Take On Life

Hi everyone,

For years, casino trips have been a gold mine for tour bus companies in Connecticut and across the Northeast.

But just imagine if you didn’t have to drive two hours each way on a bus from Danbury to gamble.

Pretty soon, you won’t have to imagine it. All you’ll have to do is turn on your computer and let it ride.

In the wake of the U.S. Justice Department’s Dec. 23 decision that Connecticut and other states can legalize online gaming — excepts sports gambling — two things have become pretty clear:

1.) Gambling generates a whole lot of money. Last year, $1.2 billion was spent on lottery tickets, pari-mutuel bets and charitable gaming in Connecticut, according to state officials. What’s more, those figures don’t count all the money spent at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, because those casinos are operated under the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.

2.) Gambling can be very dangerous, especially for people with addiction problems. Although the state of Connecticut currently spends about $1.9 million to promote responsible gambling and to help those with gambling addictions, that’s still only about 1/1,000th of the amount spent on gambling in Connecticut.

Listen, I understand money is tight and the economy is tenuous in Connecticut. I also understand Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and the General Assembly continue to look down the barrel of burgeoning budget gaps.

But for many folks, online gaming amounts to a predatory means of generating revenue. There will be consequences when online gaming comes to Connecticut in the days ahead, make no mistake about it.

“With online gambling, you’ll have it all — the casino, the card room, the horse room, everything except sports betting — and you’ll have it 24 hours a day,” said Jim Crean, director of outreach and community relations for the Danbury-based Midwestern Connecticut Council on Alcoholism and an expert on gambling addiction.

“All you’ll have to do is go from your living room to your computer room. The ease of access will make it much more dangerous,” Crean said. “The more states look to increase revenues (with online gaming), the more it potentially affects the people who can least afford to spend the money.”

Crean cautions that he is not anti-gambling, but rather, pro-responsible gambling. At the same time, he has seen too many lives destroyed by games of chance.

With in-home access coming to a Connecticut computer near you, expect those numbers only to go up.

Exponentially.

Malloy, meanwhile, defends his decision of supporting online gaming as a state revenue stream in 2012 and beyond.

He knows if Connecticut doesn’t buy in, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island will be climbing over each other for Connecticut’s gambling dollars.

“I’m not a big proponent of gaming. But what’s going to happen, based on the change in position by the U.S. Justice Department … is that there’s going to be online gaming in the United States,” Malloy said the other day in Newtown. “So it’s not a question of whether it’s going to happen. It’s quite apparent it’s going to happen.

“Therefore, you’re going to have to ask the next logical question: Who is going to benefit from that?” Malloy said. “And, quite clearly, any number of states have been proponents of online gaming — we have not been previously — but we have to accept the reality that the map has changed.”

Literally and figuratively.

Who needs a two-hour trip to Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun when you can have the same fun with two clicks on your computer?

That’s the $1 million question.

Or worse, it’s the dead-broke question.

“Some people have interpreted things to mean that Connecticut wants to start this. That’s not the case. It really isn’t,” Malloy insisted.

“If you’re asking me, ‘Do I think it’s foreseeable in the future that we may need to spend more money (on gambling awareness and education),’ I think the answer is in the affirmative. What the right level of money is and what the actual challenges will be remain to be seen.”

Dr. Lori Rugle, the state’s director of problem gambling services, said increased spending is critical to addressing the current — and future — gambling addicts in Connecticut.

“We need to do a lot of educating of the public about the dangers of online gambling,” Rugle said Friday. “This isn’t a risk-free activity.”

Indeed, it’s not.

“We usually don’t see people (for treatment) until they’ve run out of money,” Crean said. “There’s more of a social stigma with gambling addiction than there is with alcohol addiction.

“There’s no smell on your breath. Nobody is stumbling around from it. There’s no dilation of the pupils.”

Granted, online gaming revenue would help Connecticut’s bottom line. There are budgets to balance and bills to pay, after all.

