Dr. Henry Minot: 

The Bus-Driving Surgeon

A murder has occurred and police summon the medical examiner. The man who gets the call is behind the wheel of a school bus. 

It happened more than once in the unusual career of Dr. Henry D. Minot Jr., a distinguished thoracic surgeon who, in retirement, became a school bus driver as well as an assistant medical examiner. 

A native of Massachusetts, Dr. Minot was born in 1919 and graduated from Harvard College in 1941. During World War II he served as a Navy aviator in dive-bombing squadrons based on aircraft carriers. 

After the war he studied at Harvard Medical School, obtaining his degree  in 1950. He practiced in Vermont before coming to Ridgefield in 1960. Dr. Minot was a thoracic surgeon at Norwalk, Stamford and Greenwich Hospitals, with a practice based in Darien.

When he retired in 1986, there was a critical shortage of school bus drivers in Ridgefield. He signed on and drove buses here for three years and then became a driver in Wilton for more than a decade.

Retirement, Dr. Minot said, allows people to do low-paying jobs that are important to a community but not particularly popular. Bus driving is one example. "It's fun," he told The Ridgefield Press in 1992. "Some of the kids are very irritating, but most are okay and some are just amazing. It renews your faith in what's going to happen in the country and in the world." 

As an assistant medical examiner, another job for which he volunteered in retirement, Dr. Minot was occasionally summoned when he was aboard his bus. He did not show up on the scene in a bus, though; he finished the run and grabbed his own car.

Did the retiree ever relax? Many ways, among them baking bread and driving his antique BMW motorcycle along picturesque back roads.

He died in 2004 at the age of 84.

Alan Meltzer: 

A Generous Man of Music

Alan Meltzer, who died on Halloween 2011 at the age of 67, left a rather unusual will: He bequeathed $1 million to his chauffeur, and another half million to the doorman at the Manhattan building in which he lived.

Meltzer, who had a home on Old Branchville Road in the 1980s and 1990s, was a wealthy music entrepreneur whom The New York Post described as “the colorful former head of the New

York-based Wind-Up Records and a celebrity high-stakes poker player.”

Wind-Up, which has produced recordings for Creed, Evanescence, Seether, and many other artists, is one of the largest independently owned record labels in the world; the company says it’s been responsible for establishing many multi-platinum and diamond artists. (Creed’s three CDs had by 2003 sold 30 million copies.)

But when he and his wife, Diana, moved to Ridgefield, Alan Meltzer was involved in the retail side of music instead of production. He’d owned Titus Oaks Records, a small music chain in Long Island and, after moving here, opened Rainbow Records at 88 Danbury Road.

In 1985 he founded CD One Stop, a wholesaler of pre-recorded music. The business, which operated out his house here, was called the first of its kind to distribute only compact discs. Later merged into CDNow, it eventually became part of Amazon.com.

Meltzer was also a serious poker player, and frequently appeared on televised poker programs.

Tragedy struck in 1991. The Meltzers’ only child, Michael, a 20-year-old honors student at Syracuse University and a 1989 Ridgefield High School graduate, was killed in an auto accident on Danbury Road. In Michael’s memory, the couple established a scholarship for music and art students graduating from RHS that has given away tens of thousands of dollars in the years since.

Not long afterward, the Meltzers moved to Manhattan and acquired a small record label, Grass, soon turning it into Wind-Up Records. He ran the business while Diana sought out the musicians — Newsweek called her “the chief talent scout, the woman with the golden ears.”

Eventually, the two divorced. Meanwhile, Alan struck up friendships with his doorman and chauffeur —  The Post called them “two faithful workers who gave him a shoulder to cry on.”

Both were surprised at the bequests.

“I appreciate it,” the doorman said in a 2012 Post story reprinted around the world. “He was a generous guy. He was a really good friend of mine, and I was a good friend of his. It’s a surprise. Peace and rest to him.”

