribicoff, a Democrat.
After his retirement, he served several terms as a state representative from Ridgefield to the Legislature. After that, he worked as a legislative consultant until he was 82. He died in 1984 at the age of 88, still living in the town in which he was born.

In a bit of irony, two of the leading law enforcement officials in the state during the 40s and 50s lived next door to each other on Wilton Road West:  Kelly’s next door neighbor was Leo F. Carroll, who became second in command of the state police when Kelly was commissioner. Both started out together at Troop A when the barracks was on West Lane, and rose through the ranks — with Kelly always one step ahead.

Leo F. Carroll: 
An Astonishing Leader

Few public servants stand larger in 20^th Century Ridgefield than Leo F. Carroll,  who spent 56 years of his life in public service on five fronts including 34 years in the state police, four years as chairman of the State Liquor Commission, 10 years as first selectman, and six years as a school board member. 

All through those years, he was a flamboyant, colorful character. And as first selectman he was one of the most accomplished leaders of the town.

Born in 1900 in Bethel, Leo Francis Carroll was one of 13 children raised on a Bethel farm. He was introduced to Ridgefield while in high school, frequently playing the Hamilton High School squads as captain of the Bethel basketball and baseball teams. “I fell in love with the town at first sight,” he once said.

He served in the U.S. Army at the end of World War I and in 1920, became a state Motor Vehicles Department inspector, assigned to the “flying squad” of motorcycle men who spot-checked for defective autos and trucks on the growing network of state highways. Because he was only 20 years old — not yet an adult, “I could catch you, but I couldn’t pinch you,” he recalled in an interview with Marilyn Vencel in 1975. “So I would catch the cars and pull them over for the old men, who were old enough to make the arrests in case of speeding and drunken driving.”

In 1921, he joined the Connecticut State Police, and Trooper Carroll was assigned to the new Ridgefield barracks in what was later the Boland house at 65 West Lane. He eventually bought a house on Wilton Road West and Ridgefield became his home for the rest of his life. 

He was promoted to sergeant in 1927 and two years later became  a lieutenant in command of Troop G in Westport. He continued to rise through the ranks until 1947 when Major Carroll became the executive officer of the entire Connecticut State Police — the highest rank one could reach in civil service.

“I’ve had a tremendous career, a very successful career and if I may tell you this, I never injured one hair on any criminal’s head,” he told interviewer Vencel. During his policing years, he investigated dozens of murders, bank robberies, arsons, and other major crimes. “May I boast a little bit now,” he said.l “You probably never met a boy or a man who has had so many good, big cases to his credit.” (Several of those cases are described in “Wicked Ridgefield,” a new History Press book due out in October 2016.)

In 1953, he was named chairman of the State Liquor Control Commission for four years. 

A Republican, he was not reappointed by Democratic Governor Abraham Ribicoff, and that ended his hope of one day being appointed commander of the state police – a job that had been held by his next-door neighbor on Wilton Road West, John C. Kelly. 

Instead  Carroll ran for first selectman of his hometown. At the 1957 GOP caucus that nominated him, he quoted Mark Twain: “Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” It was typical Carroll. 

Always a colorful personality, he proceeded through a lively 10 years as first selectman for a period when the town doubled in population. During his administration, Ridgebury, Farmingville, Scotland and East Ridge Middle Schools were built and Branchville was started. The Planning (and later Planning and Zoning) Commission, Conservation Commission and Historic District Commission were created; and many hundreds of acres of open space were acquired, including the 570-acre Hemlock Hills and Pine Mountain Preserves in Ridgebury. 

Under Carroll, the number of miles of paved road went from 60 to 120 — Ridgefield, even in the 1950s, had many miles of dirt roads. What’s more, Carroll himself sometimes maintained the town’s roads — he said he thought nothing of grabbing a free highway department truck and plowing the town’s roads “when we had a big, heavy snow storm.”  

Much about town government was modernized during his years in office — at his retirement,  Carroll himself listed 50 major accomplishments of his administration. 

He was famous for his oratory and for the scores of colorful letters and columns he wrote in The Ridgefield Press. 

After he retired as first selectman in 1967, The Press recalled the Twain quotation and observed that “Leo Carroll is a great showman, a sensitive man, a hard worker with an uncanny sense of people, individually and collectively. He is indeed an astonishing man.” 

But his retirement was short-lived; in 1969 he was appointed to a school board vacancy and was later elected to a six-year term that ended in 1975. It was no breeze, either, for Carroll was in the middle of the famous “book burning” controversy in 1973 — he objected to the schools’ use of Eldridge Cleaver’s anti-establishment book, “Soul on Ice,” in a high school elective course on politics. The board was also involved in many school budget and school construction battles during his tenure.

In 1979,  Carroll was named Rotary Citizen of the Year. 

Leo Carroll was a man who always seemed satisfied with his life and his accomplishments. “The only one thing that I should be criticized for is that I don’t like to go away from home,” he told Vencel. “I’ve always loved my home.”

“I like to sleep and I take naps,” he added. “I like good food. I like good people. I have a burning desire to be with decent people.”

He also had a good sense of humor.

Years ago Routes 7 and 35 intersected with a 90-degree junction at which many accidents occurred. Around 1940, Lt. Carroll, who was commanding Troop A in Ridgefield, asked the state highway department to improve the intersection, resulting in a semi-rotary arrangement that lasted until around 1984 when the state returned the T, but this time with traffic lights.  Carroll claimed that the old rotary was “the safest intersection in New England. There hasn’t been a single (serious) accident out there.”

However, the seeming complexity of the traffic circle gave rise to some complaints, most of them half teasing, and the intersection became known as “Carroll’s Folly.”

One day soon after the intersection was completed, the Rev. Hugh Shields, pastor of the First Congregational Church, called  Carroll at the barracks and said: “Lieutenant, I’m up here at 35 and 7, and I don't know which way to go to get to Danbury.”

Carroll, knowing the minister never touched a drop of liquor, replied: “Listen, you sober up and you’ll find your way,” and promptly hung up.

He died in 1985 at the age of 84.