Joseph Dunworth: 

Theater and the Elderly 

A half century ago, Joe Dunworth was as well known in Ridgefield as any non-native was. Today, while few people in town may recognize his name, many benefit from two of the causes he championed: local theater and tax relief for the elderly.

Dunworth, who served in several capacities as a volunteer town official, was among the first to propose that Ridgefield help its elderly by providing a flat-out tax cut. His idea was eventually adopted and has provided millions of dollars in tax breaks for over-65 Ridgefielders.

He was also among the three people who founded what is today the Ridgefield Theater Barn, the first successful theatrical group in town.

Joseph Michael Dunworth, born in 1923 in New York City, had an early interest in the sea.

He was valedictorian of his class at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, N.Y., and soon joined the U.S. Navy, serving at the end of World War II and during the Korean War. He remained in the Naval Reserve until 1967, retiring  as a commander. 

After working for McGraw-Hill and the Burnham Corporation, and earning a master’s degree at Columbia, he formed his own company in 1975. Panatech Engineering sold furnaces and other home heating equipment for such companies as Thermo Pride Industries.

He and his wife, Flo, moved to Ridgefield in 1956, buying a West Lane home that had once housed workers on Frederic E. Lewis’s estate, Upagenstit.

By the early 1960s he began to become active in the community. He eventually served on the Big Three town agencies:  the Board of Education for six years — including time as chairman, the Board of Selectmen for four years, and another eight years on the Board of Finance. He ran unsuccessfully for first selectman in 1969. 

For all those offices, Dunworth was a Democrat, but frequently he openly supported Republicans, finally switching parties in 1989. “My enrollment in the Republican Party approximately one year ago was about 40 years overdue,” Dunworth said in 1990 as he was running for state representative (he lost to Democrat Barbara Ireland, the incumbent).

In 1965, Dunworth, along with Evelyn Foley and Patricia DiMuzio,  formed the Ridgefield Workshop for the Performing Arts for not only staging shows but also “fostering and developing creative talent.”  Its first production, one-act performances of “Sorry, Wrong Number,” and the second act from “Auntie Mame,” took place that November. He went on to direct many subsequent

productions including “Bye-Bye Birdie,” “South Pacific,” and “The Pajama Game.” The  workshop grew into today’s Ridgefield Theater Barn, which  has its own venue on Halpin Lane.

He was also active at St. Mary’s Parish, where he was a director of the Catholic Youth Organization.

After the 1990 election, he retired from public life. He moved  to Danbury in 2002 and died there in 2011 at the age of 88.

In 1972, when he was a selectman, Dunworth became perhaps the first local official to actively fight for significant tax relief for the elderly. In July that year he proposed and actually wrote the draft of a proposed state bill that would allow towns to provide tax breaks to homeowners 65 or older.

“Many elderly citizens are finding it difficult and, in some cases impossible, to pay their real property taxes,” he said.  “Many of the elderly are living lives of quiet desperation. Many of them have lived, worked and paid taxes to the community for 40 to 50 years.

“I believe that towns should honor their golden-age citizens, most of whom have ceased benefiting from their tax dollars, and provide them with certain real property tax concessions, thereby endowing them with some dignity and security in their old age.”

Under Dunworth’s proposal, a town could cut a senior citizen’s tax bill in half at age 70 and eliminate property taxes altogether at 75.

That plan did not go over well, probably because of the large amount of money that under-70 taxpayers might have to make up. But a couple years later, Ridgefield adopted Dunworth’s basic concept, creating a set tax cut for those 65 or older.

When the full program began in 1977, senior taxpayers got a $450 annual reduction in their taxes. That $450 was roughly equivalent to $1,850 in today’s dollars. While the dollar amount of the tax break has gradually increased over the years to $1,048 today, thanks to inflation that’s effectively $800 less than what the town granted in 1977.

Joe Dunworth would not be pleased.

Lillian Moorhead: 

Ahead of Her Time

Men had populated the Board of Selectmen for 265 years, when, in November 1973, that all changed: Lillian Moorhead was elected the first woman ever to hold a seat on the board. 

“Womenpower” did it, she said the day after the election. “I hope my election will encourage more women to run for office.”

