William H. Casey: 

Civic Businessman

For half of the 20th Century, Bill Casey was a leader in  the business, civic and social life of  Ridgefield. A soft-spoken man who often wore a smile, Casey founded a company that still bears his name and is still led by his family 70 years later.

Born in Manhattan in 1917,  William Henry Casey grew up on Long Island and graduated from Lehigh University, where he was president of the Class of 1939. The same year he graduated, he married Valerie Dyer, a New York City native who was raised in Montreal, Canada. They were wed at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Casey worked for several oil companies before deciding to start his own business. In 1947 they moved to Ridgefield, living at first in the Bluebird Apartments on West Lane.

He began a fuel oil business in 1949  (just three years after native sons Frank and Fred Montanari started the town’s other still-thriving family-owned oil business, Montanari Fuel).

Four years later the Casey family moved to an 18th Century Main Street homestead that has

served as their house but also their office for nearly 70 years. Over those years Casey Fuel has expanded with the acquisition of the heating oil businesses of Ridgefield Supply, Outpost Supply and Venus Oil, added a propane service, and rebranded itself as Casey Energy. The company was led by his son, Michael, starting in 1976, and today is in the hands of grandson, Shane.

 In 1961, Bill Casey opened a real estate end of the business and was long active in the realty community, serving in 1967 as president of the Ridgefield Board of Realtors. In the early 1960s,  Casey also owned an Esso gasoline station and paint store on Danbury Road, now the quarters of Marty Motors.

 Casey was always active in the civic and community life of Ridgefield. A longtime member of the Board of Finance, he also served on the Board of Tax Review.  In 1971 he tossed his hat in the ring for the job of first selectman, but then bowed out in favor of Joseph J. McLinden, who won the job.

He was chairman of the Republican Town Committee, and worked on dozens of campaigns over the years. He served as a director of the Community Center and a trustee of Danbury Hospital. 

And he held the distinction of being the longest, continuous, still-resident member of the Ridgefield Lions Club. Casey joined the club on Nov. 1, 1948, and had served as the club president a few years later. All presidents had a special project to accomplish and his in the early 1950s was something that seemed more out of the inner city than suburbs: Building showers on the front lawn of the Community Center for the town’s children. 

“This was before air conditioning and since there was no place to swim then, we put in 10 showers,” he told a 1996 gathering honoring his 50th anniversary with the Lions. “The kids were there on all the hot summer days.” 

Soon after he and other Lions helped Francis D. Martin create Great Pond’s swimming beach — today’s Martin Park.

An avid golfer, Casey was one of the longest-term members of the Silver Spring Country

Club. There, he was a founder of the infamous Poison Ivy League, a group of local golfers that included such prominent businessmen and attorneys as Judge John E. Dowling, Alex Santini, Judge Joseph H. Donnelly, Edward Hyde, and Judge Reed F. Shields.

He was also interested in his family’s Irish roots — both his and Valerie’s ancestors came from Ireland. In 1997, 18 members of the Casey clan — representing four generations —  traveled together to Ireland for a 10-day trip that included visits to many ancestral sites of both the Casey and Dyer families.  

Bill Casey died in 2002 at his home on Main Street at the age of 84. He left behind one of a handful of Ridgefield businesses that have involved multiple generations of a family and that survive and thrive today. Others besides Montanari Fuel include Ridgefield Supply, Ridgefield Hardware, Neumann Real Estate, and Ancona’s Wines and Liquors.

Seth Low Pierrepont

Seth Low Pierrepont: 

The Man of the Park and Pond 

Seth Low Pierrepont gave much to Ridgefield during his lifetime and even more in his death. One of the town’s wealthiest citizens, he was also among the most generous, and the 314-acre Pierrepont State Park in north-central Ridgefield, part of his large estate, was his bequest. 

