Mary Linda Bradley: 
Free-Spirited & Adventurous

Whether it was with four legs or two wings, Mary Linda Bradley liked being out in the open air. The poet and writer loved horses, dogs and flying and became one of the earliest women pilots, owning her own plane.

A descendant of Col. Philip Burr Bradley, a Revolutionary War leader and prominent 18th Century Ridgefielder, Mary Linda Bradley was born in 1886 in Chicago. Her father was William Harrison Bradley, a United States diplomat who brought the family with him on assignments in Italy, England and Canada. His first wife, Mary, was killed in a train crash, and his second wife, Carolina “Carrie” Lawson, decided to name their daughter after William’s first wife.

“Don’t you think it was sporty of my mother to name me after her?” Mary Linda once told a friend. 

Shortly after the turn of 20th Century, the Bradleys moved to Ridgefield, establishing an estate off Peaceable Hill Road called Felsenberg — possibly built on land that William’s great grandfather, Colonel Bradley, had once owned. When World War I broke out, both Mary Linda and her sister Marion became active in community efforts on the home front. Mary Linda founded the local chapter of the National League for Women’s Service, and was its first chairman. The league did projects to support the troops. Both sisters were athletic, organizing and playing on the Katoonah Basket Ball Club, a woman’s team that was captained by Mary Linda and coached by a young Francis D. Martin before the war.

After the war, Bradley built her own house, called Ackworth Cottage, off West Mountain Road, and although she later lived part of the year in Arizona or California, she always considered this her home. (Ackworth was the Yorkshire home of  the Rev. Thomas Bradley   [1597-1673], chaplain to King Charles I, and an ancestor of the Bradleys of Connecticut.)

Educated at private schools in Europe and North America, Mary Linda Bradley began writing while in Ridgefield, especially poetry but also natural history essays. Two books of her poetry were published. One, Reconnaissances, produced in 1937 by William Harrison Press, included a two-act poetic play, “Delusion,” set on an ocean liner and in Manhattan.

Her natural history interests included birds, and she wrote a number of pieces for publications about her observations. One, which appeared in a California periodical in the early 1930s, told of a problem that one bird caused.

“The viborous innocent villain,” she wrote, “was the Red-Naped Sapsucker, who gouged the trunk of the old Acacia by my west window, from dawn to dusk. The sap must have been worth a bird singing commercial, because one hopeful hummingbird took up his orbit around the tree and when the Red Nape withdrew for a ‘breather,’ the hummer rushed to the cracks and holes and satisfied his thirst till Red Nape returned.

“Then, amusingly, the sparrows came to the feast and tried to hover like tiny jeweled helicopters! At this point, I began to be worried about the poor Acacia, which was trying to become a golden tent, but was losing too much sap! So, ruthlessly, we decided to bind its wounds with friction-tape. The free lunch was over!”

She also liked horses. She had a postcard made of a picture of herself in 1926 with a favorite horse named Bird, whom she described on the back as “almost as clever and sassy as she looks.”

Over the years Bradley penned many letters to The Ridgefield Press, few of them of the warm and fuzzy type. In 1960, when town officials were considering a petition to change the name of the road bordering her family’s old estate from Standpipe Road to Peaceable Hill Road, she expressed her opposition and exclaimed, “How titsy-pootsy can one get!”

She also self-published a 188-page autobiography, The Fifth Decade, produced in 1947 by the Arts & Crafts Press of San Diego, probably mostly for family and friends. It was illustrated with black-and-white photos, printed on photographic paper and tipped into the binding, with captions hand-inscribed by Bradley herself. (A copy appeared on eBay in 2004 for $100. The owner called it “a very personal account of a free-spirited, adventurous single woman meeting middle age head-one — and on her own terms. It is also a record of a fledgling female pilot in an era when most American women were confined to roles as housewives and mothers.”

In the book, she describes herself as “the first Ridgefield she-pilot and the third to be licensed in Arizona.” Around 1930, at her part-time residence in Arizona, she had bought an airplane, naming it “Merry Robin.” At first she hired another early female pilot to be her aerial chauffeur, but by 1932  she had earned her private pilot’s license and was flying the Western skies on her own. She traveled extensively, both in her plane and on land, often accompanied by her dog, Arizona Pete. 

Mary Linda Bradley died at Ackworth Cottage in 1966 at the age of 79. She had been in poor health for many years and spent the last two years bed-ridden.

