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

Israel Grossfeld: 

The Crusading Father

Nineteen-year-old Fred Grossfeld was a quiet, scholarly student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a sophomore majoring in mathematics. Slight in build, the Ridgefielder loved books and spent many hours in libraries. 

 One November night in 1965, Fred played bridge with three friends in a dormitory where his

own room was located. After the game ended, he said goodnight and left. He was never seen alive again.

The tragic case of Fred Grossfeld, which made headlines locally and nationally for weeks, sparked his father, Ridgefield merchant Israel Grossfeld, to undertake a campaign that eventually helped change how law enforcement officials in the United States deal with missing persons. 

Fred Grossfeld vanished on the evening of Nov. 30, 1965, but it was two days before MIT campus police learned he was missing. Campus police then spent several days either waiting for news or looking into his whereabouts before finally notifying his parents on Dec. 6, nearly a week later.

“We found the delays shocking; the university found them routine,”  Israel Grossfeld told MIT’s president eight months later. Indeed, when Israel Grossfeld had earlier approached an MIT spokesman about publicizing his missing son in the Boston newspapers, he was told, “It isn’t a story. Kids disappear every day. This isn’t news.”

“Then I’ll make it a story,” Grossfeld shot back.

In the weeks that followed, Israel Grossfeld undertook a tireless campaign to publicize the disappearance of his son who he believed had been accosted by robbers or was suffering from amnesia. He knocked on doors of police stations, politicians’ offices, and media newsrooms. Headlines began appearing across the country — The New York Times carried at least four stories.

Fred Grossfeld’s disappearance was mysterious. There was no sign of anything amiss. His room was found in perfect condition. Except for an olive-green raincoat, nothing was missing; even his watch was still sitting on his desk.

The young man was described as a “very quiet, studious boy, who spent most of his time reading and studying,” The Ridgefield Press reported Dec. 9. “He rarely left the MIT campus. He played chess and Ping Pong in addition to bridge.” 

His father discounted rumors that he was having trouble in school, noting his son had a 4.8 grade point average of a possible 5. “His only weak subject was physical education,” Israel Grossfeld told The Times.

The FBI briefly investigated in December after Israel received a ransom call from someone, demanding $3,000 for Fred’s return and telling the father to wait the next day near five pay phones at the corner of Tremont and Boylston Streets in Boston. Grossfeld called authorities, and the next day, Boston police and the FBI staked out the area as Grossfeld waited at the corner. No call came.

Grossfeld said at the time that he believed the caller never contacted him because news of the call and stakeout appeared in Boston media the night before. “I fear that because I did not follow the caller’s advice to not contact the authorities, they might have killed Fred,” he said.

When nothing materialized, the FBI dropped out of the case. 

However, national law enforcement officials began to take more notice after Grossfeld pursued politicians like U.S. Senators Abraham Ribicoff (D-Connecticut) and Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), who in turn pressured U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to personally review the merits of the case. In early February, Katzenbach wound up ordering the FBI to resume the search for the boy.

A native of Poland who was persecuted as a Jew by the Nazis, Israel Grossfeld had come to this country in 1949 with only $8 to his name. He eventually opened I. Grossfeld Ltd., a top-drawer men’s clothing store on Main Street. 

As he worked to find his son, he virtually walked away from the business — many people in the community, including an airline pilot and the owner of a competing store — volunteered to work at Grossfeld’s shop while the father searched for his son. Scores of Ridgefielders also helped him send thousands of missing-person flyers all over the county — even to hundreds of libraries, because Fred had been such a book-lover. 

“If it takes all of my life, this is my No. 1 job — to find the boy, nothing else,” he told The Times. 

The search came to an end on Feb. 8, 1966. A Beacon Street woman was walking her dog along the Esplanade of the Charles River in Boston, when the pet broke loose, ran about 15 feet out onto the frozen river and began barking. Embedded in the ice was the body of Fred Grossfeld. 

Boston police reported that, except for his olive-green raincoat, he was clad entirely in black clothing, including a black shirt and black tie. Investigators found no evidence of foul play.

His father was crushed. He could barely do more than nod his head when he came to the police mortuary to identify the body. He had been in Boston to meet with Cardinal Richard Cushing to enlist his aid in the search campaign.

How did Fred Grossfeld wind up frozen in the Charles River? An autopsy found that the boy had drowned. There was speculation that he had committed suicide by jumping off a bridge over the Charles River, but in a letter to The Press on Feb. 15, Israel Grossfeld and his wife, Mina, wrote: “We are sure to our innermost soul that Freddie was not a suicide. He once expressed himself specifically on the subject, saying that only ‘sick’ people did such a thing. He could not inflict pain on anyone or anything, and certainly not on himself.”

