Samuel Sidney St. John:

A Man Who Loved To Teach

Nearly two centuries ago, Samuel St. John opened the Ridgefield Boarding School, offering a secondary education to teenagers near and far. Then only 26, St. John would spend the rest of his career in education, leading some of the earliest free schools in New York City.

Later in life, St. John would experience — and survive — much family sadness.

Samuel Sydney St. John was born on a Ridgebury farm in 1806. When he was 12, his father, Thomas, moved to the city and sent his son to the best schools available there.

Samuel graduated from Columbia in 1828 and while he was admitted  to the New York bar, never practiced law. Instead, he moved back to Ridgefield and opened a store in Ridgebury. A year later, he married Lucy Amy Brush, who’d grown up on a  Ridgebury farm about a mile south of the St. John spread. 

Perhaps because of the fine schools he had attended, St. John had a love of learning. In 1832, he  decided to open his boarding school. “As a teacher he excelled — patient, laborious and conscientious, he soon made his school famous and successful,” an obituary said. “It was patronized not only by the citizens of Ridgefield and adjoining towns, but by many from New York City.” His graduates went on to major institutions such as Yale.

The school, which offered college-prep and commercial curricula, was in the village, probably on Main Street, though its exact location hasn’t been found. It operated long before Ridgefield — or most towns — had a public high school; eighth grade was then the highest year of schooling for most Americans. However, if a young man wanted to go into the clergy, medicine, or law,  preparation for college was usually needed, and the Ridgefield Boarding School offered that, along with vocational training for banking and business. 

Tuition was $25 a quarter or $100 a year, which in modern dollars would be about $2,700. If you wanted French or math in that curriculum, the total would be around $3,200.

An 1833 advertisement that appeared in The New York Journal of Commerce  never mentions the sex of students. While the school may have been only for young men, the ad’s wording seems careful not to be gender-specific, and it’s possible young ladies were also admitted. (The Rev. David Short’s private school, which followed St. John’s, was co-ed.)

The advertisement gives interesting glimpses of some aspects of secondary education back then, and a look at how Ridgefield was promoted in the first half of the 19th Century:

RIDGEFIELD BOARDING SCHOOL

This institution is permanently located at Ridgefield (Fairfield Co.) Connecticut, and no exertions will be spared by the Principal to render it worthy a continuance of the liberal patronage it has hitherto received.

Ridgefield is one of the most healthy and retired villages in the State — noted for the morality and intelligence of its inhabitants, and possesses every requisite to make it an eligible situation for youth. It is fifty-four miles from the city of New York, with which it has a direct and daily communication. The course of study will be adapted to the wishes of the parents or guardians of each pupil — preparation for the Counting House or College. The French and Spanish Languages will be taught, if required.

The yearly course of study will be divided into two terms, of twenty-four weeks each — the first to commence on the first Monday of May — the second on the first Monday of November.

Terms for Board, including Tuition in English studies, $25 per quarter — Languages, or Mathematics, an additional charge of $5. No extra charges except for Books and Stationary.

The Principal is a graduate of Columbia College, and has liberty to refer to the President and Professors of that institution. Also, Rev. Wm. A. Clark, D.D.; Rev. Edmond D. Barry D.D.; Dr. Wm. Hibbard; Aaron H. Palmer, Esq; Messrs. S.C. & S. Lynnes; John Moras, Esq.

SAMUEL S. ST. JOHN, Ridgefield, Aug. 19, 1833

The school lasted until around 1841 when St. John received an offer from the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen to run its school in New York City. Founded in 1820, before there were public schools in New York, the Mechanic’s School was one of the first two free schools in that city.

In 1842, the New York City Board of Education was created  and began operating free public schools. A year later St. John was hired as principal of  School No. 26 in the 4th Ward and not long afterward was given general supervision of the other schools of the Ward, overseeing more than 4,000 pupils.  By 1848 his reputation had grown to the point where he was named commissioner of the schools in the City of New York, a post he held for two years. 

While he was leading public schools, St. John also continued to teach privately. “He has had numerous private pupils in the classics, in which he always took great delight,” an obituary said.

St. John retired in 1859 and returned to Ridgefield, living on the family farm on Ridgebury Road, a little north of George Washington Highway. The St. John homestead still stands at 620 Ridgebury Road.

Like his father, Samuel had an interest in public service. In 1837 when he was running his boarding school, he served as a  state senator for the 11th Connecticut District. In 1864 he was elected a Ridgefield state representative  to the General Assembly and served as a selectman a year later. He was also a county commissioner in the days when Connecticut had county governments.

“While he was a man of decided convictions, he was extremely reticent and retiring, never obtruding his opinion upon others unless called upon, or he saw good special reasons for so doing,” his obituary said. He was “a sincere lover of his country and its institutions, ever loyal and hearty in his support — a politician in the best and truest sense of the word, but never an office-seeker.”

Samuel St. John died in 1882 at the age of 75.

He and Lucy had a son who, at age 18, graduated from his father’s alma mater, Columbia. Thomas Platt St. John became a respected attorney in Manhattan and was also a promising political official  — in 1851 at the age of 21, he was elected as a state representative from a district of New York City, and was subsequently reelected.

Thomas St. John was also an accomplished writer and scholar — Annus Mirabilis, a long poem he wrote and read before the Philolexian Society of Columbia College, was published as a small book in 1848 that is still available today in reprints. “He was a great admirer of Shakespeare, and would quote with remarkable accuracy voluminous portions of that celebrated author,” said a biographer in 1881.

