Albert and Toni Roothbert: 

Art, Photos and Philanthropy

Among the most generous — and locally least-known — Ridgefielders of the 20th Century were Albert and Toni Roothbert, a modern art collector and a leading fashion photographer, who lived at Topstone Farm on Topstone Road for many years.

Together they aided many organizations and causes, and established a fund that has provided fellowships to more than 1,000 talented college students over a half century after their deaths.

Born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1874, Albert Roothbert came to the United States in 1902 and soon became a partner in a Wall Street investment firm. In 1925, at the age of 50, he retired and began studying and collecting modern and Oriental art. With the noted Mexican painter Miguel Covarrubias, he studied the art of Bali, and traveled from Paris to Peking in search of fine examples of modern European and Oriental art. (Some of the works he owned were later donated to major collections, such as at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

He also began looking for ways to improve society, an effort that eventually led him and his future wife to found the Roothbert Fund.

Baroness Antonie “Toni” von Horn was born to a prominent family in Germany in 1899. Around 1920, she opened a photography studio in Heidelberg. While in New York on an assignment, she met Frank Crowninshield, editor of Vanity Fair (and a founder and the first secretary of the Museum of Modern Art), After seeing her photos, Crowninshield recommended she pursue a career in New York. 

She followed his advice and soon became a leading fashion and advertising photographer in the 1920s and 30s, working for Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar and at her own studio. She became one of the first woman photographers to gain a national and international reputation in the field, and did many celebrity portraits, including Greta Garbo, Eleanor Roosevelt, Ginger Rogers, Cole Porter, Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, and Jean Harlow. Her photograph of Albert Einstein has been called the best ever made of him. 

“She was one of the first women to operate in this field at the level of Edward Steichen, Adolf de Meyer and George Hoyningen-Heune, among others, and the only one to operate as an equal in direct competition with them,” said Charles van Horne, her great-nephew who serves as treasurer of The Roothbert Fund.

Unfortunately, she has not gotten much recognition as a pioneering woman in her field. Van Horne attributes that in part to the fact many people thought “Toni von Horn” was a man — she  sometimes actually signed her work Tony von Horn or just von Horn. What’s more, few originals of her work exist because “her plates and negatives lay in damp storage in an outbuilding at Topstone Farm and were discarded after she passed away, probably without a thought.”

Albert and Toni met in New York City and married in 1937. She closed her studio “and never took another picture,” The New York Times reported years later. 

In 1958, the Roothberts established the Roothbert Fund to aid “students motivated by spiritual values, who can satisfy high scholastic requirements and are considering teaching as a vocation.” 

According to the fund, “The Roothberts shared a devotion to young people, whose idealism, they believed, was the best defense against a recurrence of the tragedies of the first half of the 20th Century.”

Recipients are called Roothbert Fellows; more than 1,000 young men and women have received the fellowships. They have included black students expelled from Southern University in 1960 for their pioneering lunch-counter integration in Baton Rouge;  the first graduates of Harlem Preparatory School;  and top-ranking Yale graduates. 

The fund also has awarded grants for special projects, including training in family counseling in a poor neighborhood of Manhattan; funding a van helping street people in the  South Bronx; support for a program for inmates at a Pennsylvania prison involving mental health, poetry, and leadership; establishing an interfaith institute for clergywomen in rural Massachusetts;  a project on peace-making in Jerusalem;  and creating a library for the college-bound program at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for women in nearby Westchester County.

Toni was also interested in the mentally handicapped. She had bought a 216-acre farm in Copake, N.Y.,  planning to convert it to an organic operation. Instead she wound up turning the farm over to Camphill, a program for adults with special needs. She also helped to secure Albert Schweitzer’s assistance for Camphill.

Albert Roothbert died here in 1965 at the age of 90. In his will he left money to create a Ridgefield High School scholarship fund as well as a sizable grant to the Ridgefield Library. Toni died here in 1970 at 71.

In later life at Topstone Farm, Toni Roothbert was an organic gardener and  conservationist, as well as a humanitarian. She was  interested in a variety of spiritual movements, including Buddhism and  Quakerism. She was inspired by and a friend of Albert Schweitzer, the multifaceted physician, philosopher,  and organist whose humanitarian work at Lambarene Mission in Africa she supported for years — she would annually supply Schweitzer with seeds for his vegetable garden.

When Schweitzer died in 1965, she wrote to one of  his friends in Switzerland: “Since my girlhood in war-torn Europe, I have been looking to Albert Schweitzer as a guiding light and in times of sorrow and stress, my thoughts and love turned always to him…

“Compassion drove the young philosopher-musician to the dark continent and here he administered medicine to the sick, but his greater gift has been to all mankind: The opening of the heart in love to all creation, the reverence for life to all creatures. He became an apostle of goodwill, the challenger to us all. He is the conscience of Man today. Though his strong heart has stopped beating, his light will shine and the world needs this light.”