“I don’t know what to do exactly with the money, but one thing I know for sure, every year I’m going to bring the guy some flowers at his grave,” said the chauffeur, the father of five. 

That grave is in Ridgefield: Alan is buried next to his son Michael in Ridgebury Cemetery. 

Fr. Francis Medynski,

A Pioneer Pastor

Father Francis Medynski seemed to have built St. Elizabeth Seton literally from the ground up. In the early days of the new parish, he did almost everything himself — painting, mowing the lawn, planting  the grass and trees. 

When the church building was erected, he hand-made the wooden stations of the cross. 

Though a bit of a carpenter and handyman, Father Medynski was first a priest and second a musician. These two vocations combined when he went looking for a baptismal font for the new church: He used the kettle of a kettle drum. 

A native of New Jersey, Father Medynski was born in 1921, the son of Eastern European immigrants. His parents died in a flu epidemic when he was a baby and he grew up in an orphanage. He graduated from Catholic University of America, got a master's degree in education from the University of Detroit, and also studied music for many years. His specialty was choral music.

Over his career as a parish priest, he started 11 boys choirs. “Every time the bishop moved me to another parish, I started up another choir,” he told an interviewer.

In 1973, when he came to St. Mary’s as pastor, he founded The Little Singers, a choir that less than  two years later sang at the Vatican. Singer Francesco Morales had lunch with Pope Paul VI and personally delivered a message from The Little Singers.

“Ridgefield was little bit different back then. It was less affluent,” said State Rep. John Frey,

one of the Little Singers. “In order to raise money for our trips, we'd be out there with our red blazers and red-painted coffee cans, collecting change in front of the Grand Union.”

In June 1976, the choir flew to London to sing at Westminster Cathedral and Royal Albert Hall. It was to be their last major appearance, however; that summer, Father Medynski was given the huge task of creating a new parish in Ridgefield, and had to suspend his work with the choir. 

“I would like to think that we are putting them to sleep for a while,” Father Medynski told The Ridgefield Press at the time. “It is not easy for me or the boys. They had dedicated themselves to good music, and not just sacred music, but secular music.”

In 1976, as the town's population grew, Bishop Walter Curtis had asked Father Medynski to start the new parish honoring St. Elizabeth Seton, the first U.S. native to be canonized.  

The parish was created later that year, with first masses in Ridgebury School. The church opened in December 1978, and Father Medynski continued as leader of the flock until 1996 when he reached 75, the church's mandatory retirement age. 

"It's been a fantastic, marvelous experience and tremendous to be with the best people in the world for 20 years," he told The Press at his retirement. 

Father Medynski continued his priestly work, serving in temporary assignments in many parishes in the diocese. He died in 2008 at the age of 86.

“He was an incredibly smart, most of the time very patient, very humble man,” Frey said. “Looking back, I didn't realize it then, he was a man who was born into unfortunate circumstances, with his parents dying young, who was of strong character, and was just a humble and good man and was a good role model for hundreds of young boys, not just me.” 

Walter McNamara: 

Our Father of Recycling

Ridgefield was a leader in Connecticut in recycling and while many worked to see that recycling succeeded here, no one was more instrumental than Walter McNamara. 

A native of St. Louis, Mr. McNamara was born in 1938,  grew up in Albany, N.Y., and graduated from Brown University. He flew helicopters in the U.S. Marine Corps, and was a United Airlines 747 pilot for many years. 

Mr. McNamara moved here in 1969. Two years later, a League of Women Voters study of the dump, politely called the “landfill,” and waste management inspired the formation of the Ridgefield Environmental Action Program with the aim of creating a recycling program. 

Soon, Mr. McNamara joined and soon REAP knew that a full-time recycling program and center were needed. He helped run REAP's first big fund-raiser, one that gained national attention: “The Dump Ball” took place outdoors on the parking lot of the town garage, right across the road from the town landfill. 