But don’t think for a minute this isn’t blood money from those who are already bleeding.

Hi everyone,

Ed Robbs can still taste those big pots of Indiana chili his mother used to make in Terre Haute.

Ed Robbs

The chili — at least, that’s what his mother called it — was a staple of his 1950s childhood, the kind of thoughtful meal that filled a little boy’s belly and his heart at the same time.

But instead of ground beef smothered in tomato sauce, Mary Rose Robbs made her chili with a tomato soup base and then thickened it with spaghetti and crackers.

With seven kids to raise by herself, Mrs. Robbs had no choice but to be creative in the kitchen. Anything to stretch a meal. Or a dollar.

Or a boy’s imagination.

Ed Robbs, the principal of Broadview Middle School in Danbury, credits his mother for encouraging him to work hard in school and to help the less fortunate.

“It’s not about how much you have,” Robbs said Thursday from his office, shaking his head for emphasis. “It’s about what you do with what you have.”

Robbs, 68, has lived by those words his whole career — first as a science teacher in Los Angeles and later as a school administrator, including the last 13 years at Broadview.

“This is what I do. I work with kids and I love my job,” said Robbs, who lives in Danbury with his wife, Myrtle. “When I first came here in 1998, I said that I’d stay for five years. Well, here I am today. I’ll stay as long as they want me and as long as I feel I’m adding value to the school.”

On Jan. 16, Robbs will be honored by the Connecticut Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Commission with its Humanitarian Award for his work with schoolchildren. The event will start at 11 a.m. at the State Capitol.

“To be honest with you, my first reaction was embarrassment,” Robbs said. “To be singled out for doing something I love — working with kids — was extremely unexpected. But after it sunk in, I felt very, very honored.”

Robbs also serves on the board of trustees for The Hord Foundation, which has given out $3.5 million in college scholarships to more than 2,500 African-American students from Greater Danbury over the years. He’s even served as chairman of The Hord Foundation’s scholarship program.

“It’s about education. It’s about making good choices in your life,” Robbs said Thursday before visiting Shelter Rock Elementary School to tell his story to a class of fifth-grade boys.

“I started off like many kids in Danbury. We were very poor. Welfare poor,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t make a difference in the world and make it a better place.”

Robbs prepared a special PowerPoint presentation for the boys at Shelter Rock School. Fittingly, there were lots of quotes from King.

Along with his mother’s love and her rib-sticking Indiana chili, Robbs will tell you about the profound influence King had on his life. And the lives of so many others.

“Ed is a very caring person. He knows all his kids and they know him,” said Sal Pascarella, Danbury’s Superintendent of Schools. “He wants his kids not only to be good students, but to be good young people. That caring comes across in everything he does. I am very proud to call him a colleague.”

Robbs grew up just as the country was entering the civil rights era, a time when water fountains were marked “White” and “Colored” in Terre Haute and elsewhere.

Not long after four young black men grabbed national headlines in 1960 with a sit-in at the whites-only lunch counter at Woolworth’s in Greensboro, N.C., Robbs and others staged their own sit-in at the Woolworth’s in Terre Haute.

“Before that happened, we didn’t know anything about (sit-ins). We had no idea,” Robbs said. “We didn’t know that we couldn’t eat at Woolworth’s because we didn’t have the money to eat there in the first place.”

As a boy, Robbs helped bring money into the house by carrying coal for two women down the street in Terre Haute. He also rolled out of bed at 4 a.m. for a paper route and worked at the local A&P grocery store.

A lifetime later, Robbs has five different pictures of King on the wall in his Broadview office. The pictures are a constant reminder of the power of change.

“One of the things King said that has always stuck with me is to be a servant,” said Robbs, who was teaching in Los Angeles during the Watts riots of 1965.

“You don’t have to be rich to make a difference. You don’t even need a college degree. Everyone can be great. You just have to serve. That’s all you need.”