It may, indeed, have have helped do just that, for in the years after her election, women began winning more and more seats in town government, often holding majorities on boards and commissions. And eight years after her pioneering win, Ridgefield elected its first woman chief executive, Elizabeth Leonard, who, ironically, defeated Moorhead for the job of first selectman.

“I was in favor of a state income tax and Liz creamed me,” Moorhead said 10 years later. (In 1991, after years of debate, the income tax was finally adopted. “It takes the state a while to catch up with me,” Moorhead said afterwards with a smile.)

A native of New Jersey, Moorhead was born in 1932. She and her husband, James, had lived in the South and on the West Coast before moving to Ashbee Lane in 1963.

She was a liberal Democrat who won the 1973 election alongside First Selectman Louis J. Fossi, also a Democrat, but more of a conservative. Despite Ridgefield’s heavy Republican majority, the two Democrats controlled the board, holding two of its then three seats.

“Lou is a native, a very popular guy,” Moorhead said, explaining the win years later. “Also, there was Watergate and the beginning of the women’s movement.”

Moorhead was re-elected four times, holding her seat until 1983 when she retired. As a selectman, she was an especially strong advocate for creation of the Housing Authority that eventually built the Ballard Green senior housing project.

“There were few believers in the Housing Authority in those early days,”  Fossi told Moorhead in front of more than 200 people who gathered for her retirement party in 1984. “But you acted out of concern for people who are less fortunate than most of us.”

Fossi and Moorhead often disagreed on issues, and votes sometimes found her in the minority, despite party affiliations.

“It’s better to be ahead of the times than behind them, and Lillian, you were ahead of them,” said Judge Romeo G. Petroni, a lifelong Republican, at the retirement dinner. “You have your principles and you stood behind them, even when Lou didn’t understand.”

Moorhead later served many years on the Housing Authority she helped to create. She was also on the Youth Commission, was a trustee of Danbury Hospital, and was a board member of the NAACP, and Regional Y. She was a founding member of the Women’s Political Caucus, which was active here in the 1970s and 80s, and which successfully pressed for the conversion of the Boys Club into a Boys and Girls Club. She also belonged to Friends of the Library, Meals on Wheels and the League of Women Voters.

Professionally, she tried on several different career hats, last of which was as a Realtor. She was well-regarded at that: In 1984, Governor William O’Neill appointed her a member of the Connecticut Real Estate Commission.

When she was moving to Martha’s Vineyard in 1991, she told a Press interviewer, “I used to be a newcomer. Now I’m a townie. It happened in the blink of an eye.”

A 1984 Press editorial said of Moorhead: “One of the most independent thinkers among recent selectmen, she was not afraid to stand up for positions that may have been unpopular with the administration and even with her party. Yet always her positions were enlightened ones, well-considered and with the community’s best interest  in mind.”

When Moorhead died of cancer in 1997 at the age of 65, her daughter, Sarah, observed, “My mom was one of those individuals who truly touched the souls of everyone who was lucky enough to have met her. She embraced life with such determination and zest and tried to impart that to others.”

Harry E. Hull: 

Hero Who Led the Town

Harry E. Hull accomplished two things few others could: He was elected a Democratic first selectman four times in a hugely Republican town and he led the Memorial Day parade for more than 65 years. 

A Ridgefield native and house painter who became a selectman in the 1930s and first selectman in 1947, Mr. Hull was respected in his prime years and virtually venerated in his later life. 

“You could learn a lot from Harry,” fellow Selectman Richard E. Venus once said. “He was superb in the way he could organize and get things done.” 

His administration’s accomplishments included building the town’s first “modern” school – Veterans Park; buying the Community Center property that includes Veterans Park; establishing a real police department instead of using state police and town constables; and leading the recoveries from two natural disasters – the 1950 “tornado” that blew the roof off part of the high school and the famous flood of 1955. 

He served on almost every board and commission in town, including the school board – which he chaired — and Board of Finance. He also headed the Democratic Town Committee, was a deacon of the First Congregational Church, and a member of the volunteer fire department, among many other organizations.  When still in his early 20s, he was a prosecutor in the Town Justice Court.

In his later years, he was best known as a veteran. Harry Hull had sailed for France on his 19th birthday in 1917, fought in many of the major battles of World War I, was wounded at Chateau Thierry, and sent home in 1919 to recuperate. 