However, Thomas apparently tired of the pace of the city. He and his new wife, Mary Louise Runyon, opted in 1859 to join his father in his return to Ridgebury and the life of a farmer. 

Ridgefield, alas,  proved to be a place of sadness. Thomas and Mary lost their infant child soon after they arrived.  Four years later, Mary, only 32 years old, died during a miscarriage. Thomas was despondent and died a year afterward at the age of 35. The official cause was given as diabetes.

Sylvia Hodge: 

A Life of Music

Among the most popular of the many 20th Century teachers at Ridgefield High School was a woman who had to commute 85 miles round trip to get to her classes. But Sylvia Hodge apparently liked teaching in Ridgefield and also liked living in her native New Haven.

And her students certainly liked her.

“What an amazing woman and teacher she was,” said Barbara Asketh Amaral. 

When she arrived at Ridgefield High School in 1964, she was known as Sylvia Randall and taught in the then tiny music department. Her name changed after her marriage to Cullen Hodge, who taught mathematics in New Haven.

She was born in 1920, a daughter of parents who had immigrated from the island of Nevis in the West Indies. Both a pianist and a singer, she studied at Yale School of Music and Columbia University and was a graduate of both the Juilliard School of Music and Albertus Magnus College.

During her 25 years at Ridgefield High School, she taught music and led choral groups (by the late 1970s, RHS had singing courses in A Capella Choir, Mixed Chorus, Choir, Voice, and Madrigal Singers). Her choral groups gave countless concerts both in school and in the community — even at Yale University, and in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. After she led students in a concert for three Ridgefield senior citizen groups in 1973, Eddie Olsen of the OWLS said, “Sylvia Hodge certainly deserves an award as music director of the year.”

He wasn’t alone in his respect for Hodge. Dozens of her students have sung her praises on Old Ridgefield.

“She was an amazing person,” said Stacy Acon in a 2017 remembrance. “I was privileged to have her as my chorus teacher for four years.”

“She was such a kind lady,” said Tracy Skelly Brooks.

“Many wonderful memories of this lovely lady who let me sing even though I couldn’t carry a tune,” said Ellen Cole Tim. “She was the best!”

“Loved Momma Hodge!” said Tracy Petry. “My best memories of RHS are of being in her class.”

“Mrs. Hodge was my mentor — all my inspiration in music came from her, and also life in general,” said James Edighoffer. “She always encouraged me in everything I did.”

“Only woman in the world that could get me to sing in the choir,” said Guy Rossini.

“She used to have a sign up in the chorus room that said, ‘When you sing, you pray twice,’” said Patrice Sarath. “I always liked that.”

“Loved her,” said Deborah Karably. “She taught me how to sing the right way, and if she noticed that one’s diaphragm was not moving the right way to get enough air in your lungs, she had a ‘hands on’ technique that made sure you never made that mistake again!”

“Mrs. Hodge was one of a kind,” said Elizabeth Capalbo. “Juilliard-trained and should have been teaching at a much higher level than RHS. She was extremely talented musically and so very kind to me personally.  I was forced to audition for her in my sophomore year because I kept singing in Study Hall and the only way to not get detentions was to audition...so I did, of course.  When I had nodules on my vocal chords a year or so later, Mrs. Hodge found two doctors for me to see in Hamden and at NYU... When I was unable to sing for a short period, she would give me an excuse note and send me to Peach Lake Deli to buy her a shrimp salad grinder (best shrimp salad ever) and then have me organize the sheet music closet … Fond memories of a great woman who was a safe haven in a tough time.”

Hodge continued to teach into her late 60s, retiring around 1988. In New Haven, however, she continued to be active in music. She was the organist and choir director for many churches — including her own, St. Luke’s Episcopal. Over the years she served as a musical director for organizations in both Connecticut and the Virgin Islands.  

“She graced many stages here and abroad with her gift and love for the piano,” her family said at the time of her death.

Sylvia Hodge died in late October 2008 at the age of 88.

Perhaps the most touching tribute to her as a teacher came from Allison Staudacher, RHS 1974. “We had this great chorus that Sylvia hoodwinked us into,” she said. “Lots of us were drawn by her charm and effervescent humor. 

“I did not have the picture-perfect upbringing, and once I made the mistake of having so much enthusiasm and pride that I pleaded with my mother to attend a concert. She showed up drunk — badly, sloppy drunk. We all knew the norms, the acceptable; I was mortified. 

“I went to the girls room to wallow in tears. Sylvia came to my rescue. How many were there in her chorus — 50,  75? There were a bunch of us — but she knew each and every one. I won’t get into specifics, but the words she said to me changed my life. Sylvia Hodges saved my life.  

“I am 60 years of age; I will continue to pay it forward. I would not feel I gave her justice if I did not try to live her words.”

Dirk Bollenback: 

Saintly Inspiration

Some teachers are respected. Others are beloved.  Dirk Bollenback was both.

A history teacher for 38 years, Bollenback chaired the Social Studies Department at Ridgefield High School, fought local “book burners” in the 1970’s, and inspired countless students.

He was also a singer, leader, and historian at St. Stephen’s Church.

A native of Evanston, Ill., Dirk Floyd Bollenback was born in 1931, graduated from the Deerfield Academy and received a bachelor’s degree in 1953 from Wesleyan University (where, for a

year, he was a member of the Pre-Ministerial Club). He earned a master’s degree from the School of Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins and then served in the U.S. Army as a research analyst and instructor in the Army’s Psychological Warfare School at Fort Bragg, N.C. After the Army, he earned a second master’s at Wesleyan University.