“The Dump Ball was a gala event, but every now and then you’d get a whiff of the dump,” Mr. McNamara said 25 years later. 

Recycling collections began at the town garage in early 1974, and the recycling center opened later that year. Until 1987, Mr. McNamara almost single-handedly managed the center. The bottle and can redemption law of 1979 cut into revenues, and later, New York's joining the redemption bandwagon hurt, too. But the center increased revenues by expanding what it would take. 

By 1988, the job was getting too much for REAP, a volunteer organization; some 1,200 tons were being recycled annually. The town took over and a few years later hired Hudson Baylor, a large recycling corporation, which ran the center for many years. It’s now operated by Winters Brothers.

When recycling became mandatory in the state in 1991, Ridgefield was one of the few towns in compliance on the first day, Mr. McNamara said. When he retired from REAP after 16 years, The Press cited some statistics, such as the fact that just the newspapers that were recycled would form a stack 140 miles high. 

“While the weight of what's been recycled over those years can be totaled up,” a Press editorial said, “the hours Mr. McNamara has devoted to recycling in Ridgefield are incalculable. And Ridgefield's loss at his retirement is just as incalculable.”

After leaving REAP, Mr. McNamara became a leader in efforts to control the water quality at Lake Mamanasco, along whose shore he lived. Around 2003, he retired to New Bern, N.C., where his interests including owning and flying his 1943 Seabee seaplane and building furniture.  He died in 2015 at the age of 75.

R. Gordon McGovern: 

A Kind, Corporate Leader

In the 1980s or 90s, if you were shopping at Ancona’s Market, you might have spotted a tall, well-dressed gentleman, fiddling with the neatness of the bread or soup can displays in the grocery aisles. It was probably Gordon McGovern, who had once swept floors at Pepperidge Farm and wound up its president, and then CEO of parent Campbell Soup.

Richard Gordon Gordon was born in Norristown, Pa., in 1926. An avid traveler all his life, he hitch-hiked across the United States as a high school student.  He graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University in 1948 and received his MBA from Harvard in 1950. He served as a Navy radar officer during the Korean War  

Starting as a management trainee sweeping floors for Pepperidge Farm, McGovern worked his way up to president of the company in 1968. He became chief executive officer of the parent company, Campbell Soup, in 1980, and retired in December 1989. 

At both companies McGovern gained national recognition for the introduction of innovative products, including the 100% natural soup line. 

He was always close to the customer. “He would shop for groceries in towns he visited, often discussing products and displays with the store manager,” a family member recalled. And he’d make sure Campbell/Pepperidge Farm items were perfectly presented. Even long after he retired, he could be spotted straightening Pepperidge Farm bread and neatening Campbell cans.

Mr. McGovern was proud of his record of never having closed a production plant at Pepperidge Farm and Campbell Soup (after he left, many were shut down).

Campbell has its headquarters in Camden, N.J., one of New Jersey’s most depressed cities, and during his period as CEO, McGovern’s was considered a “godsend,” said The Philadelphia News in 1989. “Gordon has been a tremendous asset to this city,” said Camden Mayor Randy Primas. "If we wanted to look at any one individual responsible for the development of the waterfront, it would be McGovern. He's one of the city’s unsung heroes."

A modest man, the CEO drove a yellow Volkswagen “beetle” for his corporate commute. 

He was a strong believer in education and gave generously to universities, libraries and schools and served on the boards of Wheaton College and the Wooster School in Danbury.  In Ridgefield, the Cain’s Hill Road resident contributed to such projects as building the lighted basketball courts behind the old high school on East Ridge. He and his wife, Julia, were major contributors to the Ridgefield Library, and helped pay for the building of the Dayton Program Room that the library used for more than 20 years. 

He died  in 2014 at his retirement home in South Kingstown, R.I. He was 87 years old.