“It was supposed to be the war to end all wars,” he said in a 1981 Press interview. “The theory was right but the actuality wasn’t.” 

He helped establish the local American Legion, and was not only the first grand marshal of the Memorial Day parade, he was the only one for 67 years. For almost all of those years and into his 80s, he marched at the head of the parade; for his last few years, he rode. 

He died Jan. 11, 1987, at the age of 88.

John W. Smith: 

The Orchid Man

The many estates that were established around the turn of the 20th Century brought   hundreds of workers to Ridgefield — maids, cooks, butlers, chauffeurs, farmers,  groundskeepers, gardeners, and others. Many found Ridgefield to their liking, wound up settling here and became strong participants in the community.

One of those was Jack Smith, an estate superintendent who was among the best gardeners and also among the most active contributors to his town. His orchids won many national awards and Smith himself was involved in several national horticultural organizations.

A native of England, John W. Smith was born in 1883 in Harrogate. He came to this country in 1910 to work as a gardener at Upagenstit, the West Lane estate of Frederic E. Lewis. After a stint aboard a destroyer in the U.S. Navy during World War I, he returned to Upagenstit and became its superintendent.

It was at the Lewis estate that Smith developed an interest in orchids. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis’s vast greenhouses provided plenty of space for experimenting with a variety of species, and his specialty became the cymbidium. 

Town Historian Richard E. Venus said the Upagenstit greenhouses “would match the conservatory in New York’s Botanical Gardens.” He reported that “it was said that John W. Smith…was the one who discovered the secret of growing orchids in this country. Jack isolated the orchid

plants in a corner of the greenhouse where the humidity was high. Then, instead of just applying water directly to the plants, he sprayed the water into the air around the plants and let them soak it up….That fine greenhouse produced some of the most beautiful orchids ever grown.”

Smith’s orchids won many awards at the National Flower Show in New York. He was especially known for a variety called Cymbidium Lewis. 

As Smith’s reputation became national, he was asked to judge flower shows all over the United States. He was named to the Hortus Committee of the 1939 New York World’s Fair, helping supervise the planting of flower beds on the fair’s grounds. 

He was president of the Ridgefield Horticultural Society, then a sizable and active organization, as well as a member of the New York Horticultural Society and the National Orchid Society.

When the Lewis estate was sold to Ely Culbertson (profiled in Who Was Who), Smith moved his orchids to Pinchbeck’s Nurseries for a while until he built a special greenhouse at his Barry Avenue home to house them. 

He became superintendent for the estate of Wadsworth R. Lewis, Frederic’s son, on Great Hill Road (later the home of Henry and Clare Boothe Luce).

Smith was involved in the political and civic side of Ridgefield life. In 1947 and 1949, he ran for first selectman on the Republican ticket, but lost to his friend, Harry E. Hull, a Democrat. He did win a seat on the Board of Selectmen from 1949 to 1951. 

He was a member of the School Building Committee that built the 1939 addition to the old high school on East Ridge — an addition that included the auditorium that is now the Ridgefield Playhouse. He was an original member of the Park Commission, now the Parks and Recreation Commission, serving for 16 years. 

When the town bought the Ridgefield Community Center just after World War II, Smith spearheaded the drive for public support and he personally supervised the remodeling of the Lounsbury house. He later became president of the Community Center.

He was also active in the Rotary Club, the Masons, and the First Congregational Church where, at the alleys in the church’s clubhouse, he enjoyed bowling with the locals.

He died in 1959 at the age of 75.

Julius Tulipani: 

The American Dream

In reporting the death of Julius Tulipani on New Year’s Day 1983, The Ridgefield Press observed that “he had come to the United States from his native Italy as a boy of 16, achieving thereafter positions of trust and importance in his adopted community.” 

Born in 1890 in Ripe, Tulipani arrived in New York in 1907, and made his way to Ridgefield, including walking up the three-mile hill from Branchville to the village. There, on Easter

Sunday, he joined friends for his first meal in America — he had not eaten in two days because “we didn’t have any money,” he explained later.

Tulipani went to work almost immediately, building roads and other infrastructure for H.B. Anderson’s Port of Missing Men resort on West Mountain (now Eight Lakes Estates). 