With his wife Beverly, he moved  to Ridgefield  in 1958 when he took a job as a social studies teacher at the high school. He soon became department chair, a post he held for 32 years, a period of tremendous growth in the town. The Class of 1959, his first graduating class at the “old” high school on East Ridge, had only 60 students; just over dozen years later, more than 400 were graduating from the “new” school on North Salem Road.

Over the years he revamped and improved the Social Studies Department’s courses with such success that in 1991, he earned a John F. Kennedy Library Teacher Award for “developing creative and effective curriculum and demonstrating instructional excellence.”

In the 1970s, Bollenback was at the center of the book-banning controversies that involved the high school’s Social Studies and English Departments and some of their book selections, including Eldridge Cleaver’s “Soul on Ice” and Mike Royko’s “Boss.” — both of which some school board members and parents wanted removed from elective courses as inappropriate for high school seniors. In the end both books were retained, but not without bitter confrontations that resulted in national media coverage.

“We were under a lot of pressure,” he told The Ridgefield Press a quarter century later. “It was the hardest time I went through in Ridgefield. It all got very personal and I remember being called a Communist at one meeting. In retrospect it was really farcical; I’m a very conservative guy.”

He was, in fact, a member of the Republican Town Committee for four years.

Over the years countless students sang his praises as an inspiring teacher. 

“Mr. Bollenback was simply the best among that group of exemplary career educators,” said Dave Jenny, Class of 1968. “I will always cherish the climactic conclusion to his lecture about Hitler’s manipulation of the German people into World War II. He stepped from chair to desk-top, stood and sang just the first stanza of ‘Deutschland, Deutschland Über Alles’ as the Nazis had done over and over to hijack the national anthem and the German nation. It was dramatic but yet natural, seemingly unstaged and therefore totally effective. He gave us goosebumps. He made us feel what the German people must have felt.”

Patrick Wahl, another student in the 1960s, recalled a quotation from a Bollenback essay in the high school’s Chieftain newspaper. “Your life can matter, if you care to make it, if you care,” Bollenback had written. “I kept that essay on my wall, well into the 1980’s, until it became a part of me,” Wahl said. “Dirk Bollenback taught us to become citizens of the republic, for democracy is not a spectator sport.”

The senior class in 1961 dedicated its yearbook to Bollenback, citing “his fairness in dealings with his students; his sympathy and helpfulness with their problems; his honesty and sincerity in his teaching.”

Before retiring in 1996, Bollenback was pushing for a curriculum that focused on citizenship and civility. “Kids today are bombarded with so many different messages from so many different directions that I don’t know how they become civil,” he said in the 2000s.

He won many honors throughout his career. In 1963-64 he was a John Hay Fellow at the Chicago University and won an outstanding teacher award from Tufts University. The League of Women Voters honored him in 1996 for service to school and community and, in 2013, he was the first teacher to receive the Ridgefield Old Timers Association’s annual Distinguished Educator award. 

In the community, Bollenback volunteered as a patient’s representative at Danbury Hospital and for more than 25 years sang in the choir of St. Stephen’s Church, where he was a member of the vestry and served in other posts.

He was also the church’s historian, which sparked a “second career” as a writer. To mark St. Stephens’ 275th birthday in 2000, he spent nearly three years researching and writing a book that picked up where Robert Haight’s 1975 history had stopped.

“He has done a marvelous job of incorporating the history of the parish with the national events that were unfolding,”  Rector Richard Gilchrist said at the time.

Bollenback died in 2017 at the age of 86. His wife, Beverly, who had been active in the Ridgefield Visiting Nurse Association and had been president of its predecessor District Nursing Association, had died in 2004. Artist/illustrator Jean McPherson, who became his partner in 2009, died in 2016.

Teachers should instill values by example, not by preaching, Bollenback once said. “We don’t overtly teach values. We have to set an example, be people for [students] to look up to.” 

For Stephan Cheney, who graduated in 1970, “Dirk was, by far my favorite teacher. I think I was taught more in his class than any of my high school classes.” 

Cheney said in a 2012 remembrance that Bollenback was better than any other high school teacher or college professor he’d ever had.

“If I had the authority to canonize,” he said, “Dirk Bollenback would be my first.”

Ruth Wills: 

Legendary Latin Teacher

Ruth Wills was a scholarly woman whose advanced Latin students often excelled statewide. The five-foot-tall teacher was also tough: She had no problem grabbing a hulking, misbehaving football player and dragging him to the principal’s office.

“When Ruth let you have both barrels, it didn’t matter if you were a 245-pound tackle on the football team, you quaked,” recalled a former colleague, Dirk Bollenback, former chairman of the Social Studies Department. 

“She was a very, very special person,” added Bollenback. “I never met anyone on the Ridgefield High School staff who didn’t have the highest respect for Ruth Wills.”

Ruth Ella Wills was born in Monson, Mass., in 1897. She graduated from Colby College in 1920 and that September, came to Ridgefield’s Hamilton High School a few years after the town’s first secondary school had opened. The two-story frame building stood on Bailey Avenue where  there’s now a municipal parking lot. When the school moved to East Ridge and took the name Ridgefield High School, Wills continued to work there until her retirement in 1965.

Over her 45-year career, she taught Latin, French, German, and English. In later years, however, she taught only Latin. “Year after year her advanced students would score the highest in the state of Connecticut in the Latin Achievement tests,” Bollenback said.