Mr. Pierrepont was born in 1884 in Brooklyn, N.Y., a nephew of New York mayor and Columbia University president Seth Low.  He was a Columbia graduate who was in the diplomatic service in Portugal, Italy, France, and Chile before becoming chief of the Latin-American Division of the U.S. State Department from 1911 until 1913. 

Mr. Pierrepont was on domestic duty in the Navy during World War I and, in 1921 and 1922, was assistant secretary general of the Washington Conference on Arms Limitations.

He retired from the diplomatic service in 1913 and came to Ridgefield that year, building Twixthills, his home on Barlow Mountain. He acquired various parcels of farmland, sometimes complete with houses which he provided for his employees, and assembled an estate of more than 600 acres. The property was so extensive that he hired his own private “police force” to patrol it. The house still stands off Old Barlow Mountain Road.

He quickly became active in local government, and represented Ridgefield in the General Assembly from 1921 to 1927, and there, helped create the Connecticut State Police Department. During World War II, he was chairman of the Connecticut Salvage Committee, which collected scrap for the war effort. 

In town, Mr. Pierrepont served on the Board of Finance from its establishment in 1921 until 1951, was a president of the Ridgefield Library, chaired the Ridgefield celebration of the Connecticut Tercentenary in 1936, was first president of the Silver Spring Country Club, and was a leader at St. Stephen’s Church.

It was at the church in 1915 that he figured in the resolution of a scandal: Cyrus A. Cornen Jr., the church’s treasurer, had pocketed some $13,000 — equivalent of more than $300,000 today — that was slated to pay contractors on the new St. Stephen’s Church. Pierrepont took over as parish treasurer and raised the money, probably much of his own, to cover the loss.  

Mr. Pierrepont also built what is today called Pierrepont Pond or Pierrepont Lake. He said in a letter to The Ridgefield Press in April 1938 that the lake was created from “an old impassable swamp” in which woods were cleared in 1936 and 1937 by “quite a number of men.” A. Bacchiochi and Sons built the dam, and it took about six months for the pond to fill up. Water went over the spillway for the first time on March 30, 1938.

“We are calling it Lake Naraneka after one of the Indian chiefs who signed the deed to the town of Ridgefield,” Pierrepont said. He never liked its being called Pierrepont.

In 1955, he reported that some years earlier, when he was having a small pond built near his home up on Old Barlow Mountain Road, the gardener came across a spoon-shaped piece of cedar, bearing marks of all the Indian signers of the deed, and probably used by them to drink spring water. This may have been Pierrepont’s inspiration for the name.

Mr. Pierrepont died in 1956 and is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.  He had hoped what’s now Twixt Hills subdivision would be added to the park after his death, but his widow, Nathalie Chauncey Pierrepont, sold the land to developer Jerry Tuccio instead. 

Arthur J. Carnall: 

A Shropshire Lad

Arthur J. Carnall was a boy of nine, fresh off the boat from England, when he arrived in Ridgefield in 1904. He made the town his home for the next 67 years and helped change the face and function of the community in many ways. 

A native of Shropshire, England, Arthur James Carnall was born in 1895. His family sailed to Boston and immediately came to Ridgefield; they chose the town on the recommendation of William Harrison Bradley of Ridgefield, who was then serving with the American consulate in England and lived across the road from the Carnalls. 

He graduated from the old Center School on Bailey Avenue and attended a preparatory school in Virginia. (His sister, Marjorie Agnes Carnall, married John W. “Jack” Smith, the well-known Ridgefield orchid grower and estate superintendent, who was also born in England and who is also profiled in Who Was Who). 

During World War I, Arthur Carnall served in the U.S. Navy.

In 1922, he joined the real estate and insurance business of Thaddeus Crane, located about where Dr. George Amatuzzi’s office is on Main Street. Crane (who will be profiled in a future “Who Was Who”) died in a spectacular car-vs.-train accident in 1928 and two years later, Carnall took over the business, renaming it A.J. Carnall Inc. It became Ridgefield’s largest insurance business and, in 1965, moved into the second floor of a new office building at the corner of Main and Catoonah Streets — what became popularly known as “the Carnall Building.”