“My first home was in a camp,” he told his granddaughter, Beth Tulipani, in a 1977 interview. “I lived in a one-room shack with three or four other boys.” He earned $1.75 a day ($45 in today’s dollars).

Four years later, he began a career of working on local estates, starting out as a coachman, and soon working his way up to a superintendent, a position he held on a half dozen estates for the rest of his career. He did not retire until he was 82 years old. 

He was superintendent of Col. Louis D. Conley’s Outpost Farm in the 1920s, but his longest post, beginning in 1927, was as superintendent of B. Ogden Chisholm’s Wickopee Farm on Peaceable Street, a job which he held until Chisholm’s death in 1944. 

Chisholm was so pleased with his service that he gave his superintendent the portion of his

farm that fronted High Ridge, where Tulipani lived the rest of his life.

He later worked for other estates, including Jack B. Ward’s Ward Acres. 

For most of his life here, he was active in the community. He was president of the Italian-American Club for 30 years — longer than anyone before or since. He was commander of the American Legion three times, and was one of the last living members of the Last Man’s Club of World War I veterans from Ridgefield.

He served as one of the first directors of the Boys Club and an incorporator of the Community Center when it began operations after World War II.He was elected to the Board of Selectmen three times from 1947 to 1953, and had long been a member of the Republican Town Committee. 

An expert gardener, Tulipani was proud of the flowers he raised, once producing an Empire State dahlia measuring a foot in diameter. He began raising flowers while working for Colonel Conley, and continued gardening professionally and for fun throughout his life.

In a 1973 interview when he was retiring, Tulipani told Karl Nash of The Ridgefield Press, “The United States has been good to me in all my life here since 1907. I was out of work in all those 66 years for only a month and a half, and I never had to ask for a job. People always came to me when they needed somebody.”

In 1980, more than 500 people attended a 90th birthday party for Julius Tulipani. There, among several speakers, Judge Romeo G. Petroni described his achievements, saying they symbolized “the ideas of America, freedom and opportunity for all men. His story is the American dream fulfilled.” 

Richard E. Venus: 

Historian and Storyteller

Every era has its grand storyteller, and for the last third of the 20th Century, Ridgefield’s was surely Dick Venus, historian, postmaster, town official, dairyman, and raconteur extraordinaire. 

Venus came to epitomize the way Ridgefield was during most of its 300 years — a small town of mostly kind and gentle people who participated in all aspects of their community, who enjoyed their fellow townspeople, and who loved a good story and knew how to tell it. 

Born in 1915 in a Main Street house still standing at the north edge of Casagmo, Richard Edward Venus was named for Father Richard E. Shortell, the longstanding and popular pastor of St. Mary Church. 

He grew up listening to the many stories of adults, tales told in an era before radio or TV and tales he never forgot. He became a master storyteller, enchanting countless people with his recollections of the days when Ridgefield was dotted with the summer estates of wealthy New Yorkers and of the many fascinating people who worked as their servants, gardeners, and chauffeurs. 

Many of those anecdotes are recorded in his monumental series, Dick’s Dispatch, 366 columns published in The Ridgefield Press between March 1982 and November 1988 (which have been collected, bound and indexed, and which are available at the Ridgefield Library). 

As a boy, he had a large newspaper route to help with the family income. In 1928, only 13, he went to work on Conklin’s Dairy Farm before and after school, and later worked full time. “I always loved horses and drove a team, plowing fields and mowing hay,” he recalled. 

When tractors took over from horses, he moved to the retail part of the milk business. 

Later, he became superintendent for many years at Dr. Royal C. Van Etten’s 87-acre Hillscroft

Farm on St. John’s Road.

In the 1950s, he operated Dic-Rie Dairy (named for Dick and his wife, Marie), delivering milk to many households. 

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed him postmaster of Ridgefield, a job he held for 21 years, longer than any person before or since. He was also the last Ridgefield resident to serve as the local postmaster — every postmaster back to Joshua King in 1789 had lived in town, but none since 1982 has.

