Bert Anderson: 

He Died On Duty

Only two Ridgefield police officers have lost their lives while on duty. One of them died in the town hall.

In the days before Ridgefield had its own formal police department, Bert Anderson was the town’s night constable, also called the night watchman, hired to patrol the village mostly on foot during the evening and early morning hours.

Anderson appeared “in excellent spirits” when he stopped by the Ridgefield Bakery at 4 a.m. on Oct. 9, 1939.

A few hours later, workers arriving at the Town Hall found Anderson dead in the constables’ office. He had been shot through the abdomen with his own 41 caliber revolver.

State police from Troop A on East Ridge, led by Lt. Leo F. Carroll and including the medical examiner, Dr. R.W. Lowe, investigated. Based on their findings, county coroner Patrick McIlroy of New Canaan declared that Anderson’s death was accidental.

“Lt. Carroll said Anderson was probably removing his gun belt when the weapon fell to the

floor and discharged,” The Stamford Advocate reported.

 Anderson was 60 years old.

A native of Baltimore, Md.,  Jesse Ebert Anderson was born in 1879 and came to Ridgefield around the turn of the 20th Century. He had been for many years superintendent of Casagmo, the estate of Miss Mary Olcott on Main Street.

In 1905, he married Florence Lillian “Lilly” Whitlock, a local girl. They had two children, including Lyman Ebert Anderson, a longtime Ridgefielder.

Various accounts says Bert Anderson had been chief of the Ridgefield Fire Department, but no record of that could be found. However, his grandson, Rodney A. Anderson, was chief  in 1972-73.

The other ill-fated officer was John Palmer. 

John F. Haight: 

First Career Policeman

John F. Haight Jr., who led the Ridgefield police for more than 10 years, was probably the town’s first career policeman.

Over a period of 30 years,  Haight rose from constable to chief and saw the police force grow from three to 30 officers. “He was one of the moving forces to get us from the town hall basement to where we are now," said Richard Ligi, who joined the department under Haight and later became its chief.

A native of Newburgh, N.Y., John Haight was born in 1920 and moved to Ridgefield as a child, attending classes in the old Titicus Schoolhouse, now the American Legion Hall. He graduated in 1938 from Ridgefield High School where he met his future wife, Marion Alice Roberts. The two were married in 1942; Mrs. Haight died in 1998.

During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army's Fourth Armored Regiment under General Patton, landing in Europe shortly after D-Day and receiving the Bronze Star for heroism.

One of his first jobs after the war was as an usher at the old Ridgefield Playhouse movie theater on Prospect Street. He also worked for the U.S. Post Office, driving bags of mail from the office on Main Street to meet the train in Branchville.

In 1947, he was hired as a policeman — then officially called a constable — joining Charles Wade Walker and James Brady in policing the town under the command of the first selectman and operating out of  70-square-foot “quarters” in the town hall. Constables handled motor vehicle violations and misdemeanors while the State Police, quartered at the barracks on East Ridge, did the major cases.

“In those days, we patrolled in our own cars,” the chief recalled. “We had no car, no radio, no equipment, no nothing.” The town bought its first patrol car around 1950.

In 1955, Ridgefield created a formal police department, with James Brady as chief, and John Haight was among the first officers. Ten years later, Chief Haight took command of the 10-person department, serving until his retirement in 1977 after 30 years on the job — a tenure   few others have attained with the police force.

During his nearly 12 years as chief, the department grew threefold to 30 officers, added a detective bureau, and moved from a few rooms in the town hall basement into its current quarters, the former State Police barracks, on East Ridge.

“In all humility, I believe I have turned over a police department to my successor of which you, the community, will be proud,” he said at his testimonial in 1977. 

Some 250 people attended that farewell party. “It is amazing that a man with a name like Haight can represent so much love,” emcee Paul Baker said at the event.

“He was always fair with his people and always concerned with their welfare,” said Chief Richard Ligi, who was hired as a teenaged clerk by Chief Haight in 1967.