And, she told The Ridgefield Press that week, “The ethic he stands for is certainly a precious challenge to human beings in today’s cruel and crucified world.”

Anne S. Richardson: 

Benefactor Par Excellence

For most Ridgefielders, her name is the park on North Salem Road or the auditorium at Ridgefield High School. However, Anne S. Richardson was once one of the most influential women in town, “a moving spirit for its preservation and betterment,” The Press reported when she died in 1965. 

A half century after her death, she is still helping Ridgefield and the region.

Born in 1884 into a wealthy family, Richardson came here in 1915 and built her home, Mamanasco Farm, on the plateau created by the great rock overlooking the north end of lake. The estate employed many people whose families still live in Ridgefield.

Soon after arriving, Richardson became active in the community. She and her lifelong companion, Edna Schoyer, helped organize the League of Women Voters in town.

Though she lived far from the village, she promoted the beautification of Main Street, especially preservation and replacement of trees, both as a longstanding member of the Ridgefield Garden Club and as head of its Village Improvement Committee. 

In 1939, Richardson, a Republican, and Schoyer, a Democrat, were elected to the Board of Education, serving three years. (Ridgefield High School and Scotts Ridge Middle School stand on part of her farm; the land was purchased by the town from her estate for a relatively small price.) 

Richardson was appointed to the original Park Commission in 1946 and remained in office until her death. She helped found the Ridgefield Boys and Girls Club (then just a Boys Club), was active in selling War Bonds, and served in the American Women’s Volunteer Service Corps, aiding the war effort on the home front during World War II. 

In 1964, she was named Rotary Citizen of the Year. 

She and Schoyer loved travel, and visited scores of countries on every continent (after sailing up the Amazon, The Press once reported, she confided in friends that the natives on the shore were more fully clad than some of the women on board the ship). 

Her will, which bequeathed millions to trusts and charities, gave Richardson Park to the town, ordering that her house on the land be razed.  

Arguably her most significant bequest was to create the Anne S. Richardson Fund, which, since the mid-1960s, has given away many millions of dollars; in 2015 alone, the fund donated $610,000. 

Richardson specified that the gifts be in three areas: Ridgefield organizations (10 got a total of $275,000 in 2015); Fairfield County organizations (mostly helping the poor, youth and conservation); and eight organizations that Miss Richardson had a special interest in. The last group includes the Boys and Girls Club, St. Stephen’s Church, Connecticut College, Yale University, and several hospitals. 

Alan Meltzer: 

A Generous Man of Music

Alan Meltzer, who died on Halloween 2011 at the age of 67, left a rather unusual will: He bequeathed $1 million to his chauffeur, and another half million to the doorman at the Manhattan building in which he lived.

Meltzer, who had a home on Old Branchville Road in the 1980s and 1990s, was a wealthy music entrepreneur whom The New York Post described as “the colorful former head of the New

York-based Wind-Up Records and a celebrity high-stakes poker player.”

Wind-Up, which has produced recordings for Creed, Evanescence, Seether, and many other artists, is one of the largest independently owned record labels in the world; the company says it’s been responsible for establishing many multi-platinum and diamond artists. (Creed’s three CDs had by 2003 sold 30 million copies.)

But when he and his wife, Diana, moved to Ridgefield, Alan Meltzer was involved in the retail side of music instead of production. He’d owned Titus Oaks Records, a small music chain in Long Island and, after moving here, opened Rainbow Records at 88 Danbury Road.

In 1985 he founded CD One Stop, a wholesaler of pre-recorded music. The business, which operated out his house here, was called the first of its kind to distribute only compact discs. Later merged into CDNow, it eventually became part of Amazon.com.

Meltzer was also a serious poker player, and frequently appeared on televised poker programs.

Tragedy struck in 1991. The Meltzers’ only child, Michael, a 20-year-old honors student at Syracuse University and a 1989 Ridgefield High School graduate, was killed in an auto accident on Danbury Road. In Michael’s memory, the couple established a scholarship for music and art students graduating from RHS that has given away tens of thousands of dollars in the years since.

Not long afterward, the Meltzers moved to Manhattan and acquired a small record label, Grass, soon turning it into Wind-Up Records. He ran the business while Diana sought out the musicians — Newsweek called her “the chief talent scout, the woman with the golden ears.”

Eventually, the two divorced. Meanwhile, Alan struck up friendships with his doorman and chauffeur —  The Post called them “two faithful workers who gave him a shoulder to cry on.”

Both were surprised at the bequests.

“I appreciate it,” the doorman said in a 2012 Post story reprinted around the world. “He was a generous guy. He was a really good friend of mine, and I was a good friend of his. It’s a surprise. Peace and rest to him.”

“I don’t know what to do exactly with the money, but one thing I know for sure, every year I’m going to bring the guy some flowers at his grave,” said the chauffeur, the father of five. 

That grave is in Ridgefield: Alan is buried next to his son Michael in Ridgebury Cemetery. 