“In the post office Dick Venus was always a smiling, friendly fellow, ready to greet and talk to anybody who dropped by,” Press publisher Karl S. Nash once wrote. “He knew everybody in town and, better than that, where they lived. In fact, Dick made it a point of pride never to return a piece of mail as undeliverable just because the addressee had not reported a change of address. The problem

arose most frequently at Christmas time — some years Dick had 5,000 pieces of mail with expired addresses or insufficient ones. He took these home with him and worked on the problem there, and rarely got any thanks for his effort.”

A lifelong Democrat, Venus served three terms as a selectman and ran twice unsuccessfully for first selectman against the popular — and Republican — Leo F. Carroll. In one of those runs, he lost by only 208 votes. He was a longtime friend and supporter of U.S. Senator Thomas Dodd and later his son, Senator Christopher Dodd — Chris Dodd attended Venus’s funeral.

He served on the Historic District Commission, the Zoning Board of Appeals, and was a leader in or member of many community organizations, including Kiwanis and the Boys Club.

In the mid-1980s, the governor appointed Venus as Ridgefield’s first official town historian. He was active in the Ridgefield Archives Committee, later the Ridgefield Historical Society.

And if that wasn’t enough, Venus was a musician. Around the age of 10, he taught himself the harmonica and played it so well that he gave a concert at age 11 on WICC radio in Bridgeport. Starting in 1928, he was a drummer in the Ridgefield Boys Band and later was drummer for his own

Mayflower Swing Band, organized in 1934, which played throughout the area.

A longtime member of the Knights of Columbus, Venus was a devout Catholic. In fact, his belief in his faith’s tenets led him decline to perform a celebrity wedding in his capacity of justice of the peace. It was 1941, and the notorious millionaire and socialite Tommy Manville wanted to marry his fifth wife — Venus turned him down because divorce violated Catholic doctrine. (Manville went on to amass 13 marriages to 11 women before his death in 1967 at the age of 73.)

In 2000, the town renamed the old Ridgefield High School the “Richard E. Venus Municipal Building.”  It was just one of many honors that also included Rotary Citizen of the Year in 1974.

He died in 2006 at the age of 91. A year later, a section of Route 35, West Lane, from the Cass Gilbert Fountain to Olmstead Lane — where he had lived — was named the Richard E. Venus Memorial Highway. 

His wife, Marie Bishop Venus, former chair of the Democratic Town Committee, died in 2011 at the age of 92.

Dick Venus saw the town change a lot from his childhood, but he never stopped loving it and its people. 

“It’s grown too fast,” he said in 2000. “We weren’t prepared for it ... There are a lot of nice people who have moved into Ridgefield, and there are others — it’ll take them a little time to get acclimated. My mother always taught me to tip my hat and smile at people. With some, if you do that, they’ll glare at you like you’re crazy, but they’ll get along. They’ll get the swing of things before they’re through. Most everybody who comes through Ridgefield stays, if they can. Ridgefield is a great town.”

Dr. Peter Yanity: 

Making Things Happen

Few people have been more involved in Ridgefield’s public life than Dr. Peter Yanity, who was a community leader for a half century. Today, the gym at the old high school — used both for  athletics and as a voting place — recalls his name and symbolizes his immense involvement in youth sports and local government. 

“We named Yanity Gym after him because of all the efforts and work that heʼs done with kids over the years,” said Parks and Recreation Director Paul Roche. “Pop Warner, Boys & Girls Club, Parks and Recreation, baseball, basketball. He really had the kids in mind throughout his whole life, and really was committed to making things happen for them.”

Peter Vincent Yanity was born in 1927 in Homer City, Pa., and grew up there and in Athens, Ohio. He entered Ohio University, but — still a teenager — dropped out in 1945 to join the Army Air Corps. He hoped to become a pilot, but the training program was full and the war was winding down. So instead, he volunteered to go overseas with the Manhattan Project, to work with the atomic bomb testing on Bikini Atoll. However, his athletic skills won him a different assignment: traveling throughout the Pacific Islands and Japan, playing baseball and football on Army teams.

“He was an outfielder and a pretty good hitter,” said daughter Kathleen Yanity Duffy. “In football he was a lineman.” 

Yanity was good enough that he was invited by the Cleveland Indians to try out for their farm team, but he opted instead for an education, returning to Ohio University, where he played varsity baseball and graduated in 1949.