Throughout his life here, Carnall was involved in efforts to improve the community.  “Mr. Carnall’s love of Ridgefield and devotion to its welfare marked his public life,” The Ridgefield Press said when he died. 

One of his first big projects was amassing 270 acres in the late 1920s to create the Silver Spring Country Club, which opened in 1932. Throughout his life he was an active member of the club and at his death in 1972, was its treasurer and a governor. He was, needless to say, an ardent golfer, but was also a good one, winning a number of tournaments in the region over the years.

In the late 1930s, he almost single-handedly conducted a bond-selling drive that, in 1940, created Ridgefield’s first movie theater, the Ridgefield Playhouse, on the site of today’s Prospector Theater. Before then, Ridgefielders had to travel to one of three theaters in Danbury to see a movie. The Playhouse was also used for various stage productions.

A few years later his enthusiasm and salesmanship resulted in the town’s buying the Lounsbury block, now Veterans Park, along with its mansion, now the Community Center. He also helped organize the Community Center operations.

He also dabbled in development – the “car” of Marcardon Avenue is he, partners with Francis D. Martin and Joseph H. Donnelly (Martin, then also a boy, was one of the first people Carnell met when he came to Ridgefield in 1904, and they became lifelong friends.

For 15 years starting in 1941, Carnall was the town tax collector. He was a founder of the Lions Club and of the Danbury and Ridgefield Boards of Realtors, belonged to the Ridgefield Grange and Danbury Elks, was on the Wadsworth R. Lewis Fund advisory committee, and volunteered on countless boards and committees — including serving on the Ration Board during World War II.

He and and Agnes Kelly were married in 1930 and lived on Gilbert Street for their entire   life together. Both took pride in their beautiful gardens. He was 76 years old when he died at his winter home in Florida in 1972. She died in 1996 at the age of 92 in Florida where she had moved after her husband’s death.

In 1999, Ridgefield Bank, now Fairfield County Bank, bought A.J. Carnall Inc., and 10 years later renamed it Fairfield County Bank Insurance Services. It still operates out of the “Carnall Building.” Carnall, incidentally, had held several offices in the old Ridgefield Savings Bank, predecessor of Fairfield County Bank, starting as an incorporator in 1941 and ending as vice president at the time of his death.

Olinto Carboni:  

‘Battling Bones’

Olinto “Lynce” Carboni must have held some sort of record for an active life. He did not retire from working until he was 91, would hit the dance floor at 95, and was still mowing his lawn well into his 90s.  “Why should I pay someone when I can do it myself?” he told an interviewer

A Ridgefield native, Olinto P. Carboni was born in 1909, a son of Benvenuto and Assunta Carboni (Benvenuto is already profiled in Who Was Who). He had four brothers, Adrian (“Ade”), Octavius (“Tabby”), Navio (“Pete”), and Reno (“Renz”), and a sister, Mary Carboni Michell, who all became well known in town.

As a boy he got his first job carrying water to thirsty workers building Branchville Road into one of the region’s first paved highways. He also caddied at Silver Spring Country Club, when carrying two bags for 18 holes would earn $2. “I had to give the money to my mother and she let me keep 10 cents,” he recalled in 2004.

While he was attending Ridgefield High School, he worked before and after school doing bookkeeping and deliveries for “Jimmy Joe” Joseph’s store at the intersection of Main Street and North Salem Road (“Joe’s Corner”).

He was a star athlete at RHS, captaining the baseball and basketball teams and playing football. After he graduated in 1927,  he played for Ridgefield’s baseball and football Spartans and its basketball team, The Millionaires, in the region’s popular inter-town sports leagues. 