Benjamin Levy: 

Good Scents

Ridgefielders  who’ve seen or visited Levy Park along the east side of Barrack Hill Road may have wondered just who “Levy” was. The 48-acre refuge recalls a man of not only good sense, but good scents.

Born around 1879 in Rheims, France., Benjamin E. Levy joined Coty, the French cosmetic company, in 1910, and a couple years later, established the American branch of Coty.  In 1934, while founder François Coty was still president, Levy was elected chairman of the board of directors.  He later took over as company president, resigning in 1940.

During his leadership Coty had one of the major pavilions at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, visited by well over a million people.  Coty’s perfume products were shown in the Hall of Perfumes and displays demonstrated the role of decorative arts in cosmetic packaging.

Levy also led another major cosmetic producer, Charles of the Ritz. That company was founded by a Frenchman, Charles Jundt, who in 1919, took over the beauty salon at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in New York, fashioning it after one he had run in Paris. A few years later, he began selling a line of cosmetics to retail outlets. In 1936, Jundt sold his interest to Benjamin Levy and Levy’s nephew, Richard B. Salomon. Salomon ran the company until it was sold to Squibb in 1971. Levy served as chairman of the board.

Levy and his wife, Regine, moved to Ridgefield in 1940, acquiring 80 acres along Barrack Hill Road. Over the years he served as a member of the board of managers of the Ridgefield Boys Club and was on the Board of Incorporators of the Ridgefield Library. The Levys were also “quiet philanthropists,” whose good deeds were largely unpublicized. Among their donations was Renoir’s painting, Woman with A Cat, which they gave the National Gallery of Art in 1950.

Levy died in 1952 at the age of 73; his wife had died five months earlier.  Nephew Richard Salomon inherited the 80-acre estate, selling off the house and surrounding land to another Frenchman,  Jean LeGrand and his wife, Nina; Jean was a Schlumberger-Doll executive. (A few years later the LeGrandes sold much of the land to Peter Lorenzini and Norman Craig who developed Grand View Drive — a perfect pun reflecting the location and the former owner.) 

Some 38 acres were left and in 1968, Salomon decided to give the land to the town of Ridgefield as open space, to be officially known as “The B. E. and Regine Levy Park and Recreational Area and Wildlife Refuge.” Since then, another 10 acres have been added to the park, which today has many trails through meadowland, woods, and wetlands.

 Salomon had a long history as a philanthropist. He was a major benefactor of the New York Public Library, where he was chairman of the Board of Trustees. He was also on the boards of Brown University,  Lincoln Center, WNET Channel 13, and Stamford Hospital. He had lived in Stamford and died there in 1994 at the age of 82. 

Jean and Harrison Horblit:

Philanthropic Collectors

Jean and Harrison Horblit were collectors and philanthropists who made often incalculably valuable contributions to many organizations — including those interested in the history and conservation of Ridgefield. 

A widely known and respected collector of antique books and manuscripts, Harrison D. Horblit was born in Boston in 1912, graduated from Harvard in 1933 and became a textile executive. But his avocation as a collector made him known around the world. His specialty was antique books and manuscripts related to the history of science, mathematics and navigation, and his own book, “One Hundred Books Famous in Science,” is still considered a bible in its field. 

Much of his collection of rare books and manuscripts, including many items from the 1400s and 1500s, was donated to Harvard's Houghton Library.  

After his death, Jean Horblit catalogued and then gave his large collection of 19th Century photographs, including 3,141 daguerreotypes and 3,100 paper prints from as early as 1839, to Houghton where it is now The Harrison D. Horblit Collection of Early Photography. 

Mr. Horblit was also interested in local history. In 1973, when a group of Ridgefielders tried to buy a 1780 English print of the Battle of Ridgefield at a Sotheby's auction, they quickly ran out of money. Mr. Horblit stepped in and eventually paid $16,000 for an item Sotheby's had valued at under $2,500. “This print belongs in Ridgefield if it belongs anywhere,” Mr. Horblit said at the time. 

Three months after his death in 1988, Mrs. Horblit donated the print to the Keeler Tavern Museum. 

Jean Mermin Horblit was born in 1910 in New Haven, where she grew up and was the 1927 Connecticut High School shorthand champion. She studied at Columbia University and became the head of fabric designs for a division of Marshall Field & Company. It was there that she met her husband; they were married in 1952.

She was a collector of antique Japanese woodblock prints, illustrated books and maps known as Ukiyo-e or “images of a floating world,” which cover scenes from everyday life of the people. Her prints and books have been exhibited at the Hammond Museum, Princeton University, and Katonah Gallery, and a rare 17th Century map of Tokaido was shown at the New York Museum of Natural History. 

She also donated pieces of their collections to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Mrs. Horblit had been a major benefactor of the new Ridgefield Historical Society and its efforts to restore the Scott House as its headquarters.