Maybe so, but a big bowl of Indiana chili can’t hurt.

Hi everyone,

I don’t remember exactly when I saw “A Christmas Carol” for the first time at Hartford Stage, but it was at least a dozen years ago.

I lived in Carmel, N.Y., at the time, but as I pleasantly discovered, the hour-plus drive was well worth the performance of Bill Raymond alone.

Bill Raymond (Photo courtesy of Hartford Stage)

Raymond, a fixture of the production for the past 14 years, is perfectly cast as Ebenezer Scrooge in this timeless tale of reflection and redemption.

Raymond makes Scrooge human — who among us hasn’t been wounded by one heartache or another? — the moment he awakes in his bed chambers.

It is Raymond’s skillful transformation from curmudgeon to champion that makes “A Christmas Carol” at Hartford Stage a holiday winner and a tradition in my family.

Wrap Raymond’s performance around a terrific cast, including talented and versatile veterans Robert Hannon Davis, Johanna Morrison, Michelle Hendrick and Rebecka Jones, and “A Christmas Carol” is worth the trip to Hartford.

But here’s the thing: If you still want to see “A Christmas Carol” at Hartford Stage this holiday season, you had better hurry. This year’s run ends Friday.

As I write this post, there are just six performances left: Tuesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 2 p.m., Thursday at 7:30 p.m., and Friday at 2 and 7:30 p.m.

For ticket information, visit www.hartfordstage.org or call 860-527-5151. 

One year, my two sons and I happened to meet Raymond after the show in the parking garage. He couldn’t have been nicer and more gracious to my boys, and I appreciated his kindness.

I grew up watching “A Christmas Carol” with my mom. She likes the 1938 classic with Reginald Owen and the 1951 version with Alastair Sim. To me, the black-and-white cinematography only made the storytelling more convincing.

Later on, I looked forward to watching George C. Scott and Mr. Magoo — thank you, Jim Backus! — in colorized depictions.

But at the end of the day, Bill Raymond’s live performance as Scrooge — he deftly mixes humor with humanity in his portrayal – will always be my favorite.

Hi everyone,

Patricia Fernandes seemed to have it all.

She owned a successful Danbury restaurant, Casa Portuguesa, better known as the old Emilio’s to some in the city.

She also had a loving husband, Luis, and two beautiful children, Patrick and Valentina.

But after watching a family friend — a beautiful 32-year-old girl from Brazil – succumb to blood cancer two weeks after being diagnosed, Fernandes knew she needed more in her life.

Patricia Fernandes needed to make a difference in the world.

“She was my youngest sister’s best friend. One day, she noticed two bruises — one on each hand — but she didn’t think anything about it,” Fernandes said. “She was taking her niece to the hospital and that’s when the doctor noticed the bruises.

“They did some tests on her and she was diagnosed right there at the hospital. Just like that, two weeks later, she died.”

Fernandes thought long and hard about starting over. She knew it was going to be hard. She also knew it was her only option.

After selling the restaurant and searching her heart — as well as the “help wanted” ads — Fernandes found her calling with the Icla da Silva Foundation, a New York-based bone marrow donor recruitment center.

“I worked a couple of part-time jobs at first — and I said a lot of prayers — until I finally found something special,” said Fernandes, 42. “With the Icla da Silva Foundation, I found what my heart needed.”

Today, Fernandes is a recruitment specialist for bone marrow donor registry drives in Connecticut, Massachusetts and part of New York. And she loves her work.

Fernandes is currently helping two patients in Danbury — one from Chile and another from Ecuador. In both cases, a sibling emerged as the matching bone marrow donor.

“We pretty much focus on the minority communities,” Fernandes said. “But we’ll help anyone who needs us, including those people who don’t have the money or insurance.”

It’s daunting enough to find a matching bone marrow donor outside a family member.

According to the National Bone Marrow Registry, the chances of finding a matching donor who is not a family member in the registry can be 1 in 20,000 or even higher.

