William Winthrop: 

Mr. Ridgefield Lakes

William “Willie” Winthrop was one of the most influential  — and colorful — characters in 20th Century Ridgefield. Responsible for the town’s largest development, he frequently clashed with town officials and even ran into problems with the law. 

In 1932, Winthrop came to Ridgefield and within 10 minutes of seeing the Fox Hill Lakes, a large subdivision planned around several man-made lakes, he placed a deposit on the development which he renamed “Ridgefield Lakes.” He then spent the next four decades developing the region, involved in the building of more than 325 houses and creating lots for even more. 

Many of the houses were constructed as summer cottages, but virtually all have since become year-round homes. 

He envisioned The Ridgefield Lakes as “a true haven for people who wanted a home they could afford and a haven for a potential area for their retirement years.”

A native of Minneapolis, William Lawrence Winthrop was born in 1895 and served as a gunnery sergeant with an aviation unit of the U.S. Marine Corps during World War I. He became an attorney, but he did not practice law in Ridgefield.

When he came to town, Ridgefield had neither zoning nor planning. “I hired an engineer and surveyor to plan and lay out this property,” he said in 1966. “Unlike so-called ‘planners,’ I knew this

could not be done in three weeks. I did get a plan suitable to my dream for this place in two years and I changed it repeated to achieve a real plan which would not only be suitable for homes but provide for the comfort and recreation of those who chose to build a home there.”

Winthrop maintained that “long before the alleged planners and zoners dreamed up the open space and recreation areas of which they prate, I dedicated by use and deed more than 125 acres of lakes and another 30 acres for open spaces.”

Especially after zoning arrived in 1946, he maintained running battles with the town. He fought zoning and planning officials, complaining that their rules were keeping the little people out of Ridgefield and making it more difficult for the poor to find homes. 

When planning — which included the control of the design of subdivisions — was proposed in the 1950s, he said it was “an expression of extreme snobbery, and is designed to eliminate ... the men in overalls.”

He doggedly opposed most of the town’s school building projects, calling them extravagant. 

Conflicts between Winthrop and town officials were sometimes quite public and often colorful such as at a Planning and Zoning Commission public hearing on a Winthrop proposal, at which he fought with commission Chairman Daniel M. McKeon over when he could speak.

“Mr. Winthrop, you’re out of order,” said McKeon. “Take your seat.”

“What?!” replied Winthrop.

“Take your seat!” McKeon repeated.

“What was that?” Winthrop asked.

“Please sit down!” demanded McKeon.

“Why?” asked Winthrop.

“Please sit down!” McKeon said again.

Winthrop turned to the audience and declared, “He robs me of a half a million dollars and wants me to sit down!”

Then he turned to McKeon and added, “You never had to work for yours.”

A by-now irate McKeon shouted: “You’re out of order — sit down!”

Ambling to his seat, Winthrop turned toward McKeon and said, “To hell with you!”

Coleman London, who was sitting in the audience, leaned over to Karl Nash, who was covering the meeting for The Ridgefield Press, and said, “THAT was worth the price of admission.”

Winthrop was more liberal in his views on national and international affairs, however, and,

though he was a Republican, he was an admirer of Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy. Among his interests were American Indians, and he once proposed a national holiday honoring them.

He also had some run-ins with authorities. He was arrested in 1937 and 1952 for writing fraudulent checks, and was brought to court by the town for zoning violations. In 1967, he was charged with drunken driving after his car on Danbury Road turned  toward Limestone Road, and into the path of an oncoming police cruiser, sending the officer to the hospital.

He died in 1971 at the age of 75.

Winthrop’s wife was Frances Ney Winthrop, a graduate of the Chicago School of Ballet, who was a dancer in several Broadway shows. They included the 1920 and 1921 versions of the revue, “George White’s Scandals,” with music by George Gershwin, as well as William B. Friedlander’s “Frivolities of 1920.” She died in 1982 at the age of 84 and is buried alongside her husband at Fairlawn Cemetery.

Daniel M. McKeon: 

The Squire of Ridgebury

Sometimes affectionately called the “Squire of Ridgebury,” Daniel McKeon was probably the best-known resident of Ridgebury during the last half of the 20th Century. The Yale graduate, who operated one of the last working farms in Ridgefield, was a leader in town government, in the Catholic Church, and in local and regional conservation and organic farming movements for more than 60 years. 

A native of New York City and son of a family that helped establish St. Patrick's Cathedral, Daniel Manning McKeon was born in 1906 and was among the first 50 graduates of The Canterbury School in New Milford, a then-new prep school and experiment in lay Catholic education. 

He graduated from Yale in 1928 and was a stockbroker for many years, with a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, retiring in 1965.  

He and Louise Hoguet were married in 1935 in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Her family were leaders in Catholic education, and co-founded St. David’s School in Manhattan and Portsmouth Priory in Rhode Island. 