While at Georgetown School of Dentistry, he met Elizabeth Scileppi from Long Island, a recent graduate of Trinity College in Washington. They were married 10 days after he finished dental school. After a year of his working for the U.S. Public Health Service, they came to Ridgefield in 1955, living at first on New Street. 

Richard E. Venus was one of five milk dealers in town back then.

“We followed the moving vans so that we could be first to their door to get their business,” said Venus recalled. “Little did I know he would turn out to be such a great milk customer.” Beth and Peter Yanity were to have seven children.

In 1960, Yanity moved to a Main Street house just north of Gilbert Street and set up his practice there. “He was a hard worker,” Ms. Duffy said. “Heʼd get in there at 8 in the morning and usually finish at 6. He worked half days on Saturdays for many years.”

There he and Beth raised their six girls and one boy. “He was strong and opinionated and preached that we all do the right thing, but he was also very kind and gentle,” Duffy said. “He was a sweet, gentle guy.

“He was probably the perfect father to be raising women in the 60s and 70s, when there was all the societal tumult and the roles of women were changing. Where some people from his generation might have resisted some of the opportunities that were opening up for women, he just always encouraged us to pursue careers.”

From his first years in town until his last, Yanity participated in countless community programs, an involvement his obituary called “legendary.”

He served 18 years on the Board of Selectmen, followed by 16 years on the Parks and Recreation Commission — 10 as its chairman. 

He was a past president of the Lions Club, a director and past president of the Boys and Girls Club, a director of the Chamber of Commerce, an incorporator and past president of the Community Center, and a pillar of the Republican Party. He belonged to the Friends of the Library, Keeler Tavern, and the Italian-American Mutual Aid Society — his grandfather came from a little town near Salerno, Italy. 

He was also an active member of St. Maryʼs Church for 53 years, serving on its parish council and many committees. He and Beth received the 1993 Fairfield Foundation Award for volunteerism to church and community, presented by Bishop Edward M. Egan on behalf of the Diocese of Bridgeport.

He received many other honors, including the Old Timers Club Civic Award in 1998 — Beth was so honored previously. He and Beth were also the only husband and wife ever independently named Rotary Citizen of the Year — he in 1988, she in 2000. He was the Chamber of Commerce’s Volunteer of the Year in 2006.

“He always instilled in us a great sense of civic responsibility and community service,” daughter Kathleen said. “You gave back to your community because it offered us a great place to live, and the only way a community was successful was when its citizens were engaged and involved — not just in the political arena but in serving the town.”

Of all his many interests, sports may have been closest to his heart.

In the late 1950s, Yanity was a founder of the Pop Warner Football program — the first one in Connecticut — which he then coached many years. He was also Connecticut’s representative to the national Pop Warner organization.

“I grew up with Doc Yanity as my coach,” said First Selectman Rudy Marconi. The Ridgefield team on which Marconi played under Yanity was so good, it went to Florida in 1958 to play in the Orange Bowl.

Decades later, Yanity and Marconi would serve together on the Board of Selectmen.

For many years he was an alumni recruiter for Ohio University, attending high school games throughout the state to look for talent. Legendary North Carolina Coach Dean Smith was interested in a couple of players that Yanity landed for Ohio University over the years, and Yanity long suspected that this had led Coach Smithʼs lobbying for an NCAA rule change excluding alumni recruiters.

While his allegiance was to Ohio University, Yanity was also focused on helping young players in general. “If he found a kid who maybe wasnʼt, talent-wise, able to play Division I basketball, he had friends from his high school days or Ohio contacts who were coaches at other schools,”  Kathleen Duffy said. “There are several Connecticut schoolboy players who went out on full

scholarships to Ohio colleges. I think he was quite proud of the fact that there were kids who maybe never thought about going to college and were able to go to college on full scholarship.”

Yanity was also an accomplished golfer and a founding member of the Salem Golf Club in North Salem, N.Y.

He retired from his dental practice in 2005 and from service in town government a year later, but continued to be active in the Chamber of Commerce, the Boys and Girls Club (he was a member of its board for more than 40 years), and the Lions Club.

He died in 2008 at the age of 81. 

If there was one activity Yanity may have loved as much as sports, it was dancing. 