She was famous as a strict disciplinarian. Although diminutive in size, Wills “scared some of the biggest guys in Ridgefield,” recalled Town Clerk Barbara Serfilippi, a 1960 graduate of the high school. “She was a little lady but, boy, you didn’t mess with her."
Despite that reputation for discipline, she was also known for her quiet sense of humor. Among her favorite stories was one about a Latin II test in which her student, in answer to a question about the second periphrastic conjugation, wrote, “This construction is known as the second pair of elastics.” 

Wills was a woman of many interests. She spoke several languages fluently, followed foreign affairs closely, collected antique foreign coins, knitted, did crossword puzzles, read extensively, and was an avid fan of the New York Rangers, the New York Knicks, and  — in their day — the Brooklyn Dodgers. She also surprised many ex-students by being sighted at the old Danbury fairgrounds race track  — she was an avid fan of midget class auto racing. 

When, in a 1954 interview, Wills was asked what she liked most about teaching, she replied in one sentence: “It is very gratifying to know that perhaps in some small way I have been able to help various students to attain and achieve their goal toward a happy, democratic way of life.”

Her work and her interests couldn’t have hurt her health: When she died in 2000 (the same day as her longtime colleague Linda Davies), she was 102 years old.

John Winant: 

A Man of Merit

To Ridgefielders early in the 20th Century, he was Gil Winant, the catcher on a team of teenagers from the Ridgefield Club. To the King of England three decades later, he was Ambassador Winant, the man who splendidly represented the United States during Britain’s darkest hour. 

John Gilbert Winant was born in 1889 in New York City, a son of a wealthy real estate executive. Starting around 1907 when he was in his teens, he would spend his summers in Ridgefield with his family, who occupied what became the Peaceable Street estate of B. Ogden Chisolm. Later the family acquired a farm in nearby South Salem. 

The Winants were undoubtedly drawn to Ridgefield because John’s mother, Jeannette

Gilbert Winant, came from an old Ridgefield family. Jeannette’s parents were John A. and Jeannette Wilkie Gilbert, who have a huge monument in Ridgefield Cemetery. While the monument lists John and Jeannette and their children, including daughter Jeannette, it is most likely a memorial; none of the family named on the obelisk is actually buried in the plot. 

Winant and his three brothers belonged to the Ridgefield Club whose headquarters later became the Congregational Church House that burned in 1978. “The club had a fine ball team  for several summers and the Winants made up about one-third of it,” The Ridgefield Press reported in 1941. Among the other players was a young Francis D. Martin, who became a longtime Ridgefield businessman;  Gil Winant caught Marty’s pitches.

Throughout most of his life, John Gilbert Winant would visit relatives and friends in Ridgefield.

Winant attended St. Paul’s School in Concord, N.H., which apparently introduced him to the

state that was to become his home. After studying at Princeton, where one of his history professors was Woodrow Wilson, he left to take a position at St. Paul’s, teaching history. In 1916, he got his first taste of politics when he was elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

However, a year later, with war looming, Winant joined the U.S. Army Air Service and was trained as a pilot. He wound up a captain, commanding the 8th Aero Observation Squadron in France.

After the war he returned to St. Paul’s and to politics; he was elected to the New Hampshire Senate in 1920. Five years later he was won a two-year term as governor of New Hampshire, the youngest person ever elected the state’s governor and the first to serve three terms. He was elected again in 1931 and 1933 at the beginning of the Depression, and though a Republican, “was quick to support President Roosevelt when the latter established the National Recovery Administration,” The New York Times reported. “This he did in the face of expressed disapproval of many rock-ribbed Republicans.”

While governor, The Times said, “Winant introduced many social and labor innovations that later were to become Federal laws. These included a minimum wage law, a state relief bill, aid to dependent children, and creation of the second state planning board in the country.” 

Under Winant, New Hampshire was the first state in the nation to fill its enrollment quota in the Civilian Conservation Corps. 

He also  limited the number of hours that women and children could work, and fought for transparency in government.  “Dismayed by the closed-door executive council meetings, he snuck a local reporter into the meeting, and the journalist wrote a front-page story on the council’s deliberations,” wrote Elizabeth Kendall in a profile of Winant.  “The meetings became open to the public as they remain today.”

New Hampshire historian Richard Hesse said Winant “was an excellent leader. He was very thoughtful and he could sit down and talk to a number of people who didn’t agree, and somehow bring them together.” 

Winant himself said, “Concentrate on the things that unite humanity rather than on the things that divide it.” 

His progressive thinking did not go unnoticed by President Roosevelt who in 1935 appointed Winant the first head of the new Social Security Board. Two years later he became U.S. representative to International Labor Office in Geneva, Switzerland, where he was elected director-general in 1939.

In 1941, as England was at war with Germany, Roosevelt picked Winant as U.S. ambassador to Britain, replacing Joseph P. Kennedy (father of John F. Kennedy). Kennedy had favored

appeasement of Germany while Winant made no secret that he and his government considered Germany the enemy. 

The Times in 1941 offered this analysis of the appointment. “The President, convinced that the war was causing fundamental social changes in England, desired as his representative in London a man of liberal mold intimately acquainted with the British labor leaders. Mr. Winant established such friendly relations as American representative to the International Labor Office and as its director since 1939...For this reason, as well as personal attributes — to his friends Mr. Winant seems to bear a moral and physical resemblance to Abraham Lincoln — the appointment is said to have been urged upon the President by Justice Frankfurter of the Supreme Court and others.”