In late September six years earlier Linette Burton, a reporter for The Press, wrote Bradley, asking to do an interview for the newspaper. Bradley declined, saying “I am too full of wheezes to talk” and adding that “I feel my occupations in and enjoyment of life are of no specific interest to my fellow townsmen.” However, explaining that she admired Burton’s writing and was flattered by her offer, she said she would like to get together just to chat. “Please come to see me when the leaves are worth looking at,” she wrote.

Jeo Casagrande: 

The POW and His Mom

Jeo Casagrande’s life was one of extraordinary adventure, service and accomplishment. Starting out aiming to be an aircraft mechanic, Casagrande wound up piloting huge 10-engine nuclear-armed bombers. He also spent a year and a half as a German prisoner of war.

Jeo Joseph Casagrande was born in 1921 to Adolfo and Ulrica Marcucci Casagrande, longtime residents of Bryon Avenue.  His siblings included Pio, Rudolph, Peter, Yola and Columba Casagrande.

His given name was rather unusual; today only about  two babies in every million born are named Jeo. It led to some identity problems, especially in military reporting. His name often appears in official records as Leo Casagrande, and sometimes as Joe Casagrande. The American Air Museum in Britain uses both Leo and Joe, but never Jeo.

Casagrande attended Ridgefield schools and graduated from Ridgefield High School in 1939. That December he entered the U.S. Army; it was three months after war had begun in Europe but two years before the United States became involved.

His aim was to be an aircraft mechanic, but the Army saw different talents in the 18-year-old recruit. In the years that followed Casagrande worked his way up to become an  officer and a navigator aboard heavy bombers that flew in the European Theatre from bases in England.

On Jan. 11, 1944, he was on a bombing mission to Oschersleben in north-central Germany when his B-17 Flying Fortress was shot down by German fighters. Strangely, two days after his plane was lost, his parents received a cablegram from him, reporting he had been promoted from second to first lieutenant. About 10 days later, however, they learned he was missing in action.

There were reports Casagrande may have parachuted from the plane, giving the family hope. Then in March, a postcard arrived, dated Jan. 17, saying: “I am a prisoner of war in Germany. I am not injured in any way. Apply to your local Red Cross agent for all details. This is only a transit camp. I will write and give my return address from my next camp in a few days. Love to all, Jeo.” 

On Jan. 26, he wrote another card, not received in Ridgefield until May. “Dear Mom,” he

said, “Just finished a good game of cards and am about ready for bed. Sleep and food are both very plentiful. You must give the Red Cross $25 for me. They’re doing wonders over here…”

To cheer up his family, he added, “Believe me, when I get home, there won’t be a sad person around. Everyone must be cheerful and I myself will not have a grouchy day for the rest of my life.”

Casagrande spent the rest of the war as a prisoner at Stalag Luft 1 in Barth-Vogelsang, Prussia, and was liberated by the Russians in June 1945. 

For many people, six years  — a quarter of the time in a German prison camp  — would have been enough military service. But Casagrande loved the Army Air Corps and elected to stay in after the war. After the U.S. Air Force became a separate entity in 1947, he became a captain in the new service. 

In 1950 he was chosen to pilot of one of the first new B-36 bombers assigned to the 2nd Air Force, the reconnaissance arm of the Strategic Air Command. The B-36 was an immense aircraft — the largest piston-engined airplane ever put to use, with the longest wingspan — 230 feet — of any combat aircraft ever built (by comparison, a Boeing 747 has 196-foot wingspan). The plane’s first

versions had six engines, a total soon increased to 10 — six prop and four jet! The B-36 required a crew of from nine to 15 people and because of it size and complexity, it was notoriously difficult to fly.

When he retired in 1962, Casagrande was a lieutenant colonel serving as an SAC squadron leader of B-47 bombers. His commendations included the Air Medal, awarded for meritorious service in aerial flight during World War II.

He became a stockbroker in Riverside, Calif., where he lived for 35 years and was active in community work. He served on the Commission on Aging and on an area social services board, and was active in the California Handicapped Association. He died in Riverside in 1996 at the age of 74. He was buried in Riverside National Cemetery with full military honors and an Air Force fly-over.

One of the first things Jeo Casagrande did when he was freed from Stalag Luft 1 was to write home, praising the Red Cross  — knowing that his mother, Ulrica, was a Red Cross volunteer in Ridgefield.

“The efforts and accomplishments of the Red Cross are a work worthy of the utmost admiration,” he told his mother. “While I was a prisoner, it was the Red Cross who kept me from looking like one of those neglected prisoners of war you no doubt have seen in the movies or magazines. Now, though the Army gives us the best of care, food and medical attention, it is the Red Cross which provides the entertainment and additional comforts which make life quite pleasant.”