Longtime friend Maureen Kiernan, former town treasurer, said some of her fondest memories of Peter Yanity were of watching him dance with Beth.

“They were such a great couple,” she said. “I loved to see them dance. Oh, Lord, did they love to dance together — never got off the dance floor,” she said.

“He was just such a dear man,” she added. “He was such a gentleman in everything he did.” 

Jeremy Wilmot: 

A Sense of Past and Place

Few people have served Ridgefield in more ways for more years than Jeremy Wilmot. A member of five town government agencies over her half century as a Ridgefielder, she was best known as a champion of historic preservation at a time when Ridgefield was losing some of its ancient  buildings and identity.

“By appearance or association, Ridgefield's architecture and local histories provide us with a sense of past and place,” Wilmot wrote in 1981. “Our landmarks root all of us to Ridgefield, no matter whether newcomer or native.”

Jeremy Griffiths Wilmot was born in New Jersey in 1929. Her family moved to Connecticut and she graduated from Greenwich High School in 1947, attended the Colorado School of Mines, and later finished her college education at Western Connecticut State University.

She moved to Ridgefield in 1955 and, along with raising a family, began her involvement with the community by joining the League of Women Voters and by penning letters to The Ridgefield Press on wide variety of issues.

As a member of the town’s first Charter Revision Commission in 1963, she got to know the inner workings of Ridgefield government. She later served on the Historic District Commission and on the Zoning Board of Appeals. In 1989, she was elected to the Planning and Zoning Commission, but in the 1990s, left to be elected a member of the Board of Selectmen.

Her most tangible legacy to the town was in historic preservation. In the 1970s, she was a founder of the Ridgefield Preservation Trust, an organization that eventually grew into the Ridgefield Historical Society. Calling herself a “field director and foot soldier,” she collaborated with fellow trust founder Madeline Corbin in researching and writing the voluminous Ridgefield Historic

Architectural Resources Survey, cataloguing the construction techniques, architectural style, and significant social history of some 600 of the town’s buildings.

The 1,500-page document was adopted as an official part of the town’s Plan of Conservation and Development, and is still used regularly by the town planning staff to make owners aware of their properties’ history.

“It wasn’t one of those programs that just died,” Wilmot said in a 1980 interview with The New York Times. “Instead it sensitized our people to the history of their houses.”

Her work in “sensitizing” people to Ridgefield’s history didn’t end there. She worked on setting up an early oral history program for the Keeler Tavern Preservation Society,  and organized a Catoonah Street Festival to celebrate that neighborhood’s varied mix of architectural styles; in the process, she helped produce a booklet describing the street’s history and buildings.

Her research and passion for preservation were involved in the efforts to save the Weir Farm as a national park and to renovate the old Ridgefield High School auditorium into today’s Ridgefield Playhouse.

Wilmot was also active in the Democratic Party, serving on the Democratic Town Committee and attending state conventions, often as a delegate and frequently challenging the party establishment on behalf of the liberal or peace wing of the party. She was also involved in the Ridgefield Women’s Political Caucus, a 1970s organization whose legal actions against the town led to the expansion of the Ridgefield Boys Club into the Ridgefield Boys and Girls Club.

For a time she made her skills available professionally as a “house detective,” researching for property owners the architecture and history of their homes. She also led workshops on how to research a property's past.

“When she wasn’t doing her research or running for office, she was in her flower garden,” said daughter, Jessica Wilmot. “This also was a love of hers, so much so that she took a job with the Parks and Recreation Commission solely to care for Ballard Park.” (Jessica, longtime owner of The Ancient Mariner, was one of her six children; another was the late Tony Wilmot, popular RHS baseball coach and restaurateur, who is also profiled here.)

Over her years in Ridgefield, she and her former husband, Clifford, owned several old homes, including one overlooking Lake Mamanasco at the end of Pond Road. She later moved to a large old house on Main Street near the fountain, and then to a historic house on upper Wilton Road West.

In the late 1990s she relocated to Lakeville for a decade or so, before returning to Ridgefield for her final years. She died in 2010 at the age of 80. 

Leo F. Carroll: 
An Astonishing Leader

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He also had a good sense of humor.

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

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

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

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

He died in 1985 at the age of 84.