Town historian Dick Venus wrote in 1983 that Lynce Carboni “was probably one of the very best all-around athletes that Ridgefield ever had. Though he was good at baseball, like his brother Pete, Lynce excelled in basketball and was very exciting to watch. Many of us thought he could have played with any of the professional teams” — even though he was not very tall and “would probably not stand much above the belts on some of the gigantic basketball players of today.”

For many years he served as a high school basketball referee, with legs strong enough to work two games in one night.

As “Battling Bones,” Carboni was also a successful boxer, fighting in his late teens as a featherweight in bouts in throughout the area. He never lost a fight.

He, his father and his brothers all conspired to keep his boxing a secret from his mother, who opposed her son’s participation in the sport. 

Charles “Chip” Bliss, his nephew,  told how Carboni’s undefeated boxing career came to an end.  “His mother didn’t want him to box — he never told her,” Bliss said. “He used to sneak out the windows from home. One day the iceman came early, and he had a big fight that night, and his mother asked the iceman why’d he’d come early, and he told her, ‘I’ve got to get through my route early so I can go see Lynce box tonight.’”

Assunta Carboni threw all of Lynce’s clothes out the window and said “You’re not going anywhere.” “And that,” said Bliss, “was the end of his boxing career.”

In the late 1920s Carboni began courting Dorothy “Dot” Bennett,  whose brother, artist Harry Bennett, had been a close friend. “He was my brother, he was my father,” Harry Bennett said. “I had no father, he died before I was born, so I had Lynce. I leaned on him,” 

Bennett was about 12 and Carboni 22 when Bennett’s dog Duke was killed by a car.  “Lynce came, helped that dog up, picked him up, brought him into the yard, called the vet, had him declared dead, got a shovel, made a box, and buried him, then made a tombstone,”  Bennett said. “He found a piece of rock and chiseled it so it had a semblance of a tombstone and then chiseled the word ‘Duke’ into it. He could do anything.”

Carboni and Dot Bennett eloped in 1931. Both loved to dance and were famous throughout their lives for their prowess on the dance floor. When they were courting, Lynce would take her dancing at Peach Lake, in Danbury, Bridgeport and even New York in his Model A Ford. They marked their 65th wedding anniversary in 1996, the year she died.

Carboni began his career as a plumber. “He was a great plumber — marvelous,” said brother-in-law Bennett. “Anything he did was like brand new, just perfect. He was meticulous, he was reliable, and he had lots of knowledge. And anybody could call him, and he’d just rush to help them.”

“He was a hard worker,” said Chip Bliss. “He single-handedly built the foundation on his house — dug it out. He had it all done and a terrible rainstorm caved in two walls and he had to rebuild it. That just shows the persistence he had.” That house on Pound Street was his home for some six decades, but in his last years, he lived on Prospect Street.

Carboni served in the Navy during World War II aboard the U.S.S. Astoria, a light cruiser, in the Pacific. He thought his knowledge of pumps would land him a job in damage control, but he could also type and was made yeoman to the executive officer, the ship’s second-in-command.

He was on the Astoria in the China Sea in December 1944 when it survived a huge typhoon that capsized and sank three U.S. Navy destroyers. “They ran out of fuel and were at the mercy of the sea,” he reminisced in 2000.

His ship was the target of kamikaze pilots during the invasion of Okinawa, and he recalled one crashing so close it shook the entire ship. He was on the Astoria in Tokyo Harbor when the Japanese surrender was signed aboard the U.S.S. Missouri.

After the war Carboni joined John Tulipani in forming a plumbing business. In 1959, he did a plumbing job at the Board of Education offices in what is now St. Stephen’s South Hall, and his work caught the eye of school administrators. He was offered the job as the only “maintenance mechanic” for the Ridgefield Public Schools, which then had only two buildings, Veterans Park and the old high school. When he retired in 1976, the district had grown to eight school buildings and he headed a crew of five men who kept them all in repair.