“It’s like winning the lottery,” Fernandes said.

Only sweeter.

The odds of finding a matching donor for people of color are tougher, Fernandes said, because about 80 percent of all bone marrow donors — 6 million — are white.

Donors of color represent the other 20 percent — about 1.5 million donors — according to the National Marrow Donor Program.

You do the math.

That doesn’t mean it’s a hopeless cause, Fernandes said. But it does mean anyone from 18 to 60 can make a difference.

By the way, the initial screening to be a bone marrow donor doesn’t hurt. I registered about a year ago, after wiping a cotton swab inside my mouth to collect some cheek cells.

That’s it, folks. End of story.

Fernandes has two bone marrow donor registry drives set up in Danbury in the coming weeks.

The first will be held Dec. 17 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Fernandes Food Store at 99 Town Hill Ave.

The second will be held Jan. 14 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Case Benfica at 331 Main St.

“When I first started about a year ago, I used to get very emotional,” said Fernandes, who typically runs 15 drives a month, although she once worked three in one day in Massachusetts. “Of course, somebody would always start crying. And then I’d start crying. And then everybody would start crying.

“I’m better now, but the stories still touch your heart,” she said. “I’m here to help the community, no matter where you come from. The most important job we do is to help people who are sick find a donor.”

In this season of caring for others, the greatest gift you might be able to give someone is to wipe the inside of your cheek with a cotton swab.

On a larger scale, think of it this way: If your church or college or company can open its doors to a blood drive, it can do the same for a bone marrow donor drive.

“If someone wants to host a drive, I’m here to help,” Fernandes said. “All you need is two or three volunteers and a table. Just open the door for me, that’s all I need. I’ll do the rest.”

Hi everyone,

Layaway, unlike big hair, bell-bottom jeans and other fixtures of the 1970s, has made a comeback this holiday season.

The old-school payment plan has resurfaced at Walmart, Kmart, Sears, Toys ‘R’ Us, Best Buy and other big retailers.

But is layaway a good deal, especially when most of these retailers charge you a $5 fee just to take your money?

To me, it all depends on how much you’re spending, and how you view the aforementioned $5.

In any event, a little consumer information goes a long way.

There are some, myself included, who view the $5 charged by layaway retailers as a convenience fee.

Think of it like those annoying surcharges at the ATM, or maybe, the extra nickel or dime per gallon that many gas stations charge when you pay with a credit card.

It doesn’t mean I like these charges. It just means I understand the concept of convenience.

It also means I try to use my debit card at the grocery store so that it doesn’t cost me extra to withdraw cash.

And it also means that I usually fill up at a gas station that charges the same for cash or credit.

But there are other folks, such as U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who view layaway fees as one set of handcuffs away from robbery.

Last week, Blumenthal — the state’s former attorney general — spoke about layaway at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford.

“Typically, these layaway plans involve a downpayment of $10, a fee of $5, which means an effective annual percentage rate of interest sometimes between 44 and more than 100 percent,” Blumenthal said.

“These interest rates are unconscionably high and they are imposed under the guise of fees and other charges that take advantage of consumers hard-hit by tough economic times who are desperate or deceived or both.”

Louis Hyman, an assistant professor of history at Cornell University, wasn’t much more forgiving in a recent opinion article published in The New York Times.

“Imagine a mother going to Wal-Mart on Oct. 17 and buying $100 worth of Christmas toys,” Hyman wrote. “She makes a downpayment of $10 and pays a $5 service fee.

“Over the next two months she pays off the rest. In effect, she is paying $5 in interest for a $90 loan for two months: the equivalent of a credit card with a 44 percent annual percentage rate, a level most of us would consider predatory.”

Except the $90 isn’t a loan, not unless you consider it lending the money to yourself.

To calculate the APR on a $5 service fee is absurd. I could just as easily say a $5 service fee is 5 percent of a $100 purchase.

