Take On Life

Hi everyone,

This wasn’t your usual first pitch ceremony, where a baseball is thrown into a vacuum of anonymity while no one is really watching.

This was way better.

With a windmill wind-up, 5-year-old Cooper Fesh released the high heat the other night at Rogers Park. The ball took a few bounces toward home before the little boy with the big grin, the son of Westerners pitching coach Sean Fesh and his wife, Meg, was carried off the field.

This is the view from the top — from a father’s shoulders and from the pitcher’s mound of the Danbury Westerners, the city’s charter member of the New England Collegiate Baseball League.

The Westerners, who just came off a six-game winning streak — their longest of the 2010 season — are playing their best baseball in years and Greater Danbury is taking notice.

On Tuesday night, the Westerners drew the biggest crowd in their 16-year history with an announced gate of 1,333 fans. There were probably half as many people at Wednesday night’s game, but the allure was just the same.

At Rogers Park, the best seat in the house is often a lawn chair along the first baseline. There are no luxury boxes here, only simple pleasures — baseball with wooden bats, frozen treats from the ice cream man, children chasing foul balls with gloves nearly as big as their heads.

Mike Rivard, an X-ray technician from New Milford, takes his boys, 8-year-old Benjamin and 6-year-old Matthew, to Rogers Park at least once a week to watch the Westerners. Rivard, who grew up in Watertown, didn’t get the chance to spend many summer nights with his dad, Leo, who died suddenly at the age of 57.

So Rivard’s mom, Anna, the ardent Yankees fan, became his transfusion for a baseball bloodline. Rivard’s heart has been pumping in pinstripes ever since.

To read more about Mike Rivard, Cooper Fesh and the Westerners, check out my “Take on Life” column Friday.

Only in the print edition of The News-Times.

Hi everyone,

For nearly 50 years, commuters, visitors and errand-runners alike have benefited from the existence of Interstate 84 in Greater Danbury. 

The region’s signature highway weaves through western Connecticut for 16 exits. But these local exits aren’t just numbers. They’re also neighborhoods.

On Sunday, The News-Times will publish the first part of a series called, “Life Along the Exits.” The first installment will examine the history of I-84 and life along exits 1, 2 and 3 in Danbury.

Future stories will focus on exits 4 through 16 and the neighborhoods there. Those stories will also help answer some pressing questions: What does the future hold for I-84 in Greater Danbury? What improvements are in the works?

To see what’s coming down the pike, check out “Life Along the Exits,” exclusively in the print edition of The News-Times, starting this Sunday.

Hi everyone,

For years, the little room next to the sports department at The News-Times developed a photographer’s most precious gifts.

It was here that Dave Harple brought his pictures to life as he swirled chemicals over white paper aching to be born into print the next day.

I miss seeing Dave’s images in our newspaper.

I miss seeing him even more.

Sunday will mark the one-year anniversary of Dave’s death after a courageous and often irreverent battle with cancer. How else do you describe someone who wore a “Cancer Sucks” button like an accessory?

But that was Dave. He was authentic and talented, and it showed in his pictures.

Boy, was he talented.

Sometimes, it was hard to tell what was working faster — his mind with all those incredible ideas, his mouth telling you about them, or his shutter capturing rich, layered moments for posterity.

“I think about Dave every day, several times a day,” said News-Times photo editor Carol Kaliff, who worked with Dave for 27 years, longer than some of our reporters have been alive. “Every time I go into that (dark) room, I see him.”

A while back, Carol set up a modest yet meaningful tribute to Dave outside that little dark room they shared for so long. And it was entirely wonderful.

There’s a black-and-white photo of Dave holding up a roll of film to choose his next great image. And, trust me, there were plenty of great images from Dave Harple in our newspaper.

To read more about my friend, check out my “Take on Life” column Friday.

Only in the print edition of The News-Times.

Hi everyone,

Here’s the promo for this week’s Sunday paper. Be sure to check it out!

“For the past few years, a number of school boards in Greater Danbury have told residents that cutting the budget would mean teacher layoffs.

Maybe 10 teachers might have to go. Maybe 20. Maybe more.

But somehow, when the final budget is approved, often only a handful of teachers – and sometimes no teachers – actually seem to lose their jobs.

Do local school officials pad their numbers to gain public support for increased spending, or are last-minute budget cuts made elsewhere to save jobs?

The News-Times is digging into this thorny issue and will let you know, in an exclusive report in the Sunday, July 25, edition, how many teachers were projected to get the ax in your town this year — and how many actually lost their jobs.”

Hi everyone,

Zena and Norman Dachs live on Long Island, home to the Fire Island National Seashore and the Hamptons, two of the most breathtaking beach destinations in America.

And yet, for the past 21 years, the couple has spent their summers on Lake Waubeeka in Danbury, the intimate enclave founded in 1951 by a group of Jewish firefighters from New York City.

It’s hard to imagine a more idyllic retreat.

“It’s a very quiet, pristine lake,” said Norman Dachs, a 77-year-old attorney with a special affinity for tennis. “There are no motor boats and no noise. It’s a wonderful community.”

Dachs and his wife can see paradise from their deck on Lake Waubeeka, a placid reflection coating the surface of this 55-acre treasure near Wooster Mountain State Park.