She also donated 22 acres of her estate bordering Round Pond to the Land Conservancy of Ridgefield.

The Horblit home itself, a magnificent English Georgian-style mansion that had been meticulously maintained by Mrs. Horblit, is an important piece of Ridgefield history. Built in 1930 from limestone imported from France, “Oreneca” was all but abandoned by its owner, Philip D. Wagoner, after the death of his wife a few years later. When the Horblits bought the place in 1965, the property was so overgrown they did not know the house overlooked nearby Round Pond. 

Avid yachters, Jean and Harrison Horblit sailed the Maine Coast for two months every summer for many years. Jean Horblit moved to Stonington in 2004 and died in 2009 at the age of 98.

Irene Hoyt:

Our Florence Nightingale on Wheels

Irene Smith Hoyt was a nurse – for most of her career, THE nurse – at the District Nursing Association, where she worked from 1927 until her death in 1972. But she was more than a nurse. “When Irene Hoyt came into a sick room,” Linette Burton wrote in a Ridgefield Press editorial, “the patient’s spirits rose as she crossed the threshold.”   

The Wilton native grew up in Ridgefield.  and graduated from the high school in 1925. After two years of nursing school, Hoyt joined the DNA, now the Ridgefield Visiting Nurse Association. 

During her 45-year career, she ministered to literally thousands of Ridgefielders. She was called Ridgefield’s “Florence Nightingale on Wheels,” and for decades her name was synonymous with the District Nursing Association — and a helping hand.

For most of her career, she was the only employee of the District Nursing Association, working out of a one-room office on Catoonah Street. As an example of what that meant, in 1956,

● She handled 933 cases. Those cases entailed 4,823 visits.
● At the same time, she provided health checks, including weighing and measuring, for 1,182 school children.
● She did 1,139 vision and hearing tests for students.
● She assisted the school physician with 596 physical exams of students.
● She performed 990 individual health inspections “for emergency care and dressings to prevent spread of contagious diseases”

During that time, the DNA was governed by seven volunteer officers including a first vice president and a second vice president, and 19 volunteer members of a board of directors. All, to see that Irene Hoyt and her patients got the support they needed.

Today there are more than 100 paid staff members of the Ridgefield Visiting Nurse Association, the modern version of the DNA. Instead of a one-room office on Catoonah Street, the RVNA has a multimillion dollar headquarters which just opened on Governor Street. 

In 1964, when Philanthropist Jack B. Ward gave Hoyt a brand-new Studebaker Commander,

he observed that she “was all by herself and she had a tiny little dilapidated car – it was almost like in the old-fashioned days when a nurse got on a horse and went up into the mountains.That little lady worked so hard that I decided to buy her a proper car.”

The building Hoyt worked in “looked so run down inside” that Ward  once paid to have the association headquarters completely renovated.

Her devotion to the welfare of Ridgefielders led to her being named Rotary Citizen of the Year in 1962.

(An accidental fall from her high chair as an infant resulted in a broken chin so damaged that doctors were unable to properly repair it. It left her with a chin that was very recessed and she appeared to have no chin at all.)  

It was in her office, doing the work she loved so much, that Miss Hoyt died suddenly one Sunday in 1972 at the age of 63.

“She devoted her talents to helping people who were in trouble – physical, mental or emotional – and her success can be gauged by the number of people who will miss her gentle ministrations,” Linette Burton wrote.

Henry K. McHarg: 

A ‘Santa’ to Many

Ridgefield has been the home of many generous people, but often they were little known for their munificence, preferring not to publicize their generosity. One of them was Henry McHarg, a railroad tycoon who, it it said, over his lifetime quietly gave away some $2 million — equivalent today to more than $50 million.

While most of his gifts were behind the scenes,  one couldn’t avoid being showy.

In 1906, McHarg sold one of his railroads (Virginia & Southwestern) for $6-million ($162-million in today’s dollars). To show his appreciation for the Virginia & Southwestern employees,  he arranged just before Christmas for a special “Santa Claus” train on which a conductor, dressed as St. Nick, traveled the length of the railroad with presents from McHarg to all his former employees. The gifts included full years’ salaries to the higher officials, month’s salaries to all others who had been employed by the railroad for at least a year and various other gifts for the remaining staff. 

 In July 1910, after the sale of the Texas Central Railroad, he did the same thing.

How many corporate leaders of today would do that?

Henry King McHarg was born in Albany, N.Y., in 1851. His great grandfather was Lt. Joshua King, the Revolutionary War “celebrity” and prominent Ridgefield businessman, and his great great grandfather was the Rev. Jonathan Ingersoll, the second minister of the First Congregational Church (both King and Ingersoll are profiled in Who Was Who).