Winant quickly won the hearts of the British people. When he arrived in England — which

was being bombed daily by the Germans — he declared at the airport: “I am very glad to be here. There is no place I’d rather be at this time than in England.” That statement was quoted on the front page of virtually every newspaper in that war-torn country.

“Winant lived modestly in London despite his station and traveled widely despite the Blitz,” said the Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph in a 2010 article.  “He became a familiar figure at bombed buildings, helping where he could. He preferred conversing with janitors and waiters to rubbing elbows with the high-born.”

Nonetheless, he wound up becoming close to King George VI and especially to Prime Minister Winston Churchill — he was with Churchill when both men learned that Pearl Harbor had been attacked; the two were excited because they knew it meant the United States would enter the war.

Winant spent many weekends at the prime minister’s country estate, Chequers Court, where he met and soon fell in love with Churchill’s daughter, Sarah, an actress 25 years his junior. According to an article published by the New England Historical Society, “They spent as much time

as they could together. They danced after dinner at wartime conferences in Cairo and Teheran, and saw each other in London, where her apartment was a five-minute walk from the U.S. embassy in Grosvenor Square. They were terrified of scandal and tried to keep the affair quiet.”

Sarah Churchill was separated from her comedian husband and Winant was married to Constance Rivington Russell, a former New York socialite, who was back in New Hampshire. Their marriage had been troubled from early on. “She loved Paris and parties, he loved Concord and social reform,” the historical society said.

After the war, Winant resigned as ambassador, took an apartment in London and told Sarah he would seek a divorce so they could be married. Sarah declined the offer. Winant was heart-broken.

For a while Winant served as U.S. representative to UNESCO. However, biographers have reported that he had hoped to be appointed the first secretary-general of the newly formed United Nations, and was disappointed when Trygve Lie of Norway got the post.

In early 1947, he left public life and retired to his home on Pleasant Street in Concord.  In her 2010 book, “Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour,” Lynne Olson said Winant “was an exhausted, sick man.” He was estranged from his wife, depressed over the outcome of his affair with Sarah Churchill, saddened at not getting the UN post, and financially broke. 

On Nov. 3, 1947 — the day his autobiography, “Letter from Grosvenor Square,” was published — Winant went into a bedroom in his Concord home and shot himself in the head. He was 58 years old. Sarah Churchill, who had talked to Winant on the phone only a few days earlier, blamed herself for his death.

Winant wanted to be buried on the grounds of St. Paul’s School, but because he was a suicide, the Episcopal institution would not allow it and he was buried in a Concord cemetery. Twenty years later the school had change of heart, and Winant’s casket was moved to St. Paul’s.

Winant’s service and support of England was so appreciated by the English that, a year after his death, he was made an honorary member of the British Order of Merit. He was only the second — and the last — American to be so honored; the other OM was Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Throughout his life, John Winant was famous for his generosity. When he left for the war in 1917, he asked a friend to take care of his affairs. The friend was amazed to find a huge monthly bill for milk — Winant had been providing daily deliveries to needy families in the area. On his way to

the station to go to New York one day, he ran into a former maid at St. Paul’s who was financially destitute. He gave her all his cash and wound up having to borrow money at the station to buy his ticket. He often gave money to poor people outside the Statehouse and would tell the Concord police to buy breakfast for homeless people and send him the bill.

In 2007, 60 years after his death, a statue of John Gilbert Winant was erected in front of the State House in Concord. 

“Imagine if you can that he is here with us, right now, uncomfortably listening to us recount his good deeds,” said Mike Hirschfeld, rector of St. Paul’s School, during the dedication ceremony. “In my mind’s eye, I can see him shuffling uneasily, and awkwardly looking down at his feet, embarrassed by our praise.”

Linda Davies: 

A Long Career and Memory

Linda Davies was one of the last of a long line of educators who were born in Ridgefield, grew up in the town,  and spent their lives teaching here. In her case, that career lasted nearly a half century.

 As a 20-year-old in 1930,  Davies began instructing first through fourth graders at the two-room Branchville Schoolhouse, which still stands along Old Branchville Road. She went on to teach for 42 years. “Even after her retirement, she came back and served as a substitute for a number of years,” said former schools personnel director Paul Hazel. “What a delightful thing that is.”

Margaret Linda Davies was born here the day before Christmas in 1909, a daughter of William and Jenny Tait Davies. Her father, an immigrant from England who was an estate gardener, and her mother, who was born in Northern Ireland, had each left school after the fourth grade.

She attended Ridgefield schools and graduated from Ridgefield High School in 1928. She then studied in the teaching program at Danbury Normal School, now Western Connecticut State University, for two years and began working at Branchville. By the 1950s, she was teaching fifth grade at the new Veterans Park School and when she retired in 1972, was a social studies teacher at East Ridge Junior High School. 

Over the years she had continued her studies, receiving a bachelor's degree from Teachers College at Columbia University in 1939 and a master's degree there two years later. She did advanced graduate studies at New York University, Eastern Connecticut State College, UConn, and Fairfield University. 

She considered teaching a difficult but rewarding experience. "The processes of child development are extremely complex," she told a Press interviewer in 1955. “One of the greatest sources of satisfaction to the teacher is in noting [a child’s] improvement and realizing that she or he, through study and evaluation, has had an opportunity to be of some assistance in helping the child to make these gains, whether they be social, emotional, educational, or other."

