Fourth-grade interviewers uncover Cornwall history

CORNWALL — It may be part of the curriculum, but the annual fourth-grade essay project is more often referred to as a tradition.

Interviews with longtime local residents by students at Cornwall Consolidated School may also provide valuable historical documentation. So much so, in fact, that teacher Cathy Binkowski has decided to offer the dozens she has collected in her four years at the elementary school to the Cornwall Historical Society.

The project culminated recently with a “tea,� served in the classroom on Dec. 4 and hosted by the students for their parents and the people they had interviewed. The highlight of the gathering was a reading by each student of his or her essay.

A theme of the essays: What was life like in Cornwall when the interviewees were the students’ age? And a commonly asked question: Did you ever get in trouble as a kid?

Alec Frost admitted to throwing a “lime ball� and breaking the windshield of a neighbor’s car. Former Housatonic Valley Regional High School teacher Norma Lake skipped a day once while she was a high school student herself.

“Of course! I was normal,� Ralph Gold was quoted as saying. “I talked a lot in school. I was always punished by having to help the janitor.�

Fred Bate described himself as the teacher’s pet while in school, but a “little devil� at home.

Taking a cautious position on the question, First Selectman Gordon Ridgway responded that he had been in trouble as a youngster ... but did not want to talk about it.

Juicy tidbits aside, this is a serious project that involves weeks of work and leads off a year of study that progresses from local history to the history of the state and then the nation.

In class, the students work with Binkowski on their interview questions, practice by interviewing each other, and host a tea for the eighth-graders, to hone their manners and tea-hosting skills. They brainstorm questions, seeking some that require more than a “yes� or “no� answer. They generally choose their own interviewees, often a member or friend of the family, or a neighbor.

“I used to tell them to pick a senior citizen,� Binkowski said. “But sometimes their perception is a little off and they come back with the name of someone about 40. Now I tell them to pick someone who has lived here at least 25 years.�

Everyone had a story about the 1989 tornado, and some recalled the flood of 1955. Most charming were the stories from childhood, which illustrated how much things have changed in a town that seems to have stayed wonderfully the same.

Doc Simont recalled while being interviewed by Teagan Lynch that he used to go sledding on Town Street before the plow came through and would hitch rides back up the hill on the back of the neighbors’ Jeep.

When Phil Hart wasn’t breaking windows, fighting with his brothers or not cleaning his room, he told Roxy Hurlburt, he was helping his dad with farm chores, playing sports, building forts and earning pennies for picking yellow mustard weed out of hayfields. He recalled that his family’s first phone number was 75J1. His best friend was Jerry Blakey, whose number was 75J2.

Jill Bryant told Annika Elwell that during World War II, when gas was in short supply, she hitched rides on the back of the milk truck to get to Cream Hill Lake.

John Calhoun told Eliana Calhoun he grew up without television and did farm chores for 50 cents an hour for two years to save up enough to buy a three-speed bicycle.

Dorothy Russ told neighbor Dartanian Oyanadel about all her childhood pets, about using her imagination to play and about shopping mostly from peddlers who came to town.

The school had no water fountains back then, she said. “Instead, they had a bucket of water with a ladle. Everyone drank out of the same ladle.�

The audience at the tea particularly enjoyed stories gleaned by Sasha Givotovsky from Marion Blake. Simple pleasures in Blake’s  childhood included grownups playing pinochle while the kids made fudge and using oars and a clothesline to play tennis.

She recalled having no furnace and wearing itchy long underwear. The buttons bothered her, so she cut them off. “Her father was the town selectman for 15 years,� Sasha wrote. “Her mom was Citizen of the Year, for helping people. Her favorite thing about Cornwall is that people help each other.�

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less