McHarg attended a private school in Geneva, N.Y. At the age of 15, he joined the investment offices of LeGrand Lockwood, a Wall Street stockbroker. Lockwood’s interests included railroads, among them the Danbury and Norwalk Railroad, of which he was a major stockholder and eventually president. Lockwood’s interest in railroads may have inspired McHarg, who also became fascinated with that rapidly growing industry and wound up owning a at least four railroads around the country. (Lockwood, a Norwalk native who died in 1872, built and lived in what is now the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion, a historical museum in Norwalk.) 

When Lockwood ran into some financial troubles in 1869 and had to downsize his office, McHarg joined the Third National Bank and worked his way up in the world of finance so that on the day after his 21st birthday, he became a member of the New York Stock Exchange (when he retired from the exchange in 1926, he was its oldest member). In 1873, he went into the bond and investment business in partnership with William Adams, under the name of Adams & McHarg. After 12 years, the two split and McHarg continued the business alone.

According to The Encyclopedia of Connecticut biography, published in 1917, “The railroad

interests of Mr. McHarg have for a long period been numerous and important.” His specialty was taking over failing railroads and turning them into successful, profitable operations. Among them were the Texas Central (of which he was president for about 20 years),  the Atlanta, Knoxville & Northern, the Virginia & Southwestern, and Detroit & Mackinac. He was president of all those railroads but also served as a director of many others, including the Danbury and Norwalk Railroad, and the New York, New Haven, and Hartford (later the New Haven railroad), which took over the Danbury and Norwalk line.

“Mr. McHarg’s railroad work has invariably been constructive,” the encyclopedia said. “While the element of speculation, which is never wholly absent from any business undertaking, had its part in his ventures, more especially as they were all the rehabilitation of unsuccessful enterprises, he has contributed substantially to the advancement of the railroad interests of the last third of a century, having imparted to everything he undertook some portion of his vitalizing energy.”

It was through his railroading ventures that McHarg wound up naming a town. For many years he had a home in Stamford. According to Texas historian Tammy Hill Harvey, in April of 1891, a group of Texas Central Railroad bondholders that included Henry McHarg bought the railroad, which was in foreclosure.  McHarg made many trips to Texas to reorganize the Texas Central and in 1899, after a meeting with two men named Swenson who owned a large tract of land for a new town, he struck a deal in which the Swensons gave half their land to the Texas Central in exchange for making the town the new end of the line. A 40-mile track was laid from Albany, Texas, to the new town site, which McHarg named “Stamford” in honor of his own home town. On Jan. 8, 1900, Stamford, Texas was officially incorporated.” (Today, the city of some 3,100 people is best know as the home of the annual “Texas Cowboy Reunion.”)

McHarg was an avid yachtsman and in the 1890s owned the 65-foot cruising schooner, Neaera. He was a founder in 1895 of the Stamford Yacht Club (the club proudly points out that Commodore McHarg was responsible for naming Stamford, Texas, and that McHarg’s vice-commodore at the club was Schuyler Merritt, the Connecticut congressman for whom the Merritt Parkway was named).

Around 1925, after his wife Fredericka had died, McHarg decided to move to the town of his family’s roots, buying a house on Nod Road a little south of Whipstick Road. Two years later he married Elizabeth Clark Pierce; she was 36 and he, 76. The Nod Road home remained his main residence for the rest of his life. 

McHarg was a philanthropist who usually went out of his way to keep his donations anonymous. “It is reported that they totaled $2 million, but rarely was public mention made of them,” The Times said in his obituary. But the newspaper did point out that one of his many New York City contributions was $5,000 ($70,000 today) to the “Home for Old Men and Aged Couples,” operated by the Episcopal church.

He showed considerable generosity in Stamford, where he had lived for more than 35, giving large amounts of money to organizations like Stamford Hospital, the YMCA,  and the
Ferguson Library.

His contributions in Ridgefield were kept quiet — except for one he made 37 years before he moved to town. McHarg donated to the First Congregational Church the land on which its landmark stone church was built in 1888.

Henry McHarg died in 1941 of a heart attack while wintering in Florida. His wife, Elizabeth, continued to live in Ridgefield until 1966 when she moved to Apache Junction, Ariz. She helped pioneer the organic gardening movement in the Ridgefield area in the 1930s, was active in the Red Cross during World War II, and after the war revitalized the Ridgefield chapter of Children’s Services of Connecticut (now Family and Children’s Aid). She died in 1976 at the age of 85. 

What must have been one of the most trying periods for the McHarg family occurred in the 1930s when the aging Henry Sr., then 82, was sued by his son, Henry Jr., then 53, for failing to give him control of the Detroit & Mackinac Railroad as Senior had apparently promised. Junior had

worked for years as the railroad’s vice president and general manager at a small salary that he accepted with the understanding the railroad would someday be his.

But after his mother died and his father remarried, dad decided he wanted to sell the railroad so he could give most of the proceeds to charity. The son would get $300,000 after dad died.

Henry Jr. did not like that, and sued his father for $1 million. The two became “enemies” for several years.

When the suit was finally settled, the story in The New York Times brought tears to the eyes of many readers.