Casagrande added, “I am proud to know my Mom has been patiently making bandages and other stuff for this famous organization. Yes, here is one of the Casagrande boys coming home in a few weeks and probably the biggest one factor in helping him survive this struggle has been his own mother’s outfit.”

Walter Gengarelly: 

His Own Drummer

Four Ridgefielders have been their party’s candidates for governor of Connecticut.

The Lounsbury brothers, Phineas and George, were both Republicans and both successful at winning the office.

Melbert B. Cary was a Democrat, but he lost.

And Walter Gengarelly was a Libertarian and, perhaps needless to say, he also lost. 

But few people have been as dedicated to a party and its ideals as was Gengarelly, who  died literally while running for office and whose name is recalled today in an award offered by the Connecticut Libertarian Party.

Walter Janvier Gengarelly Jr. was born in 1935 in New York City, but grew up on a poultry farm in Hillsdale, N.J. He  served three years in the U.S. Army as an artillery radar technician.

Gengarelly began his career in aviation when he took a job at the Ramapo Valley Airport in Spring Valley, N.Y.  to earn money to help pay for his own flying lessons. He worked his way up from a mechanic’s helper to a commercially rated charter pilot, flight instructor, and finally manager and vice president of the airport itself.

In 1967, while living in Vermont, he was involved with stage and screen choreographer Michael Kidd in establishing the Red Fox Airport, a small air strip near Bondville, which he subsequently managed. He owned a Cherokee 235 and used it in business and pleasure for many years.

Gengarelly became an advertising and promotions executive for publications in the aviation field. He and his family moved to Ridgefield in 1974, after he joined Air International News, a magazine based in Danbury. 

In Ridgefield he became active in the Ridgefield Taxpayers League, the Mill Rate Watchers,

and the Republican Party. As a Republican, he ran unsuccessfully for first selectman in 1979 against popular incumbent Louis J. Fossi.

Three years later, after dropping out of the GOP, Gengarelly ran for governor on the Libertarian ticket. He knew he would not win the election, but putting himself up as a candidate allowed him and his party to spread the Libertarian message. 

“The simplest explanation is that we are fiscal conservatives and social liberals,” Gengarelly told The Ridgefield Press. “The point, really, is that people should have a right to make choices about their lives themselves, and not have the government make it for them. How you would educate your children, what kind of medicine you would use if you’re sick, what kind of doctor to get to if you’re sick, what work you do, what you get paid for working.”

Gerard Brennan, state chairman of the Libertarian Party at the time, said Gengarelly was chosen based on his political experience and his ability to articulate the party’s philosophy. Because the Libertarian platform was not well known, it was that articulation, rather than winning the election,

that was most important, Brennan said.

“We don’t have any delusions about winning right away, but it’s important to disseminate our ideas,” added state secretary Richard Loomis.   

In the end, Gengarelly got only about 8,000 votes — winner William A. O’Neill, a Democrat, received 569,000 votes and Republican Lewis B. Rome, 496,000. 

Gengarelly did not give up with his efforts to promote Libertarian positions. He ran for state representative from Ridgefield in 1983 and  for congressman in the 5th Connecticut District in 2002, 2008 and 2010.

Gengarelly was locally known not just for his political activities but also for his rather troubled gas station. In 1978, he bought what had once been called the Hilltop Service Station on Route 33, Wilton Road West, near the Wilton line. In the late 1960s, Shell had acquired the old family-run operation, tore down the low-key but comely Hilltop building that had included a convenience store, and built a modern, glassy station with three service bays — and no store. 

Shell sought a permit to do auto repairs at the station, something Hilltop had never done. The Zoning Board of Appeals refused to allow repairs, saying it would be an illegal expansion of a non-conforming use, and courts upheld the board. Shell was stuck with a three-bay station that could sell only gasoline, oil, and tires, not a moneymaking proposition back then, and the operation eventually shut down.

When Gengarelly took over, he gave up his job working for the aviation magazine, which required a lot of travel, and began working full-time at the gas station. Long hours, many problems and lots of stress resulted. Six months after he bought the station, the nation was hit by the big fuel crisis that resulted from the Iranian revolution. Many stations — especially Gengarelly’s new operation — could not get needed supplies of gas. Long lines formed at stations, and rationing was common.   

All this stress helped lead to the breakup of his marriage. It was a sad irony, Gengarelly said,

 because he had given up his magazine work so he wouldn’t have to travel. “I wanted to be home with my family, that’s why I switched careers,” he told The Press in 1990. “But it wasn’t a good career move.”