Davies was active in many Ridgefield organizations, including the Sunshine Society, the OWLS, the Friends of the Library,  the old Grange chapter, and the Keeler Tavern, where she was a cashier for the gift shop. She lived for many years on  Ramapoo Hill Road

Davies belonged to the First Congregational Church where she was a member of the Women's Fellowship. “She was a very dynamic and practical lady,” said Dotty Hall, a fellow church member. “She had good sense and she always had the right answers.”

Davies had a lifelong interest  in politics. In 1978, she was selected as a senior intern to serve in the U.S Congress in Washington, D.C., from the Fifth Congressional District.

She was also an avid traveler and in her younger years, was an active bowler.

She died in 2000 at a nursing home in Mansfield at the age of 90.

Linda Davies was another oldtimer who was valued for her memory of the past. She could recall many details of what life in the village was like long before Main Street was even paved. She knew the people and places well, and had a collection of early photos of the town. She “maintained a vast knowledge of the history and people of Ridgefield,” a family member said.

For seven years, she aided the Ridgefield Archives Committee — forerunner of the Ridgefield Historical Society — in its efforts to identify thousands of old Joseph Hartmann photographs of the town and its people from early in the century. “She knew everything,” said Kay Ables of the Archives Committee and now town historian. “She knew all the people all the stories. She had all this information in her head.”

Patricia Schuster, 

Dancer, Teacher, Founder

More than 5,000 children learned dance from Patricia Schuster, a professional ballet dancer who brought the art of fine dance to Ridgefield in 1965 and whose legacy is alive — and dancing — today.

Born in 1937, the Ohio native grew up in New York City, Schuster studied at the American Ballet Theater School and with teachers from the Royal Ballet and the Kirov Ballet. She danced professionally with the Brooklyn Opera Company, the Boris Goldovsky New England Opera Theater, and other companies. 

In 1964 she moved to Ridgefield and a year later opened the Patricia Schuster School of Dance in the Community Center. Later, she renamed the school the Ridgefield Studio of Classical Ballet. In 1978 she also founded the Ridgefield Civic Ballet, which staged many productions with local students and international stars. 

A number of her students have gone on to professional ballet, including James Fayette, who was a leading dancer with the New York City Ballet and is now a director, with his wife, of a school in Los Angeles. 

Many who did not become dancers also benefited from the experience. “My daughter took ballet lessons from Pat for years and the poise and self-confidence she gained was immeasurable,” said Nancy Pinkerton. “She later became Connecticut Junior Miss using ballet dancing as her talent. The scholarship money was a big aid in college expenses.” 

Schuster died in 1999 and in May 2000, it was revealed that she had bequeathed her Ridgefield Studio of Classical Ballet to the Friends of the Ridgefield Playhouse, the organization that was renovating the old high school auditorium into a performing arts center. In its early years the Ridgefield Playhouse provided a venue for both classes and performances, and still is a stage for performances under its new management, the Ridgefield Conservatory of Dance. 

“The Playhouse embraced the school as its dance school in residence and, recognizing that the school needed and deserved its own management structure, acted as a bridge to its new life as a non-profit with its own board and management,” said the Conservatory, which now has its school at 440 Main Street. Schuster’s bequest included funds to support the project.

“Miss Schuster never had any biological children of her own, but in reality, and far better, she actually had thousands of adoring ‘children,’ ” Susan Consentino, who’d studied under her for 17 years, said at her Schuster’s memorial service in 1999. “She helped shape and influence every one of us, and not just while we were her students. She gave each of us skills to carry with us in life that consciously or unconsciously are part of us to this day.” 

Adam Salvo: 

A Huge Inspiration

Teachers are among the most memorable people we meet in life. And a Ridgefield teacher who produced many great memories — and great students — was Adam Salvo, who taught art at RHS for nearly 40 years.

“He was one of my all time favorite teachers in high school,” said alumnus David C. Selwitz, Class of 1973. “Such an inspiration to so many young adults. I loved him.”

Michael Adam Salvo was born in New Haven in 1935 and graduated from what is now Southern Connecticut State University. He went on to earn a master’s degree at Columbia University,  received a degree in art from the Ecole des Beaux-arts at the Palais de Fontainebleau in France, and studied at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

He began teaching at Southern Connecticut State in 1957, but two years later came to Ridgefield High School where he soon created and taught the school’s first art history course. He also taught painting and other fine arts, became chairman of the Art Department, and over the years he fostered many young artists. 

When news of his death in 2012 was posted on Old Ridgefield, there was an outpouring of praise, including:

“He was a huge inspiration and just the encouraging voice I always needed at the time,” said Terry L. Britton. “He sure went to bat for me on several occasions — I'm grateful that I had someone like him in my life.”

“He truly made me believe I could enjoy and participate in art,” said Cynthia Glasbrenner. “I was never talented, but he told me no one could match my enthusiasm.”

“He was a patient man; I gave him a little bit of holy hell in my senior year,” recalled Tom Bennett.  “I had scored straight A's in art class for 3 1/2 straight years and in the last term of my final year, he gave me a B. It was like receiving an F in anything else for me. I discovered it as a good kick in the pants and I went on to become a painter and illustrator.”

Rob Kinnaird called him “a great man who saw my potential and changed my life.”

“His class opened many doors,” wrote Maren Sirine. “He opened his heart and home to many. A favorite teacher who inspired and encouraged me to go to art school, too. I survived high school with his help!”