Instead, the Grossfelds said, “we believe that Freddie met with foul play, whether from a gang of delinquents roaming the streets or from someone out of the vast hate world we shall probably never know.” 

The week after the discovery, Israel Grossfeld told The Press, “I am not going to let the files be closed. If the police don’t care to pursue the case, I will pursue it myself. This is something that I feel I must do for the memory of my boy and for my own peace of mind.”

Grossfeld returned to the MIT campus to try to determine whether school and police officials were making any effort to solve the mystery. He was accompanied by author Max Gunther and photographer Joseph Consentino, both Ridgefielders, who had been assigned by the Saturday Evening Post magazine to cover the story. 

Gunther, who had already spent three days interviewing Fred’s dormitory neighbors as well as campus officials, told The Press on Feb. 16 that he “found no evidence that Fred was unhappy or worried in the weeks before his disappearance. Furthermore, Fred’s friends recalled that the brilliant young scholar had always shunned physical violence and was extremely sensitive to pain, cold and other discomfort.

“If Fred was going to commit suicide,” Gunther said, “it seemed unlikely to his friends that he would choose such an agonizing method as jumping into an icy river and drowning.”

By the spring of 1966, Israel Grossfeld had recovered enough to focus on a new campaign: The creation of a federal agency handling missing persons.

“We need what a number of other countries already have: A federal bureau for missing persons, under the FBI,” Grossfeld wrote Senator Ribicoff in July. “In the areas of taxation, water control, education, and movement of traffic, we have gained immeasurably by the unity and coordination of federal control. Why not in personal safety?”

He had already complained to the MIT president, “It is unfortunate that disappearances of college students are each treated as a common, routine matter. In most cases they probably do present no cause for concern, but this results in tragedy for the few exceptions that do occur.” 

He felt that MIT should have been more diligent in dealing with Fred’s disappearance and should have notified area police and the parents immediately. “We shall probably never know whether this entirely usual lack of communication made the difference between life and death,” he told the MIT president.

Grossfeld found a supporter in Senator Ribicoff, who had earlier been governor of the Connecticut. In 1967, Ribicoff introduced a bill to create a federal office to help local police departments to find missing persons. It would, as The Times reported, “set up a separate investigative staff within the Justice Department concerned solely with missing persons…. The staff would assist directly in investigations if requested to do so by local policemen…The office would also serve as a national clearinghouse for information on missing persons, using modern computer technology to collect and store information from all over the country.”

Such an agency would no doubt be overloaded, unless it had thousands of staff members. But the federal government did institute the National Crime Information Center, or NCIC, whose huge databases include not only criminals, but also missing and unidentified persons. Today, up to 12 million searches a day are done by law enforcement agencies, using NCIC. Many of those are for missing persons.

But as a result of the efforts of Israel Grossfeld and others, significant improvements in dealing with missing persons have been made. “Many police departments used to wait 24 to 48 hours before accepting a missing persons report,” said current Ridgefield Police Chief John Roche. “No more.”

Grossfeld had argued that any delay in searching for the missing makes the job tougher. Chief Roche agreed. In Ridgefield and in Connecticut in general, missing persons now get instant attention. 

“The longer you wait, the less you have the ability to find the person,” Chief Roche said. While many missing persons cases may involve miscommunications or domestic spats, “you just don’t know,” he said.

Ridgefield police even plan for missing persons. One of the more frequent types of missing persons is an Alzheimer’s patient, who may wander off and get lost. The department maintains a database of dementia victims, with information voluntarily supplied by caregivers, so that such vital details as photos, physical descriptions, and habits can be quickly called up at headquarters.

Israel Grossfeld was active in the 1970s in supporting youth programs, particularly the Ridgefield Boys’ Club. For many years the Fred Grossfeld Memorial Fund provided scholarships for Ridgefield High School graduates. 

Grossfeld sold his store and his Stonecrest Road home in 1980, the same year his wife, Mina, a teacher of Russian, died. He remarried, eventually moved to Israel, and then to Florida, where he became active in the state chapter of the Friends of Israeli Disabled Veterans. 

He died in 2013 at the age of 91.

Carmela Sabilia: 

The Peanut Lady 

Few Ridgefielders in the 1920s and 30s knew the name Carmela Sabilia but, as Dom D’Addario once observed, “everyone knew The Peanut Lady.” 