Richard T. McGlynn: 

First Professional Fire Chief

Richard T. McGlynn was fated to be a fireman.  He was born in 1927 literally across the street from the firehouse and his grandfather, Michael T. McGlynn, had been a founder of the fire department in 1895. 

He began fighting fires as a high school kid during World War II when many of the regular volunteers were in the service. When he was old enough, he joined the U.S. Navy during the war and served as a seaman in the Pacific aboard the USS Hugh Purvis, a convoy carrier.

After the war he worked in the family plumbing business while resuming service as a volunteer firefighter.

In 1950, only a couple of years after Ridgefield created the position of paid, full-time fireman, Dick McGlynn joined the paid force of four men. Still also a volunteer, he was elected chief of the volunteer department from 1964 to 1968. 

In 1973, he became the paid department’s first chief, a post he held until his retirement in 1989. (In the early years, he was both the paid and volunteer chief at the same time.) 

“He’s one of those rare individuals who gives everything of himself to the town,” said First Selectman Sue Manning at his retirement banquet. 

When he started with the paid department, it had four people, enough to schedule one person on duty around the clock, seven days a week. If a call came in, that man could roll the ambulance or a fire truck while volunteers were being summoned. 

Much changed in the McGlynn years. There was one ambulance, one firehouse, and four fire trucks when he started. By the time he retired, there were 26 men, two ambulances, eight trucks, and two firehouses. 

He died in 2009 at the age of 82.

At McGlynn’s retirement party, Police Chief Thomas Rotunda suggested that if the long-discussed “new firehouse” is ever built, it should be named the “McGlynn Firehouse.” After all, he said, one McGlynn helped found and lead the volunteers a century earlier, and another led the development of a modern professional department that still works side-by-side with volunteers.

Francis D. Martin and his wife, Doris.

Francis D. Martin: 

“Mr. Ridgefield”

“Known affectionately as Mr. Ridgefield,” his Ridgefield Press obituary said, Francis D. Martin “was a jeweler, optician, banker, traveler, church and community leader, figure skater, and a philanthropist who aided many organizations and causes.” 

Mr. Martin was probably also the best known Ridgefield resident of the 20th Century. When he and his wife, Doris, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1966, more than 1,500 townspeople attended the open house at their gymnasium on the former Ridgefield School property on North Salem Road. 

“My first hobby is helping my fellow man, my church, and my community,” he once told The   Press. 

Born in 1893 in West Park, N.Y., “Marty” came to Ridgefield at the age of three. His father was for 50 years superintendent of Gov. Phineas C. Lounsbury’s Main Street estate — including what’s we now the Community Center — and his family lived in a house on the south side of Governor Street, where the Wells Fargo bank parking lot is now.

Mr. Martin attended school on Bailey Avenue — “where there were no toilets and no running water, just a pail with a dipper from which everyone drank and no one got typhoid fever,” he once wrote.

He began working at the age of six, carrying mail to the Vinton School for girls on East Ridge (now the Ridgefield police station). At 12, he was caddying at 15 cents a round. A year later, he got the job of night operator for the telephone company at $3.50 a week — five cents an hour — working from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. He said he'd then go home, eat breakfast and catch the 7:35 train for Norwalk High School (Ridgefield didn't have a high school then).

At Norwalk he was captain of the basketball and baseball teams. At basketball, he said, he was high scorer in the state in his final year on a team that had a 21-1 record and won the state championship. The same year, he reported, he pitched Norwalk High’s baseball squad to a 19-1 record, and had the highest batting average, .421.

He later played regional baseball and basketball and, in 1916, pitched three no-hitters for the Woosters of Danbury. That September, he said, he tried out for the Chicago White Sox, was offered a contract, but refused because he was about to be married to Doris Godfrey, his wife of more than 60 years.

Mr. Martin attended the Philadelphia College of Horology and Optics. In 1911, at age 17, he opened Ridgefield’s first clock and optician store in the Donnelly building on Main Street. “For the first 23 years I never failed being at my place of business later than 4:30 in the morning,” he said. “And we kept the stores in Ridgefield open every night in those days.”