The station could not bring in enough money to pay the bills and eventually failed, but Gengarelly, as a Libertarian believer in free enterprise, did not blame the failure on the system. “That’s one of the perils of the free enterprise system,” he said. “Sometimes you go into business and you make money. Sometimes you go into business and you lose money. It just didn’t work out for me — or us, I should say,” referring to his family.

Things got so tough that, for a while, Gengarelly was living in the gas station. Despite all his problems, however, he always seemed optimistic and invariably wore a big smile.

The property was eventually sold, owners got permission for it to become a convenience store, but the station has nonetheless remained closed for years — a sad eyesore on a scenic highway with no other commercial properties for miles.

Gengarelly eventually moved to Newtown and later Danbury. He died of heart problems in 2010 at the age of 75 while in the midst of yet another campaign for Congress. In his honor, the Connecticut Libertarian Party State Central Committee issues the Walter Gengarelly Jr. Award at its annual convention to a person who has exhibited a “sustained and selfless effort to support the cause of liberty” at “extreme sacrifice to him or herself.”

“He was a kind, gentle and generous person who — to those of us who knew him well — very much marched to the beat of his own drummer,” said Wilson Leach, managing director of Air International News. Citing Gengarelly’s Libertarian campaigns for governor and congress, he added, “To the average person this may have appeared to be an unrealistic pursuit, but clearly Walt was a staunch believer in individual liberties.”

Michael Bullock: 

Three Friends Who Flew

Longtime Ridgefielder Mike Bullock loved flying. So did two close friends, Robert Herrman and Donald Gough. All three died doing what they loved to do.

The three met in the U.S. Marines as young jet pilots. Later all three flew fighters off the carrier USS Forrestal in Vietnam. All three then went to work for Trans World Airlines, flying 747s. 

They often did things together. For instance, Gough and Herrman spent 12 years building a single-engine Christen Eagle aerobatic biplane.

On July 17, 1996,  Gough, then off-duty, and his wife Analei, were flying as passengers aboard TWA Flight 800. Twelve minutes after the 747 took off from Kennedy Airport, the plane exploded over the ocean, killing all 230 people aboard. It was the third most deadly plane crash in U.S. history and the subsequent investigation, the most expensive in aviation history, led to a probable cause of a short circuit in a fuel tank. (The engineer aboard the flight was Richard G. Campbell of Ridgefield.) 

Two years later, Bullock and Herrman were flying the Christen Eagle that Gough had helped build. They were near the Napa Valley of California when something went wrong and the aircraft plunged into Lake Berryessa, killing both of them. Bullock was 58 years old.

A New Jersey native, Michael Edward Bullock was born in 1940. He graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1961 and immediately joined the Marine Corps, earning his aviator wings in 1963. After his military service, he flew for TWA from 1966 until 1992, earning the rank of captain. He joined Taiwanese carrier EVA Airways in 1992 and was flying 747s for them when he died in 1998.

Bullock moved to Ridgefield the same year he joined TWA and left the same year he joined EVA, splitting his time between at homes in Chatham on Cape Cod and in Taiwan.

During his years here, he was active in the community. He was a founder and commandant of Ridgefield’s Marine Corps League detachment, and was among the first to lead its Toys for Tots program in town; he was named Marine of the Year in 1979.

He was a member of the Republican Town Committee, and other GOP groups, and was active in the Lions and the old Jaycees club. He managed Little League and Pony Colt baseball teams.

Bullock was also active in the Airline Pilots Association and was its safety and training chairman in the 1980s.

“He was a very outgoing, very friendly, very dynamic type of person,” said Paul Sedlak, a fellow TWA pilot and longtime friend. “He was very active and very involved in everything he ever did. And he was always doing something.”

He had a “zest for living,” said his wife, Mickey, who had been a Ridgefield teacher. “He was a pilot’s pilot.” 

Sereno Jacob:
Fighter Pilot, Playhouse Fighter

A pilot who won the Croix de Guerre for shooting down German fighters in World War I and who was among the earliest to fly commercial airliners may have been largely responsible for the venue that is now the Ridgefield Playhouse.

Born in Brooklyn in 1896, Sereno Thorpe Jacob grew up in Westport. He became a carpenter, but soon ran away from home and joined the Merchant Marine.

Early in World War I, he volunteered as an ambulance driver for the American Field Service in France. While there he became interested in aviation, trained as a pilot, and wound up joining the Lafayette Flying Corps, a group of American volunteer pilots who flew in the French Air Force before the U.S. entered the war. 