New York State Supreme Court Justice Aaron J. Levy presided over the case in October of 1934. After several conferences, a settlement was reached in which Senior would make a new will, leaving a third of his estate — nearly $1 million — to Junior and Junior’s three children. 

The lawyer for Junior tried to get the son to shake hands with his father and become friends again. Junior refused. The judge then told the younger McHarg: “Don’t you know this defendant is your father, whether he is right or wrong?”

“You don’t know the bitterness I have suffered over these years,” replied the son.

“I don’t want to hear about that,” said Justice Levy. “My suggestion in the light of this settlement, and even apart from it, is that you go and tender your hand to your father and ask him to forgive you.”

“The son then asked for time to consider the proposal,” the Times said, “but Judge Levy asked him to act at once. The younger McHarg then agreed, and walked up to his father at the counsel table, extending his hand. The father looked up, blinked in surprise and then took his son’s hand and embraced him. Both wept for some moments. 

“After they sat together for a time, the son told the court, ‘I am glad Your Honor brought me to think of it. Now we will both be very happy and I know my children will be also.’

“‘I would give this boy my soul,’ said the father.”

The two left the court, arm in arm.

Junior died in 1943, only two years after his father.

Paul and Johanna Laszig: 

Surprise Philanthropists

A man who listened to advice and a woman who was grateful for help were behind a generous philanthropic effort. Since the early 1980s, the Paul and Johanna Laszig Fund for the Elderly has distributed more than one million dollars to help Ridgefield’s seniors.

 Paul Laszig was born in Gonswen, East Prussia (now Poland), in 1900. After learning the trade of a barber, he emigrated to Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1923. After only three years there, he decided to come to the United States, arriving in 1926 and living in New York City. There, in 1932, he married Irmgard Johanna Heine, who had been born in 1892 in Dresden, Saxony, which was later part of East Germany. She had come to the United States two years earlier to work as a maid. 

The same year they were married, the Laszigs moved to Ridgefield.

For 33 years Paul Laszig operated The Modern Barber Shop on Catoonah Street, about opposite where the telephone building is today. The couple rented on Gilbert Street for many years before building a house at 245 West Lane (torn down around 2007 to make way for a more elaborate house).

On Wednesdays, when his shop was closed, Paul Laszig would visit the homes of some of

the area’s wealthy and powerful men to cut their hair. In the process, he’d pick up their advice on smart investments, in stocks or real estate. Among his clients were former U.S. Vice President Henry Wallace of South Salem, Ingersoll-Rand Chairman George Doubleday of Ridgefield, Underwood typewriter chief Philip Wagoner of Ridgefield, and pollster Elmo Roper of Redding. “Paul, like most barbers, was a good conversationalist, but more important, he was a good listener,” said town historian Dick Venus.

Laszig retired in 1965 after 51 years of cutting hair. He died in 1974 at the age of 74. 

After Johanna died in 1980 at the age of 87, it was revealed that she had left an estate worth around $1.4 million, most of which was investments her husband had made thanks to his Wednesday clippings.

In her will Johanna bequeathed a share of her estate to create a fund to benefit the elderly. In her later years, she had had difficulty walking and was eventually wheelchair-bound. Friends speculated that the assistance she received from organizations such as Meals on Wheels and the District Nursing Association (now Visiting Nurse Association) helped inspire her to create the fund.

The will specified that the trust fund would aid elderly Ridgefielders “including, but not limited to, providing them with housing, medical assistance, transportation, food, or other  services for their general welfare in order that they may live out the remainder of their lives in dignity.”

The estate took more than two years to settle, delayed partly because the main portion of the bequests was left to five of Mrs. Laszig’s relatives in East Germany including a cousin and a nephew. Since East Germany was a communist country,  the will stipulated that if  “for any reason whatsoever, including but not limited to the law or policy of the government of East Germany,” the German beneficiaries would not receive the money left to them, that money would go to the fund for the elderly.

Union Trust Company, the bank that through several mergers is now Wells Fargo, was in charge of the trust. Attorney John E. Dowling, representing the bank and the trust, questioned whether the money should be sent to East Germany because most of it would wind up in the hands of the communist government there.

Dowling and the bank’s senior trust officer flew to West Germany to meet with a lawyer the East German heirs had hired. They negotiated an agreement in which the East Germans would receive 65% of the investments instead of all of it. The Laszig Fund would get the remaining 35% plus the $100,000 from the sale of the house. Thus, the fund was set up with around $371,000 instead of $100,000. In today’s dollars, that’s $935,000 vs. $252,000 — well worth the trip to Germany.

 Each year the fund provides an average of six grants to nonprofit organizations and efforts helping Ridgefielders who are 62 years old or older. Grants range from $1,000 to $25,000, and total around $50,000 — although some years, as much as $59,000 has been distributed.