But he didn’t really retire that year. He continued to work as the schools’ “courier,” ferrying documents and other deliveries among the various schools and administrative headquarters. He continued courier services until finally retiring in 2000, nearly 92 years old. And he continued driving until he was 95. 

Over the years, Carboni encouraged and inspired many young athletes and coached Little League baseball for many seasons. 

He was a life member of the Ridgefield Volunteer Fire Department and the Italian American Mutual Aid Society — he continued to serve at the club’s monthly men’s and women’s dinner nights into his  90s. He was also a founding member of the Ridgefield Old Timers Association and was honored by the Danbury Old Timers.

Lynce Carboni died in 2006 at the age of 97 and is buried beside his wife in the Bennett family plot in Fairview Cemetery.

“He was a man of few words,” Chip Bliss said. “He never had a bad thing to say about anybody. He was always upbeat. Everybody liked him — didn’t have an enemy in the world.” 

Walter Tode: 

A Top-10 Chef

Ridgefield has been the home of the kitchens of some of the finest chefs of the 20th Century, but few were on a level of Walter Tode. Once listed among the 10 best chefs of the world, Tode owned and operated The Inn at Ridgefield — also called Tode’s — for 20 years.

Walker Karl Tode (rhymes with Cody) was born in Nancy, France, near the German border, in 1908 and even as a child, loved to cook. His parents paid to have him apprentice, at age 13, at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. He went on to work at a casino in Germany, then in Rio de Janeiro. He returned to Germany where he earned a degree in hotel management at the University of Heidelberg.

“I was then imported to the Fort Sumter Hotel in Charleston, S.C., U.S.A, the youngest chef they’d ever hired,” Tode told an interviewer in 1965. (The interviewer, Fred Reynolds, also described Tode as a man with “Charles Boyer charm, the Eric von Stroheim authority, the Roland Young [“Topper”] build and walk.”

Tode next worked at the Ambassador Hotel in New York, became executive chef for the Roney chain of hotels, and in 1935, opened and ran Jack Dempsey’s, a famous New York restaurant on Broadway, across from the old Madison Square Garden. The restaurant lasted until 1974, but Tode left in 1940 to open new restaurants in hotels in Miami Beach. 

In 1945, he came back north and briefly took over the kitchen at the Silver Spring Country Club. He liked Connecticut and a year later, bought the former Kane Inn on West Lane — once the

home of George Pratt  Ingersoll, ambassador to Siam.

His new restaurant, with what interviewer Reynolds called “elegant, intimate opulence,” drew diners from throughout Fairfield and Westchester Counties, as well as New York City.  

Tode suggested he had an advantage over most American restaurateurs. “Too few restaurant owners come up through the fine kitchens,” Tode said.

That “elegant, intimate opulence” of the dining rooms remained largely unchanged during his years at The Inn, even though he’d sometimes try to update the decor. “Every time I get ready to

make changes, people scream,” he told a magazine in 1966.

In 1951, Tode was named one of the 10 Outstanding Chefs of the World by the International Societe Gastronome in Strasbourg, France, one of only two Americans so honored.

While running The Inn, he also served as director of food service for American Airlines, was a consultant for Intercontinental Hotels, and was an associate professor at Cornell University, where he taught in the School of Hotel Administration. He also took a shot at producing gourmet foods for wholesale distribution, establishing the “Gastronomical Galley” line of foods in 1959. It did not last long.

Tode also made headlines in 1961 for getting into an early morning disagreement with his

bartender, and punching him in the face which reportedly broke his jaw. He was arrested, and fined $200 for assault and breach of the peace. However, he was also sued by the bartender for $15,000 ($120,000 in 2016 dollars), but a Superior Court judge ruled in Tode’s favor.

In 1967, after 21 years of operating The Inn and 46 years of creating fine foods, Tode sold the restaurant (which is now Bernard’s) and essentially retired, although he taught classes in the area for several years. He died in Danbury in 1984 at the age of 75.