Salvo was active in the Aldrich Museum, and was a founder in 1993 of the museum’s Student Docent Program, which began with just two schools in Ridgefield and 10 years later involved 45 schools in 16 towns. The program trains and provides students to serve as docents at the museum.

In 2006, the Aldrich staged a show, called “Homecoming.” Exhibiting artists Damian Loeb, Sarah Bostwick and Doug Wada, all with studios in New York, shared what The New York Times called “a seminal experience”: They each had studied art under Salvo at Ridgefield High School.  

“The artists remember him as the rare teacher who treated them as adults and complained about the school administration,” The Times said. “The instructor remembers his former students, too, and regularly treks to their shows.”

Salvo was a longtime Ridgefield resident, living first on Rockwell Road and then on Oscaleta Road. He retired from teaching in 1996.

He was a member of the National Committee on Art Education of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the American Association of University Professors, and many arts-oriented organizations. He was listed in “Who’s Who in American Education.”

Over the years he had many shows of his own works, including at Silvermine Guild of Artists, Yale University,  and, of course, the Ridgefield Library.

Salvo was 77 years old and living in Guilford when he died.

Margaret O’Sullivan: 

Boosting Sports for Women

In 1965,  the senior class at Ridgefield High School dedicated its yearbook to Margaret O’Sullivan who, by then, was a guidance counselor at the school. Few students at the time knew of the role “Miss O” played in helping young women be a part of interscholastic athletics.

     “Before girls sports at Ridgefield High School received an equality boost from Title IX legislation in the early 1970s, they got a formative hand from Margaret O’Sullivan some 30 years earlier,” said longtime Ridgefield Press sports editor Tim Murphy.

     Margaret Claire O’Sullivan was born in 1911 in South Boston, Mass., and graduated from Boston University with a degree in physical education. She later earned a master’s degree at the University of Bridgeport.

     When she joined the high school faculty as a physical education teacher in 1943, there were no interscholastic girls sports teams at RHS. Not one. 

     O’Sullivan quickly changed that, organizing varsity and junior varsity girls teams for one sport each season: field hockey in the fall, basketball in the winter, and softball in the spring. She later started a club team for girls tennis. 

     While turnout for the programs was good, conditions were not. The girls had limited equipment and shared fields with boys’ sports teams — mostly, they practiced and played when the boys were at away games.  But O’Sullivan always fought for more time and attention to girls’ athletics and well-being.

     She served as head of the girls physical education department at the high school until 1962, when she became a guidance counselor. 

“All of us have seen the kind of person she is,” said the staff of the 1965 yearbook. “Loyal, sincere, self-sacrificing, dedicated — these are part of Miss O’s personality. Friendly, helpful, generous, devoted — these, too, describe Miss O. This list is endless. She is the manifestation of many of our ideals.”

O’Sullivan retired in 1973 and moved to Shrewsbury, Mass., to live with a sister. When she died in 1993 at the age of 81, she had been all but forgotten locally. The Ridgefield Press had only a brief, three-paragraph obituary, provided by the sister (but did run a picture of her, smiling).

Seven years later, the Ridgefield Old Timers Association remembered O’Sullivan, giving her a Posthumous Award for her work with girls at Ridgefield High School. ROTA said she had died “with much deserved praise left unsaid.”

George B. Leeman Sr.:

Music for Kids and Stars

When George B. Leeman was only two years old, he astonished family members by picking out tunes on a piano. “By the time his fourth birthday rolled around,” The Ridgefield Press reported in 1962, “he was ready for a recital.” 

Born in 1907, the Oklahoma native studied music at the University of Oklahoma and went from there to RKO studios in Hollywood where he worked on RKO’s “Hollywood on the Air” radio show. 

However, he soon wound up in New York, working CBS radio and later television as a composer and arranger for the likes of Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Dick Haymes, Paul Whiteman, Andre Kostelanetz, Archie Bleyer, and, for 12 years, with Arthur Godfrey. 

For Godfrey, Leeman prepared music for the daily show, as well as Godfrey’s weekly Talent Scout program. He served on the audition committee for the latter, and was involved in the auditions of many future stars, including Eddie Fisher, Wally Cox, and the McGuire Sisters.

A Ridgefielder since 1942, Leeman was instrumental in the founding of the Ridgefield Symphonette in 1964, and aided its growth into the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra, one of the top small orchestras in the country. (His son, George Jr., has also been a leader in the orchestra, and wrote the program notes for many years.)  When it gave its first concert in April 1965, the

symphonette consisted of 24 musicians, 13 of them residents and only seven of them professionals.

“The reason for our existence is to provide the best possible entertainment for the people of Ridgefield who enjoy music of this calibre,” Leeman said in a 1972 letter to The Press.

After his retirement from CBS in 1959, Leeman gave private piano lessons to Ridgefield youngsters.  He also composed and arranged many songs and musical programs that were performed by children in the Ridgefield elementary schools, where his wife, Evelyn, taught for many years.

“Music,” he said, “is a therapy. Most children find something in music that relaxes them.” 

Leeman died in 1978 at the age of 70. Two weeks after his death, the Board of Education named the auditorium at Scotland School “the Leeman Room” in his honor.

Marie Kilcoyne: 
Half Century of Teaching

Ridgefield has had many teachers with long careers in the classroom, but few if any in the 20th Century matched Marie A. Kilcoyne, a native daughter who taught for 50 full years, 43 of them in Ridgefield. 

“I teach because I love children,” Kilcoyne told The Press in 1955. “Their vivid imagination and their willingness to please is one of the great pleasures of a primary teacher.”

