Take On Life

Hi everyone,

For some, the name Sybil Ludington conjures up blank stares and shrugged shoulders.

For others, the name paints a portrait of colonial courage, a 16-year-old girl riding horseback through the woods on a dark and rainy night to summon her father’s regiment after the British raided Danbury in 1777.

Finally, there are those who know Sybil Ludington as the girl riding the horse in the courtyard statue at Danbury Public Library.

More than 230 years after her famous 40-mile ride — more daring than Paul Revere’s when you consider the weather, her age and her route — two different filmmakers are trying to tell her story.

On March 4, “Sybil Ludington” — a Christian-based narrative produced by KICKS Ministries of Ohio — premiered in Southland, Texas, of all places.

A second film, “Ludington’s Ride” — actually, it’s a trilogy — has been under way since 2003 as the brainchild of writer-producer Charles Welty of California.

Forget about Southland, Texas, although I’m sure it’s a nice community. These films need to be shown in Danbury, an important backdrop for the Sybil Ludington story.

To see where these two films should play in Danbury, check out my “Take on Life” column Friday.

Only in the print edition of The News-Times.

Hi everyone,

With the NCAA Tournament set to tip-off Thursday, I thought I’d share my Final Four picks with you.

WEST: Syracuse (Of course! Arinze Onuaku will be ready to go when it matters.)

EAST: West Virginia (Sorry, Kentucky fans. John Calipari cuts corners and turns my stomach.)

SOUTH: Duke (The ACC was weak this year, but this bracket is even weaker. And please, don’t tell me how the ACC got six teams in the tounament. Three of those teams — Georgia Tech, Wake Forest and Florida State — are seeded No. 9 or higher.)

MIDWEST: Kansas (No brainer here, but look for ‘Cuse to beat the Jayhawks in the national semifinals just like the Orange beat them for the 2003 national championship.)

Who do you like in the Final Four? Leave me a comment!

Hi everyone,

For generations, little kids have strapped on pretend military helmets to fight the enemy.

Jack Ruffles, who turns one today, didn’t need to pretend last March. The enemy was all too real for the Danbury boy.

Within hours of his birth — and after an urgent helicopter ride to Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y. — Jack was wearing a silver helmet strapped to his chin as he fought for his life.

But this was no ordinary helmet.

This was three layers of water-cooled salvation, an amazing device called the Olympic Cool-Cap System that reduces a baby’s scalp temperature to about 50 degrees for 72 hours to help prevent brain cells from dying.

For Jack, it was the difference between permanent brain damage from 15 minutes of oxygen deprivation at birth, and taking his mother’s hand now as he gets ready to walk on his own.

To find out more about Jack Ruffles and his first birthday, check out my Take on Life column Wednesday.

Only in the print edition of The News-Times.

Hi everyone,

Congratulations to those who made last week’s Family Fun Night in Danbury a night to remember.

The annual event, which is sponsored by the Greater Danbury Child and Family Network, is held for kids with special needs and their families. This year’s party drew about 50 families, according to organizers.

Family Fun Night has live entertainment, games, crafts, raffles and information booths about services for special needs kids and their families.

For the past few years, Family Fun Night has been held at the Park Avenue School in Danbury. Nice job by Danbury Public Schools for making this space available for Family Fun Night. 

This year’s featured entertainer was Zooky the Clown (shown left) with 5-year-old Connor Fako. The Gals Club from Rogers Park Middle School oversaw the crafts portion of the program, while teens from Escape the Arts in Danbury did face painting.

For more information about Family Fun Night, or services for special needs kids and their families, call Danbury Children First at 203-797-8088.

Hi everyone,

Eileen Werndorfer doesn’t want your pity.

But she’ll take your $20 in the name of Parkinson’s research.

After seven years of fighting the degenerative neurological disorder, the Brookfield woman refuses to take Parkinson’s lying down.

Except for the first 45 minutes or so after she wakes up.

“I can’t walk in the morning until after I take my medicine,” Werndorfer said with a grin. “But once it kicks in, it’s like Superman. It’s like you go into a phone booth and come out a different person.”

This is the Parkinson’s picture that Werndorfer and her husband, Steve, want to paint for the world, not the old canvas of body tremors that hangs in too many minds.

Although some folks with Parkinson’s have visible body tremors accompanied by stiffness, other people manage the disease with medicine and exercise.

The 61-year-old Werndorfer understands it takes money — a lot of money — to punch back against Parkinson’s the way that Muhammad Ali, Michael J. Fox, Janet Reno and the Rev. Billy Graham do.

So for the past four years, Werndorfer has decided to do something about it.

To find out what, check out my “Take on Life” column on Sunday.

Only in the print edition of The News-Times.

Hi everyone,

Here’s all you need to know about the crash that almost took Jerry Nadeau’s life:

He had oatmeal for breakfast.

That’s all Nadeau remembers about May 2, 2003, the day he lost control of the No. 01 U.S. Army Pontiac and slammed into a wall during practice at Richmond International Raceway.