In 1938, the McKeons bought a 135-acre farm on Ridgebury and Old Stagecoach Roads, naming it Arigideen after a river in County Cork. The farm was steeped in history, parts of it having been granted by the colony to one of Connecticut’s early physicians in the late 1600s, long before the town was settled. French troops camped there in 1781 and the house, built  in 1782 by Revolutionary War veteran Captain Henry Whitney, was once a stagecoach stop and later the home of the one-armed Civil War veteran and selectman Samuel Coe. (The house was moved  northwesterly to the corner of Ridgebury and Old Stagecoach Roads in 2009, and was replaced by a new but similar-looking home.)

The McKeons maintained a herd of as many as 45 Brown Swiss dairy cows over the years, and sold unpasteurized milk for many years. The dairy operation, Ridgefield's last, closed in August 2000, causing much sadness among Ridgefielders so accustomed to seeing cows in the fields along Ridgebury and Old Stagecoach Roads. 

McKeon was best known locally for his long service in planning and zoning, starting in 1958 when he was appointed a charter member of the new Planning Commission. A year later, he was elected its chairman, and when the Planning and the Zoning Commissions were combined in 1962, he was its first chairman.

On the occasion of his 10th anniversary as chairman, the commission presented him with a commendation for his “prodigious endeavors” on behalf of the town. It noted that for many years, the commission had no paid staff, and McKeon had “devoted many hours performing multitudinous duties necessary for the proper functioning of the commission.”

Several months earlier,  McKeon had been involved in what his supporters called “the fight of his life,” a Republican primary challenge from former town planner Lowell I. Williams, who had been linked to real estate development interests.

“His enemies, self-interested people, have sworn to beat him because he has never ceased to fight for you and for his town,” a pro-McKeon advertisement said in September 1969. His campaign focused on his efforts to upzone residential areas, his work to zone more than 1,000 acres for tax-generating light industry, and his having “led the battle to have the town buy 1,000 acres of land for open space and recreation.” 

McKeon handily defeated his challenger and went on to serve 25 more years with the commission, retiring in 1993. 

A lifelong Republican,  McKeon had been considered a possible Eisenhower appointee as U.S. ambassador to Ireland in 1952. 

Like their parents, the McKeons were closely involved in the Catholic Church. Mr. McKeon helped establish the St. Thomas More Center at Yale and contributed toward the establishment of a chair of Catholic philosophy at the university. In 1975, the McKeons flew to Rome to attend the canonization of Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton as the first American saint. Later, they were instrumental in the establishment of St. Elizabeth Seton Parish in Ridgebury, where McKeon served as a trustee and on the parish advisory council.

In 1983, he was made a knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great, a papal honor that was conferred on him at St. Augustine Cathedral in Bridgeport. The McKeons counted among their friends Father James Keller, founder of the Christophers, and Frederick Shrady, the noted Catholic artist who was the first American to have a sculpture placed in the Vatican gardens.

Throughout their lives, the McKeons had a deep interest in history, perhaps inspired by their old farmstead. Dan McKeon was considered an expert on early Ridgebury and was especially interested in the role French soldiers played in the American Revolution. In 1781, French troops under Comte de Rochambeau and Duc de Lauzun camped on the McKeon farm and it’s believed that the first Catholic mass ever celebrated in town took place there. For many years, McKeon was a part of an American regiment that portrayed the French troops, and he took part in the re-enactment of the Battle of Yorktown at its 200th anniversary in 1981. 

Two years later, he portrayed the Duc de Lauzun of the Lauzun Legion, marching with the Rochambeau Army in Chartres, France, during ceremonies there honoring Rochambeau.
An excellent horseman,  McKeon was a longtime master and member of the Goldens Bridge Hunt Club. In 1985, when he was 79, he was hospitalized after a fall during a hunt club event. After recuperating, he continued to ride until 1990.

Both he and his wife, who died in 1993, were involved in the preservation of the Keeler Tavern, and in the establishment of historic districts in the village.

A lifelong environmentalist, McKeon was appointed to the Connecticut Conservation Commission in 1950. He also later served on the Fairfield County Soil and Water Conservation Board of Supervisors, and had been active in the organic farming movement starting in 1947.  He was one of the founders of the Discovery Center, one of whose aims is to encourage people to use Ridgefield’s many open spaces.

The McKeons were devotees of unadulterated foods, noted a New York Sunday News story in 1960. “Some call ’em ‘health cranks,’ but with a leader of the stature and background of McKeon, they rate more attention than ordinary food faddists.”

In the spring of 1971, when a huge outbreak of gypsy moth caterpillars was expected, the selectmen hired a helicopter service to spray the town with insecticide.  McKeon led other conservationists in threatening to sue the sprayer, arguing that the spraying would certainly kill useful insects and might also harm people. The sprayer backed out, and the caterpillars eventually died of a natural disease.

McKeon died in 2001 at the age of 94.