Chief Haight’s first home here was on Washington Avenue, but in the early 1970s he built a house at the north end of Lake Mamanasco. After his retirement, he moved to Cape Cod, but returned periodically for visits and to host testimonials — after he stepped down as chief, he became a celebrated toastmaster, enjoyed for his wry wit. One of the last formal affairs he attended was a retirement banquet for Thomas Rotunda, who had succeeded him as chief.

He died in 2002 at the age of 82 and is buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery. 

Elizabeth and Mary Boland: 

The Teaching Sisters

For two generations of young Ridgefielders, the name of Boland was impossible not to know. Between the sisters Mary and Elizabeth, they taught virtually every child who went through the school system. 

Their subjects were the opposites of what their given names might suggest: math for Elizabeth and English for Mary. 

Together they worked 93 years in the Ridgefield schools. 

Westport natives, the Boland sisters came to Ridgefield as young children, living in a house on

West Lane that had been the first state police barracks in Ridgefield. They attended local schools,  graduated from Danbury Normal School (now WestConn), got master’s degrees at Columbia, and started teaching in 1919.

Mary, who was known as May, was born in 1898. She began teaching at the Center School, then went to the one-room West Mountain School, and from 1929 until her retirement in 1964, taught at the junior and senior high school.

Elizabeth, born in 1899, began at Titicus School, then Center School. In 1947, she moved to the high school and taught math there and at the junior high until her retirement 30 years later.

“Bess” Boland taught for 48 years, three more than Mary. 

Both moved to Fairfield where they died, Mary in 1986 at the age of 87, and Elizabeth in 1990, aged 91. 

When they began teaching, their salaries were $1,000 a year. When they left, it was only $10,000.

John C. Kelly: 

State’s Top Law Enforcer

John Kelly was a prime example of “local boy makes good.” He joined the Connecticut State Police when it was tiny but suddenly expanding agency, and wound up three decades later as head  of the entire state police force.

One of eight children, John Cornelius Kelly was born in Ridgefield in 1895. His paternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Kelly, were among the first Catholic families to settle here. 

When World War I broke out, he enlisted in the Navy and served on submarine chasers. 

Around 1920, he joined the state motor vehicle patrol, a motorcycle unit that enforced laws dealing with the increasingly popular automobiles, but more particularly, the increasing dangerous trucks. In 1921, the motor vehicle patrol became part of the rapidly expanding Connecticut State Police. 

The state police had been established in 1903, but had only five men covering all of Connecticut. The force wasn’t much larger than that by 1920, but the enactment of Prohibition that year meant a manifold increase in the need for law enforcement, particularly in Connecticut’s smaller towns.

Consequently, the state police force was greatly expanded, and “barracks” or local sub-stations established around the state. (Stations were called “barracks” because troopers ate and slept in them for shifts of five or six days.)

Kelly was quickly recognized as a leader and, in 1922, he was promoted to sergeant and given command of the new Ridgefield barracks, located on West Lane. In 1927 the barracks moved to a larger building on East Ridge Road — what’s now the Ridgefield Police headquarters.

By 1931, Kelly was instruction officer for the whole state and in 1945, he was made a major and executive officer of the state police department. Four years later, he was named chairman of the State Liquor Control Commission. 

In 1953, Governor John Lodge appointed him commissioner of the Connecticut State Police,

the equivalent of a chief of police, a command he held until 1955. He might have held the office longer, but Kelly was a Republican and by then the governor, who made the appointments, was Abraham Ribicoff, a Democrat.
After his retirement, he served several terms as a state representative from Ridgefield to the Legislature. After that, he worked as a legislative consultant until he was 82. He died in 1984 at the age of 88, still living in the town in which he was born.

In a bit of irony, two of the leading law enforcement officials in the state during the 40s and 50s lived next door to each other on Wilton Road West:  Kelly’s next door neighbor was Leo F. Carroll, who became second in command of the state police when Kelly was commissioner. Both started out together at Troop A when the barracks was on West Lane, and rose through the ranks — with Kelly always one step ahead.

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.