On Wednesday, nearly seven years after his near-fatal wreck, Nadeau spoke to about 100 people at the Stony Hill Inn in Bethel as a human ghost, the NASCAR driver who cheated death at 120 mph.

The Danbury native and Abbott Tech graduate was the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for Newtown Youth & Family Services, a local nonprofit mental health clinic and youth service group.

It was the first public speaking engagement for Nadeau in three years.

“I still can’t feel my left side,” Nadeau told the crowd. “You know how your leg falls asleep sometimes when you’re sitting on the couch?

“Well, that pins-and-needles feeling, that’s how the left side of my body feels all the way down, all the time.”

Even now, it is a painful admission for Nadeau, a once-promising driver who won the NAPA 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway in 2000.

Nadeau, 40, understands there will be no more victory laps, no more smoking tires in the infield. And it tears his heart out every time he wrestles that reality.

Motor skills and motor sports are inseparable, you see. They always have been.

For the rest of his days, Nadeau will live with a traumatic brain injury that “rattled my cage” as he calls it, the injury that left three lesions on the right side of his brain.

At the time of his accident, the black box in Nadeau’s car at Richmond rated his crash impact at 140 Gs, or 140 times the force of gravity — the equivalent of jumping off a 10-story building, the doctors told him.

To read more about Jerry Nadeau’s road to recovery, check out my “Take on Life” column Friday.

Only in the print edition of The News-Times.

Hi everyone,

Before I started writing “Take on Life” for The News-Times in May 2007, I spent 14 years covering the UConn men’s basketball program for the paper.

During that time, I had my share of run-ins with Jim Calhoun, the team’s Hall of Fame head coach, the man with two national championships and more than 800 career victories.

Calhoun didn’t like everything I wrote about him or his team. But then again, that’s not how it works. My job was to cover the Huskies, not promote them.

And yet, I also saw a side of Calhoun — a private, compassionate side — that never made it into print.

I remember this one time, there was a high school kid from Greater Danbury who was having a tough time, after his father had died from a massive heart attack.

This kid loved the Huskies, by the way – almost as much as he loved his dad.

I knew that Calhoun’s father had also died when Calhoun was just a kid in Braintree, Mass. So one day after practice, I went up to Calhoun and asked if he would sign his book for this kid from Greater Danbury.

The book was called, “Dare to Dream: Connecticut Basketball’s Remarkable March to the National Championship.” Calhoun wrote it with Leigh Montville, a great storyteller via The Boston Globe and Sports Illustrated, among other publications.

Anyway, once I told Calhoun about this kid’s story, he grabbed my pen and started writing. And writing.

I expected an autograph. Calhoun gave me — and this young man — a full page of honesty, encouragement and hope.

Here’s another story: A few years ago, I took part in the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life in Newtown with my family.

For a fundraiser, I asked Calhoun and UConn football coach Randy Edsall if they would autograph balls for me as raffle prizes.

They pretty much agreed on the spot.

Edsall, who also uses his high-profile position to help people, even had the football mailed to my house. But that’s Randy. He’s a good guy that way.

As for Calhoun, when I went to his office to pick up the basketball, he told me to wait a minute.

Suddenly, he reached into a shelf behind his desk and pulled out locker room baseball caps from UConn’s 2004 national championship team.

A few Sharpie swirls later, Calhoun had autographed four or five caps for me.

“Here you go,” Calhoun told me. “Raffle these, too.”

So while some folks speculate about when Calhoun should retire — and yes, I understand UConn crashed and burned down the stretch this year — Calhoun has earned the right to retire on his own terms, whether it’s this year. Or next year. Or five years from now.

Jim Calhoun deserves that much. It’s time to give it to him.

Hi everyone,

Matthew Shepard was hardly an intimidating figure. At 5-foot-2 and barely 100 pounds, the University of Wyoming student was a small man who loved good coffee and good conversation.

Shepard was also gay.

It was never going to be a fair fight that autumn night in 1998, when convicted murderers Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney beat the life out of Shepard just because he was gay.

First, they pistol-whipped him with a .357 Magnum and stole his wallet in Laramie, Wyo.

Later, they tied him to a fence in the desert and beat him until his skull was so badly crushed and his brain was so badly swollen it impaired his ability to breathe.

This unspeakable hate crime shocked America and ultimately sparked the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HCPA) that was signed into law by President Barack Obama on Oct. 28, 2009.

It took more than a decade, but the federal government got it right.

On Saturday, the blatantly anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church plans to protest The Brookfield Theatre for the Arts’ performance of “The Laramie Project,” a production about Shepard’s life and death.

The Kansas-based church, whose Web site is www.godhatesfags.com, plans to send seven people to Brookfield, according to Shirley Phelps-Roper, the daughter of church founder Fred Phelps.

To read more about Matthew Shepard and the Westboro Baptist Church, check out my “Take on Life” column on Wednesday.

Only in the print edition of The News-Times.