Among the efforts the fund has recently help support  are the fitness program at Founders Hall, the work of the town’s Commission on Aging, and buying large-print and audio books for the Ridgefield Library. Groups getting aid also include the Ridgefield Community Center, the town’s Social Services Department, Meals on Wheels, and the Ridgefield Visiting Nurse Association.

In 1983, the fund gave out $25,000 in grants — equivalent to about $61,000 in today’s money. So far over the years, it has distributed more than $1 million to aid the elderly of Ridgefield. The fund itself, which began at $371,000, has grown over the years and now has assets worth just over $1 million.

“I think Mrs. Laszig will be remembered for a long time for her generosity to agencies like Meals on Wheels,” said Romeo G. Petroni, who had been Mrs. Laszig’s attorney when her will was draw up. “Her memory and Paul’s memory will long survive — after we’re all gone — for the good they’ve done.”

Wadsworth R. Lewis: 

Millions in Gifts

Countless thousands of Ridgefield people have benefited from the “Lewis Fund,” but few have known who “Lewis” was. 

Since it began distributing money in 1950, the Wadsworth R. Lewis Fund has given local charitable, educational or religious organizations more than $3.4 million. In today’s money, if inflation were calculated into those gifts, that’s more than $15 million in help.

Waddy Lewis would be pleased.

Born in Tarrytown, N.Y., in 1889, Wadsworth Russell Lewis was a son of Frederic E. and Mary Lewis. Around 1908 his parents bought the West Lane estate of Henry B. Anderson and began turning the 100-acre spread into one of the grandest of country homes of the era. Called Upagenstit, the estate is now the Ridgefield Manor, including Lewis Drive and Manor Road.

“Waddy,” as he was called, grew up in New York City and at Upagenstit. As a young man, he apparently led a life of leisure; at the age of 27, when he registered for the draft on June 5, 1917 in Ridgefield, he listed “none” as his occupation. But as World War I loomed on the horizon, he donated his yacht to the U.S. Navy to use to patrol New York Harbor. Soon thereafter, when he joined the Navy himself, he was put in command of his former vessel which patrolled New York Harbor. He later served in Washington as a lieutenant in the Censoring Department of the War College.

After the war, Lewis spent more time in Ridgefield. According to town historian Dick Venus, he enjoyed local sports and in the 1920s, even sponsored a Ridgefield baseball team, buying the uniforms and equipment, and paying some semi-pro players to beef up the squad. They came known as “Waddy’s All-Stars.”

Venus tells the story of one game at the old high school field on East Ridge at which Lewis, in an effort to please the crowd, offered $5 for each home run hit by a member of the Ridgefield team. “The offer was only a few minutes old when a conference with the opposing pitcher was held behind the old grandstand,” Venus said. “The result was an eruption such as has seldom been seen on any ballfield. Baseballs began to rain on Governor Street and some even reached the lawn of the state police barracks (now the Ridgefield Police headquarters). 

“They were not fooling Waddy — he was well aware that he was being taken. However, he enjoyed the demonstration as much as the players and the fans, and he had a broad smile as each crack of the bat sent the ball soaring in the air.”

It wasn’t just athletes that Lewis helped out. In the late 1930s, he came to the rescue of The Ridgefield Press which, a couple years earlier, been purchased by the brothers Karl and John Nash.

John, a longtime friend of Lewis, explained what happened: “My brother and I had the Ridgefield Press and in the early days, we were really struggling. The previous owner of the building sold it to us with a mortgage of $9,000. Rather unexpectedly one day, they approached us and wanted us to close out the mortgage.

“We, of course, didn’t have the money. We managed to negotiate them down to $3,000, but we didn’t have that either.

“Somehow, Waddy heard about it, probably through our mutual friend, Joe Donnelly, who was the attorney on the original deal. One day he showed up with a chauffeur-driven Lincoln, and told us that he was going to take care of the problem. He drove us down to New York to his bank. He asked the bank manager to arrange a loan at a favorable rate for his friends. The bank manager said, ‘Of course, Mr. Lewis. Would a rate of 2% be okay?’ That solved the problem for us and saved the paper.”

In 1934, Mary Lewis, by then a widow, sold Upagenstit. Waddy Lewis, however, enjoyed Ridgefield so much that he decided to build his own estate here in 1939, located between Limestone and Great Hill Roads. He called the place Taghkanick, an Indian word that some have translated as “wild place” and others, as a “clearing in a forest.”

Lewis’s parents were always interested in the welfare of the people in their town. That sense of community was especially strong in their son and particularly as he grew older, he became more interested in the “serious” side of community life. He became a member of the Board of Education, served on the Draft Board, and during World War II, the Ration Board. He was on the building committee that renovated the town hall around 1940.

He was also an award-winning grower of orchids, helped along by the premier orchid expert, John W. “Jack” Smith, who was his estate superintendent (also profiled in Who Was Who). 