He became active in the community, helping found Ridgefield's first Boy Scout troop in 1912, raising funds for the county YMCA,  establishing  the Promoter’s Club, and serving as first president of the Lions Club. He was a 27-year member of the Board of Finance, a state commissioner of opticians, chairman of the Boys’ Club,  chairman of the Red Cross during World War II,  president of the First National Bank for many years, and a trustee of Danbury Hospital. 

With A.J. Carnall, he worked on the acquisition of  the Lounsbury estate to become Veterans Park and the Community Center, and even tried to convince the United Nations to establish its headquarters in town.

For many years, Mr. Martin headed the Branchville Fresh Air Camp, which hosted some 100 children a year through the Herald Tribune Fresh Air Fund. The camp was on the site of today’s Branchville School.

A leader in the Jesse Lee Memorial United Methodist Church, he was chairman of the church’s Board of Trustees for 35 years and led the church’s move from the center of town to its present location. He gave the church more than a half million dollars. 

One of his favorite activities was figure skating, and for many years in February, he would plow snow off the ice at Lake Mamanasco and invite the entire town to a skating party there. Often, more than 1,000 people would attend.

In 1934, he was seriously injured in a skating accident. While he was recuperating,  Mr. Martin decided to undertake “five projects to benefit Ridgefield and my fellow man.” He completed four and never revealed what the fifth was.

“The Depression was on, and business was very bad at that time,” he wrote of his first plan. “Foremost in my thought was that in 30 years, wealth would be gone and Ridgefield needed some kind of industry, but no factories, as we are a beautiful residential community.”’

So he began buying properties near the village, particularly along Grove Street and Old Quarry Road. Some people thought he was crazy, he said. One teacher even told his son’s class, “Wise people buy high and dry land; foolish people along railroads, town dumps, and filter beds.”

Eventually, however, the land was zoned for light industry and, improved by Mr. Martin, became home to such companies as Schlumberger and Digitech.  

His second project was to upgrade his business into “the finest country jewelry store in America.”  (By the time he sold the store to Helen Craig in 1950, he calculated that he had personally repaired 125,000 watches and 25,000 clocks.)

His third project was the acquisition of many run-down properties including the Tudor-style building where Planet Pizza is today.  Many were fixed up, and shacks out back torn down. 

In 1941 he bought the old Ridgefield Boys School on North Salem Road “with the sole purpose in my mind of keeping out of Ridgefield a very undesirable group of people who were after it,” he said without further explanation. He eventually decided to make it his home and much of the building was razed to make it more house-sized. (The property was once among the sites considered for the world headquarters of the United Nations, now in Manhattan.)

Around 1950, Mr. Martin purchased the 14 acres at the corner of Danbury and Copps Hill Roads so that “when Ridgefield (was) large enough, we would have a shopping center outside congested areas with parking room for over 1,000 cars.” The spot is now Copps Hill Plaza, built in the early 1970’s.

Mr. Martin’s final project was his favorite. “While still in bed, I laid great plans to have an exceptionally fine swimming place for the people of Ridgefield —a place that would be absolutely clean, well-guarded by the police and lifeguards.”

The land at Great Pond was acquired by Mr. Martin and others. Volunteers created a beach in 1953. Fees high enough only to cover costs of operating the private park were charged.

When the Great Pond Holding Corporation donated the property to the town in 1970, Mr. Martin had only two stipulations. “It is the wish of Francis D. Martin,” the deed says of one, “that this park be continuously self-supporting.” He did not want taxpayers who don’t use the beach to have to pay for it and thus, the town must charge fees for its use.

The only other stipulation was that “said premises will be known as Francis D. Martin Park.”

Francis Martin died in 1982 at the age of 88. His wife, Doris, died five years later.