Marie Ann Kilcoyne was born in Ridgefield in 1907 and started her education here as a pupil at Titicus School, then went to the East Ridge Grammar School and graduated in 1925 from Hamilton High School on Bailey Avenue. 

After two years of study at Danbury Normal School (now WestConn), she taught in Easton for seven years, starting in 1927. 

She came to the old Branchville Schoolhouse in 1934, teaching first through fourth grade in one room until 1939 when the school was closed. She moved to the Garden School, once the high school she had attended as a teenager, and taught second grade. When Veterans Park opened in 1955, she continued as a second grade teacher there the rest of her career. 

Kilcoyne used to “dress for the kids,” said her cousin, Marie Venus. For instance, she’d make a point of wearing jewelry that would fascinate the pupils. “She’d have on silver bracelets and when she went to write on the board, they’d all slip down her arm,” Venus said. “She used to do that just to entertain the kids. They were her life, her pupils.”

When she retired in 1977, Kilcoyne seemed saddened by the fact that TV and other activities were drawing children — which she called “her kiddies” — away from reading and that they seemed to need more direction. “The children are not as able as they once were to do things for themselves,” she said. “Maybe they have too much supervision.”

But she was optimistic, too. “The children are smarter today than in years gone by. They can discuss things more intelligently and their school program is broader.”

Kilcoyne died in June 2000 at the age of 93.

Hester Hurlbutt: 

The Cutest Kid

Hester Hurlbutt may not have been famous or exceptionally accomplished. But in her 80s, the Ridgefield native and longtime teacher made national headlines in her fight against condominium developers who were kicking renters out of their apartments.

She may also have been the cutest kid ever photographed by Joseph Hartmann. 

Hester Elizabeth Hurlbutt was born in Ridgefield in 1896, the daughter of Frank and Annie Dunkerton Hurlbutt. Her father, who operated a shoe store on Main Street,  died when she was 10 and her mother passed away a year later. She then grew up with her aunt and uncle in the Hurbutt family homestead at Main and Market Streets  and also spent some  time with her maternal grandmother in the Finger Lakes region of New York.

Hurlbutt attended the Center School on Bailey Avenue and the Nash Private School, located

in what is now an apartment house just north of the Ridgefield Library.

When she was 20, she became a teacher of young women at a Delaware reform school, but in 1920, she moved to Boston where for the next 46 years, she taught sewing and clothing design in the public schools, retiring in 1966.

In the early 1980s, when she was living in Boston’s Back Bay, her apartment building began being converted to condominiums. Though in her 80s, she started attending Boston City Council hearings to seek support for legislation that would prevent the eviction of rent payers from apartments

turned into condominiums.

She helped found the Massachusetts Tenants Organization, and spent nearly three years fighting building owners. “I’m not easily frightened,” she said. “Why should I be? Why should I not stand up for my rights? I’m not going to be downtrodden and I’m not going to live in the slums.”

Her efforts made headlines in Boston newspapers and news segments on Boston TV, but  readers around the country learned of her efforts in 1982 when the Associated Press carried a story about the octogenarian battling the big-time developers.

As her building on Commonwealth Avenue continued to be converted into condos, she  

refused to leave, saying she could not afford the price of buying the unit and would not be able to find another apartment to replace her rent-controlled unit. 

“I’ve lived in the Back Bay for 60 years,” she told the Boston Herald American. “My friends, my doctor, my church, stores, hospital — all those things that are my lifelines are there.”

She was successful.

“She put up a good fight, was able to keep her apartment, and helped many others do the same,” said Del Bryon, a longtime friend, in a letter written a few years later. “She can be proud of her victory! A capable lady and a formidable opponent.”

Elise Haas, former president of the Keeler Tavern Museum, visited Hurlbutt in 1989. “A feisty little lady, she had filled her apartment with memorabilia of Ridgefield,” Haas said. “She told

many stories of Ridgefield and recalled Sunday afternoon walks with her parents to the Resseguie Hotel (Keeler Tavern) for tea. Phillis Dubois, a black woman who had lived since childhood at the old hotel, would pick up small Hester so she could look down the well.”

When she moved to Boston in 1920, Hurlbutt took out a subscription to The Ridgefield Press and continued to be a subscriber until the day she died. In a correspondence with this writer in 1990, when she sought help in getting reprints of some old family pictures that had appeared in the Press, she said she read the entire newspaper every week.

When she was younger, Hurlbutt would often return to Ridgefield, visiting old friends.

Asked in 1990 if she would be visiting Ridgefield again, she said her failing health prevented her from traveling very far from her apartment. “I would never be  lonely there,”  she said, “and I will return someday — because I shall be buried there.”

Indeed, after she died in 1991, she was buried next to her parents and other family members in the Hurlbutt Cemetery, a section of the Ridgefield Cemetery on North Salem Road. Her small gravestone says only “H.E.H.”

A few years later, this writer happened across an online dealer in antique photographs who

was advertising a group of Joseph Hartmann portraits of a child, each mounted on cardboard. They turned out to be pictures of Hester Elizabeth Hurlbutt.

Notes on the back, probably penned by her mother, gave the month and year of almost every picture.

The group of photos was purchased and many of the images appear here, along with one — by an unidentified photographer — showing Hester as a young woman. 

The childhood pictures demonstrate not only what a “cute kid” Hester Hurlbutt was, but also Joseph Hartmann’s skill at doing portraits of young children. 

They probably also reflect the love that Annie and Frank Hurlbutt had for their only child.