But where’s the shock-and-awe value in that?

I bought my first set of golf clubs on layaway in the 1980s. They were a starter set, hardly anything to brag about, but at least they were mine.

Eventually.

I don’t recall paying a service fee in those days, but I do remember being pretty excited when I made my final payment and stuffed the box of clubs into my trunk.

Unfortunately, the excitement didn’t last much beyond a couple of shots. In fact, it was pretty easy to follow the rapid descent of my joy straight into the woods.

Of course, that was a long time ago.

There are also canceled contract fees with today’s layaway programs — typically, $10 — but again, when was the last time you backed out of a deal without a penalty?

Have you signed up for a two-year cell phone contract lately? How about one of those triple-play options from the cable company?

Try backing out of those contracts without paying a penalty.

To me, it’s far better to default on a layaway contract and lose $10 than it is to rack up Christmas receipts and make the minimum payment on your credit card(s) for the next year. Or longer.

That’s the real APR rip-off, Sen. Blumenthal.

Hi everyone,

A week ago, in this very blog, I wrote about a Danbury support group for men who were sexually abused as children.

I had never heard of “Voices of Courage” before I met with officials from the Women’s Center of Greater Danbury, the wingless angels who help survivors heal from the worst kind of human betrayal.

A week later, in the wake of allegations that another coach from a major university — first Penn State, now Syracuse — might have sexually abused children, I knew I needed to hear the truth.

I don’t know if Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State defensive coordinator, committed unspeakable acts against children for 15 years, like a grand jury report claims.

I don’t know if Bernie Fine, the longtime Syracuse basketball assistant coach, molested two former ball boys, as they alleged last week.

What I absolutely do know is that we must take these charges seriously and investigate them vigorously and without prejudice.

If these charges are proven true, those responsible — directly and indirectly — should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

The damage will already be levied, of course. Shutting the cell door on a monster doesn’t restore a child’s innocence and joy.

But if the charges are proven false, what happens then? How do you restore a reputation that will always have an asterisk next to it for many people?

In the case of Fine, who has called these allegations “patently false,” an investigation by the Syracuse police will help to decide the veracity of his claims.

For the sake of children everywhere, I hope he’s telling the truth.

On Friday morning, I received an alumni email from Syracuse Chancellor Nancy Cantor.

It was a strongly worded letter, a document advocating justice, not self-preserving spin.

“We are aware that many wonder if university administrations are willing to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing that may disrupt a successful sports program,” Cantor wrote.

“I can assure you I am not, and my fellow administrators are not. We hold everyone in our community to high standards and we don’t tolerate illegal, abusive or unethical behavior, no matter who you are.”

Those last five words — no matter who you are — are critical to addressing any assault on America’s children.

A man’s professional station should not be a shield from scrutiny, especially when kids are involved. If anything, for those who work with children, the scrutiny should be even more searing in these cases.

On Friday night, I talked on the telephone with a young man from Ridgefield who told me that he was abused as a child by a family member.

For 10 years, the young man said, he’s been trying to get someone to listen to his story. But until these reports came out of Penn State and Syracuse, he felt like he was yelling into an empty canyon.

Sure, it felt better to scream, but it still resembled a terrible twist on that old philosophy question.

If you holler from your heart, but nobody is there to hear it, does it still make a sound? Even more importantly, does it make a difference?

Yes. It makes a very big difference.

If nothing else these last two weeks, I’ve learned nothing is as sinister as silence in child sexual abuse cases.

It is critical for witnesses to speak up and for victims to be heard. These voices, without exception, must not be dismissed.

After all, what’s more precious than the safety and security of our kids? The short answer and the only answer is nothing.

As more survivors come forward — and there will be more — it is incumbent upon all of us to listen to these folks and to get them help.

That does not mean every story will be true.

But it does mean every story — just like every fire alarm — must be met with a swift and sure response, especially now.