Lewis was also an avid golfer and among his many friends on the local links was Alex Santini, a well-known Ridgefield caterer, chef and restaurateur. At some point Lewis gave Santini a putter. But it was no ordinary putter and Santini was no ordinary player. According to Dick Venus, “it was an exceptionally large putter and weighed considerably more than the ordinary club.” Santini used it not only for putting, but for driving, pitching and chipping. “Compensating somehow for its flat face, Alex was able to tee off and send the ball great distances,” Venus said. With that one putter, “he was able to beat other good golfers who used a complete set of clubs.”

In 1941, Lewis became ill for several months. While he recovered he was noticeably more frail. On Nov. 3, 1942, shortly after returning home from a meeting of the local Draft Board, he suffered a heart attack and died; he was only 53.  

Lewis had established the fund in his will, stating that grants should benefit non-profits “which are conducted in whole or in part for the benefit or use of the residents of Ridgefield and its vicinity.” However, he stipulated that it not begin functioning until his mother had died — the cost of her care would apparently affect the amount of the fund. Mary Lewis died in 1950.

And it was in 1950 that the Lewis Fund made its first grants, totaling $15,000 — that’s equal to about $152,000 in today’s dollars. By 1983, the annual grants had risen to $59,000 ($144,000 in today’s dollars). 

In 2015, grants totalling $116,000 were made to some 45 organizations.

Thus, the grants today amount to about eight times more than when they began. Yet, thanks to inflation, their buying power is noticeably less.

Waddy Lewis’s Taghkanick later became the home of Henry and Clare Boothe Luce, and then of the rare-book dealer, Hans Peter Kraus (all three of whom are profiled here in the Who Was Who series). The house is still in use today, though much of the estate’s land has been subdivided in recent years.

Louise Peck: 

Conservationist & Philanthropist

One day in the early 1990s, two teenagers received $3,000 checks in the mail from a woman they’d never met. The boys’ parents had casually known Louise Peck for 25 years. Peck later told the parents she had seen the boys walking to school for many years, admired the fact that they walked instead of taking the bus, and wanted to help with their college educations. 

It was just one small example of the kindness – often unexpected or unusually generous – of a woman who gave away literally millions of dollars.

She did so quietly;  Peck was much better known as a vocal conservationist, who fought for land preservation long before it was popular. She spoke at meetings, wrote letters, served on the Conservation Commission for 11 years, was a supervisor of the Fairfield County Soil and Water Conservation District, and belonged to the conservation committee of the Ridgefield Garden Club for years. 

She sometimes got in trouble. In 1980, Peck was nearly take to court for libel after she wrote a fiery letter criticizing Casagmo/Fox Hill developer David Paul and his plans to build more condominiums on Danbury Road. 

But she was not afraid of being on the hot seat. In the early 1950s, when whites belonging to black organizations were unusual, Peck was very active in the newly formed Ridgefield Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. That was during the heyday of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and she was ridiculed for her work. As she said  years later, “I was called a communist by some of the supporters of that sickly man. That was because I was an officer of the NAACP at the time.”

Louise D. Peck was born in 1919  in New York City where she grew up and graduated from Barnard College of Columbia University. Her major in English served her during World War II when she was in the Women’s Army Corps. An instructor stationed in Goldsboro, N.C., from 1943 to 1945, she taught sometimes illiterate recruits to get their English up to at least sixth grade levels.

It was during her Army years that she met Grace Woodruff, who was to become her lifelong companion. “Woody,” who died in 1994, shared Peck’s desire to find a place in the country and the two came here in 1946, eventually buying a home on North Salem Road — which they called “Woodpecker Hill,” an amalgam of their names and their interest in birds. 

During the 1950s they operated a music store on Main Street, selling records, radio, sheet music, and some instruments.

Besides conservation work, Peck served on the library board, was a director of the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra, and a founder of the NAACP chapter here. 

A poet, her work was published in such magazines as Harper’s, and in The New York Times, for which she also wrote gardening and natural history articles. For many years she and Woodruff raised sheep at Woodpecker Hill, a fact reflected in the title of her book, “Lambing and Other Poems,” published in 1979.

Peck donated 10 acres at Turtle Pond and later most of her own homestead on North Salem Road to the Land Conservancy of Ridgefield. 

She not only fought for, but also lived conservation. Although she was well-to-do, she owned a small house and drove just about the tiniest, most economical cars she could find. Her own property was a wildlife refuge, full of fields with bluebird boxes and edged with plantings that were food and habitat for birds and other creatures.

After her death in 1999 at the age of 79, it was revealed that she had bequeathed more than three million dollars to such organizations as the Ridgefield Library, Keeler Tavern Museum, and the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra.

“Although Louise was outspoken when it came to many issues, her donations to civic, charitable, conservation, and arts organizations were done without fanfare, without the desire or need for recognition,” said one speaker at her memorial service. “There were no testimonial dinners, no awards, no hoop-la. Louise stood out as a model of modesty. She did good because she wanted to do good, not for any reward or recognition she would receive in return. She did good because it was the right thing to do.”