For other folks in Greater Danbury, especially those who like to open a motor boat’s throttle, Candlewood Lake is the vacation address of choice.

Add a beer and a burger at Down the Hatch, the waterfront restaurant in Brookfield, and you’ve got a pretty nice end to the day right there.

But unlike the homes surrounding Lake Waubeeka, many of the homes on Candlewood Lake are larger and more expensive, seven-figure monuments to the good life.

Of course, the good life is always a relative term.

Sometimes, it depends on the depth of your pockets. Other times, it depends on whether your dream is sponsored by silence or Evinrude.

To read more about spending the summer on the lake — and to read about my favorite lake — check out my “Take on Life” column Sunday.

Only in the print edition of The News-Times.

Hi everyone,

For Danbury dentist Ralph Giuliano, his first trip to the village of La Victoria in the Dominican Republic was nothing short of life-changing.

But not because of the island’s sparkling beaches. Or its lavish resorts with the overflowing buffets and the swim-up bars.

Giuliano won’t forget his first trip to La Victoria because he wasn’t prepared for what he saw.

They don’t teach you how to pull out a tooth in dental school with only a flashlight to guide your hand. They don’t teach you how to politely decline a plate of food because the parasites are everywhere.

“We started out in a closet in a school classroom with a mud floor,” Giuliano said Thursday afternoon from his office on Clapboard Ridge.

“Roughly 15 years later, we’ve built a hospital there and we have a dental clinic,” Giuliano added. “But even now, if you walk around the corner from the hospital, you’ll see the trash dumped outside and the animals eating it right next to the houses.”

For a long time after Giuliano came back from La Victoria that first year in 1995, he was numb.

But this numbness had nothing to do with Novocain or any other pain killer. There wasn’t a needle big enough to make Giuliano feel this way.

When Giuliano agreed to join his college buddies — Dr. Robert Edwards, a dentist from Massachusetts, and Dr. Jerry Hough, a pediatric surgeon from Florida — on a trip to La Victoria, he pictured a one-time thing, a quick-fix job with not much emotional investment.

It was anything but a quick fix for Ralph Giuliano and the people who waited outside with the trash for hours to have their teeth pulled for free.

Over the next few years, Giuliano brought his three daughters — Jennifer, Jessica and Jacqueline — to La Victoria. They, too, held babies in their arms and a tiny village in their hearts.

“I think it made us all understand how blessed we are to live in America,” Giuliano said. “Far too often, I think, we forget how lucky we are in this country.”

To read more about Dr. Giuliano, check out my “Take on Life” column Friday.

Only in the print edition of The News-Times.

Hi everyone,

For folks who live along Candlewood Lake and other bodies of water in Greater Danbury, the joys of waterfront living extend year-round. For those who come to visit — and rent — each summer, it’s a wonderful way to unwind.

Greater Danbury isn’t the Hamptons or Cape Cod. But for many people — permanent residents and renters alike — that’s part of the appeal.

Of course, all of this serenity comes at a price for the thousands of people on the waterfront. What are the pros and cons of lakefront living? And literally what does it cost to live on the water?

Read all about summer lakeside living — and see what $20,000 a month will get you — exclusively in the Sunday, July 18, News-Times.

Hi everyone,

With more than 15 convictions on his rap sheet, James O’Neill is no stranger to the criminal justice system.

So when O’Neill’s bond was lowered from $200,000 to $49,000 on Monday in connection with evading the scene of a May 28 accident in Bethel, some folks in Greater Danbury shook their heads.

After all, wasn’t O’Neill a “person of interest” in the June 3 hit-and-run death of Danbury Police Officer Donald Hassiak?

Yes, but O’Neill was only that — a “person of interest” in the Hassiak case, not a suspect or a defendant.

Until Tuesday.

Forty days after Hassiak was struck and killed on Route 7 as he rode his bicycle to work for the midnight shift, New Milford police issued an arrest warrant for the 47-year-old O’Neill, of Bethel.

O’Neill, who is already behind bars in Bridgeport, faces a litany of charges associated with Hassiak’s death, including felony misconduct with a motor vehicle, felony tampering with evidence and four misdemeanor charges.

There was no closure with this announcement. It’s too early — much too early — for any healing here.

But there was a sense Tuesday that justice can finally start to flex its muscle and help one of Danbury’s finest rest in peace.

During O’Neill’s arraignment on the Bethel charges in June, State’s Attorney Stephen Sedensky argued for a high bond because O’Neill might be a suspect in another case.

Everyone in the court room knew the other case was the cowardly hit-and-run tragedy that stole Donald Hassiak from his wife, Kim, and their three beautiful boys: Matthew, Luke and Donald Joseph III.

By all accounts, you see, Donald Hassiak was a credit to his uniform and a hero to his family.

He was a decorated 16-year veteran of the Danbury Police Department and a father who scooped his wife and kids into his arms like he was scooping them out of a treasure chest.

Hassiak cherished them more than anything in the world, friends and family said. Who needs diamonds and rubies when you have a great wife and super kids?

There is no greater joy in life. Nothing is more precious.

To read more about Tuesday’s arrest warrant in this case, read my “Take on Life” column Wednesday.

Only in the print edition of The News-Times.