Mrs. Sabilia lived in Georgetown with her grocer husband, Louis, and by 5 a.m. each Sunday, she’d be up roasting peanuts over a wood fire. She’d package them in bags, put them in two baskets and be off on a 13-mile walk that took her through Branchville and up the long, four-mile hill to Ridgefield village, selling her bags of peanuts along the way at 10 cents each. 

“She always wore a hat and two or three layers of coats or jackets,” said D’Addario, who had been a child in Branchville at the time. 

Carmela Catmo was born in 1859 in Italy and was in her late 30s when she came to the United States in 1898. Not long after her arrival, she married Joseph Sabilia, a Connecticut native of Italian parents, who was a year older. By 1910, she had a young son and was working as a “sales lady” for her husband’s “fruit store” in Georgetown,  according to the U.S. Census that year. The store was “Sabilia’s Groceries, Fruits & Vegetables, Ice Cream & Candy,” and she was known to the locals as “Mamma Joe.”

By the 1920s, she was doing her peanut route and was probably in her late 70s before she stopped her weekly treks.

 “She was, as it were, the walking forerunner to the Good Humor truck, given her popularity with the children and the distances she traveled, as far as Ridgefield,” said Wilbur Thompson and Brent Colley, Georgetown historians.  “Mamma Joe used old orange crates to roast peanuts over. She roasted them right on the side of the road. Then she put them in small paper bags and walked (sometimes rode on horseback) the roads of Branchville, Georgetown, Redding selling them.”

While Sabilia reportedly spoke little English, she was wise in the ways of American business. According to Thompson and Colley, “The peanut business was profitable and about once a week, she would travel to the savings bank to make a deposit. 

“Like many women of that period, especially Italians, she wore about 6 layers of skirts with pockets in each. In the bank she pulled up about 4 layers of skirts, found the money and savings booklet, made the deposit, and then buried the booklet back in her layers.”

When she died in 1943, she reportedly left a small fortune. 

She is buried in St. Mary Cemetery beside her husband, who had died five years earlier. Their son, Louis (1900-1970) is there, too.

Charles Wade Walker: 

Happy, Musical & Armed

Music was Charles Wade Walker’s first love and primary profession, but this prominent, many-faceted Ridgefielder also ran a magical Main Street store that entertained a generation of kids and adults. So Walker doesn’t seem quite like the kind of fellow who’d be a pistol-packing leader of a posse, and perhaps he should not have been.

Born in 1880, the Albany, N.Y., native came here in 1910 after having been an organist in several New York City churches. Over the years he was music supervisor for the schools, a tenor in the Ridgefield Male Quartet, organist and choirmaster at the Jesse Lee Methodist Church, a piano tuner, conductor of the St. Cecile Choral Society, and a trumpet player in the Ridgefield Band.

For many years he operated Walker’s Happy Shop on Main Street, a popular newspaper and novelty store. The sign in the front said, “Toys to make the kiddies happy, sweets to make the ladies happy, and smokes to make the men happy.” 

In 1917, when he installed a soda fountain, he put up a window shade with the sign, “Meet me here at the fountain.”

Walker was also a justice of the peace and town constable, long before Ridgefield had its own formal police department. It was, perhaps,  a job for which the musician and merchant was not always well suited, as evidenced by the story told by Town Historian Richard E. Venus in a 1987 “Dick’s Dispatch” column in The Ridgefield Press. 

It was in mid-winter one evening in the 1930s when Irene Zwierlein heard a noise in the

basement of her Barry Avenue home. Her husband, Joe, was attending a meeting in town, and she was alone in the house. “She opened the kitchen door that led to the basement and there, in the darkness, was the outline of a man,” wrote Venus. “The man hurled a rubber boot at Irene and then fled out the back door of the basement.

“Irene quickly recovered and soon had the police, in the person of Charles Wade Walker, on the scene. Word spread quickly through the neighborhood and soon a posse of neighbors was organized. It was led by a very nervous, part-time policeman.

“The trail of the intruder was easy to follow as there was a light, freshly fallen snow….The tracks led north through the fields to Ramapoo Road and an old hay barn that had a ground floor basement. The barn was part of Irving Conklin’s dairy farm and while the upper part of the barn was used to store hay, the basement sheltered a dozen young heifers that Irving used to winter there.

“The basement doors were always left open, in order that the herd of heifers would have easy access to the tiny pond where they got their water. The tracks of the culprit led directly to the open barn door.