He piloted Nieuport 27 and SPAD S.XIII fighters against the Germans from October 1916 through January 1918. He earned the Croix de Guerre with Palm for exceptional bravery after a battle in which he and another pilot shot down a German observation balloon and were then attacked by five German planes. “The American aviators succeeded in sending two of the German planes to earth and drove off the three others,” said a contemporary account.

A record of his service in France reported that “most pilots are glad of an occasional rest from flying, but Jacob, according to his comrades, was always ‘gonfle’ [“pumped up”] — three patrols a day were nothing out of the ordinary for him. The habits of the local Boches [Germans] formed a study of never-failing interest; it was his delight to lie in wait for the wary Rumpler [a German plane] which so often made its photographic reconnaissance at noon, heralded by tracery of white shrapnel puffs across the sky. Though he has three official victories to his credit, Jacob had had bad luck in getting confirmation, and among the chalky hills of the Champagne, ... there are without doubt several fast-disappearing heaps of wreckage which are rightfully his.”

Jacob later served briefly in the U.S. Army at the end of the war..

When the conflict was over, Jacob worked for a while for an American automobile company selling Cadillacs in Belgium, but returned to the states in 1921, when he married Marion Couch Wakeman of Westport. Soon after, the couple moved to Ridgefield to a house on the corner of High Ridge and Barry Avenue (behind the big stone wall built by Joe Knoche) that had belonged to Jacob’s grandfather, Sereno Allen. Their arrival was almost legendary. 

“My father’s greatest public relations coup was arriving in Ridgefield with his beautiful bride, wearing two raccoon coats, in a Stutz Bearcat,” son Merritt Jacob said.  “People were always ready to tell me about their ride in the Stutz — which had an exhaust cutout so that the roar of the engine could be heard miles off.”

For a brief period Jacob flew Ford Trimotors for a regional airline providing service to such cities as Bridgeport, Newark, N.J., Albany, N.Y., and Springfield, Mass., but he left around 1930 when the airline lost its mail contract and went belly-up. Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, a World War I flying ace who founded Eastern Airlines in 1926, knew him, hired him and Jacob flew Eastern’s Curtiss Condor airliners for seven years.

“He was a very early member of the airline pilots union and wrote a paper defending the union, which did not please Captain Eddie,” said Merritt Jacob. “And so they parted ways.”

Jacob’s new career was very land-based: real estate. He worked with Harold E. Finch, a prominent oldtimer and owner of what became Squash’s New Store and is now Ridgefield Office Supply.  However, though he wasn’t flying, he often spoke to clubs and organizations about his years as a pilot, both in World War I and with the airlines. The challenges were many and the instruments few. “Flying blind is like walking a tightrope in a dark closet blindfolded,” he told a First Congregational Church club in 1938 about piloting a plane in overcast weather.

Jacob served three years as chairman of the Board of Assessors and, according to The Press, “devoted his talents to putting that office on a more business-like basis.”

He also served on the building committee that expanded the “old high school” on East Ridge in the late 1930s. Merritt Jacob reports that, “according to my mother, he fought very hard for a separate gym and auditorium — which put Ridgefield way ahead of any of the neighboring towns facilitywise and gave us the auditorium that is still in use” — the Ridgefield Playhouse. “I myself got to see Toscanini conduct in that auditorium. My father could be very forward-looking.”  

During World War II, Jacob was chairman of the Ridgefield Defense Council and worked to bring about greater public appreciation of the danger of the war reaching this country. He was not always successful. In March 1942, he asked the town for $25,000 for civilian defense projects; the Town Meeting later authorized $2,500. 

He was a member of the Republican Town Committee, the Lions Club, and the American Legion. He also belonged to the Last Man’s Club, a group of World War I veterans who met annually to remember their comrades  until the last man died. When Jacob died in 1947 at the age of 51, he was only the second of 31 members to pass away. 

Sereno Jacob loved traveling not only on land and in the air, but also on the sea. He was an expert yachtsman, and had owned 40 and 50 foot sailing vessels that took part in many major racing events. But he also loved a good ride in that Stutz.

One day he was parked in front of town hall when Joe Zwierlein happened by. (A local house painter, Zwierlein was well-known in town; he was a volunteer fireman for 60 years and dog warden for 30.)

“My father asked Joe if he wanted to go for a ride,” Merritt Jacob said. “Well, Joe jumped at the chance. After about 30 minutes of driving, Joe asked my father where they were headed, and my father said, ‘Montreal.’”

It took Zwierlein a bit of time to recover from the shock and figure out what he would tell his wife.