“At this point, a decision had to be made: Do you barge into the barn or do you wait for the quarry to come out? Perhaps this is a good time to explain that the officer carried a gun, but, as he said later, he was terrified at the thought of ever having to use it. In fact, he said that he had never used it, even in practice.

“By now the posse had grown to a considerable size and they wanted some action. The man had managed to enter the barn without disturbing the heifers and they remained quietly in their shelter.

“However, at the approach of this small army, led by Charles Wade, a distinct rumble could be heard. Just as they reached the door, the herd, probably encouraged by the man, stampeded out the barn. Several people were knocked flat, including the officer, whose gun went off harmlessly into the air.

“The heifers raced across the open field, with the perpetrator keeping pace in their midst. He sure could run and with all the tracks made by the crowd, it was impossible to follow him.

“Several people thought they knew who he was, but positive identification could not be made and he got away scot-free.”

Walker may not have like toting a gun, but he was probably more knowledgeable than most about the law; before he came Ridgefield, he had studied law in New York City. His knowledge was put to use as a prosecutor in the town Justice Court. He was also a village traffic officer from 1938 to 1951,  and a volunteer fireman. And if that wasn’t enough, he belonged to the Masons, Odd Fellows, Lions, and the Grange — and contributed poetry to The Press.

He continued to live in Ridgefield until about a year before his death in a Hartford nursing home in 1961 on the eve of his 81st birthday.

Joseph Juran: 

The Quality Man

Dr. Joseph Juran overcame a deprived, even abusive childhood to become an internationally famous expert in “managing for quality.” His work helped transform resource-poor, postwar Japan from a synonym for shoddy goods into an industrial superpower famed for the quality of its products. 

Born in 1904 in a dirt-poor, remote Romanian village, Juran and his family came to the United States in 1912, expecting the streets to be literally paved with gold.
“Not only did they find there was no gold, there were no pavements, and they were supposed to do the paving,” his son Charles Juran said at a 2004 testimonial.

He overcame an “abusive childhood,” said his grandson, G. Howland Blackiston. “It was extraordinary to me that he managed to turn that around. He forgave society for the many problems it presented him and decided to devote his life to paying it back.” 

Blackiston produced the 1996 documentary, “An Immigrant’s Gift: The Life of Quality Pioneer Joseph M. Juran,” that was aired on public television.

Juran earned degrees in electrical engineering and the law, and went to work for Western Electric. He focused on the quality of work and workers,  and over his career he wrote 16 books – including his famous “Quality Control Handbook” – and hundreds of professional papers. 

“Because of the work done by Dr. Juran and his counterpart, Edward Deming, quality tops the list of attributes consumers expect to find,” said Andy Mais in a 1996 profile of Juran in The Ridgefield Press. “But there is more to quality than simply putting parts together. Dr. Juran sees quality as the way for mankind to save itself from itself.”

For many years Juran was a professor and chairman of the Industrial Engineering Department at New York University, where he inspired many students. (Once, when there was a power failure and the classroom turned pitch dark, he remained unperturbed. “I can teach in the dark if you can learn in the dark,” he told his students.) 

In 1979, Dr. Juran founded the Juran Institute, then located in Wilton, “to create new methods and tools for making quality happen within organizations throughout the world.” 

He and the institute have advised hundreds of major corporations on how to attain high quality products. His concepts and methods have contributed to the creation of the new science of “managing for quality.”
“He created this institute, put a million dollars of his own money into starting that up…[yet] he’s never drawn a salary,” Blackiston said in 1996. “Matter of fact, at one time he owned essentially all the stock. He’s given it away to the employees, most of it.”

The institute is now located in Southbury.

Dr. Juran received more than 40 medals, fellowships, and honorary degrees from 12 countries. These included the Order of the Sacred Treasure, awarded by Emperor Hirohito of Japan for Dr. Juran's “development of quality in Japan and the facilitation of Japanese and American friendship,” and the National Medal of Technology, awarded by President George H. W. Bush “for development of key principles and methods by which enterprises manage the quality of their products and processes.”

Joseph and Sadie Juran lived on Old Branchville Road for 18 years, and moved to an assisted living center in lower Westchester around 2002. He died in 2008 at the age of 103. When Sadie died later the same year, she was six days short of her 104th birthday. 

The Jurans had been married for 81 years. 

Joseph Juran’s brother was motion picture director Nathan Juran who won a 1942 Academy Award as an art director for the classic John Ford/Darryl Zanuck film, “How Green Was My Valley.”

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.