Hi everyone,

While America recoiled at last week’s charges that a former Penn State football coach sexually assaulted eight boys over a 15-year period, several local women didn’t bat an eye.

But I suspect they might’ve blotted a tear.

Maria Morey wasn’t shocked by the allegations surrounding Jerry Sandusky. Neither were Kathy Johnson and Melanie Danyliw.

They have read this predatory script a million times … right here in our own backyard.

All three work at the Women’s Center of Greater Danbury with men who were sexually assaulted as children. The stories are painfully real in their details and their outcomes.

Don’t be fooled by the organization’s name. The Women’s Center has provided free, confidential counseling for years to adult survivors who were sexually assaulted as boys.

It wasn’t until June 6 — a mission more than five years in the making — that Morey and Johnson started the area’s first support group for these men.

The group is called, “Voices of Courage.” It’s a fitting title for this weekly catharsis on West Street in Danbury.

Although the group has seen as many as six members, it consistently has at least four, Johnson said.

The men range in age from their mid-30s to their mid-50s. They come to the Women’s Center from as far away as Bridgeport and Patterson, N.Y.

“Everyone (who is an adult survivor) is being triggered by what happened at Penn State,” Morey said Friday afternoon. “Penn State is out there now.”

But for far too long, the situation at Penn State — just like every other sexual assault case involving children — was not out there.

Sandusky’s alleged reign of terror was protected by the whispers of cowardice and the pillars of greed at Penn State.

Suddenly, children were the worst kind of currency in State College, Pa.

But what about the survivors Sandusky didn’t allegedly terrorize with his dark, unspeakable brand of evil?

What about the male victims of childhood sexual assault right here in Greater Danbury?

Officials from the Women’s Center suggest there might be hundreds of local men who are survivors of childhood sexual assault in the organization’s 13-town service area that includes Danbury, Brookfield, Newtown and New Milford.

“This group should be bursting at the seams,” Johnson said. “We should have more men than we do.”

So why don’t they have more men?

Why aren’t there more men from Greater Danbury — and beyond — seeking the sanctuary of “Voices of Courage” every Monday night?

What, these men can’t cry? Please.

They can’t mourn the loss of their youth and their innocence? They can’t openly address the grief and the rage, and the misguided shame?

That is not just absurd and archaic. It is insulting.

It’s time to drop the ignorant and paralyzing gender stereotypes that have suffocated men for centuries in Western culture.

It’s time for us to acknowledge the tears, the nightmares, the anguish and everything else resulting from these sexual attacks.

“All people, including men, have vulnerabilities and feel pain,” Johnson said. “It’s part of who we are as human beings.”

This is the message that Johnson, Morey and Danyliw reinforce every Monday night.

“ ‘No’ is a full and complete sentence,” Johnson said succinctly.

The “Voices of Courage” meetings were supposed to last 10 weeks. Suddenly, the group is working on five months.

And counting.

Sometimes, the agenda drives the men at these meetings. Other times, the men drive the agenda, Morey said.

“It’s about giving these men their power back,” Johnson said.

No one is required to talk here. You don’t grab a ticket and a testimonial at the door.

If you want to talk, great. If you want to sit and listen and try to process some of these unthinkable stories, that’s fine, too.

There are no filters for this evil, the kind of darkness that scars a child’s soul for the rest of his days.

Sometimes, the words unfurl slowly and deliberately in these meetings. Other times, they cut through the air like a machine gun spitting curses.

“I don’t care how you say it,” Johnson said. “Just say it.”

The same could be said for the Penn State power brokers, the people who protected an image instead of children.

Someone needed to say something to police. And no one did.

According to court documents, Jerry Sandusky was brazen and predatory in his sexual assault of at least eight boys.

So far, the mother of one of these boys has come forward. I suspect there will be others before it’s all said and done.

Too many others.

Hi everyone,

More than 65 years later, David Barlas still weeps when he talks about Hiroshima and burned faces hidden under handkerchiefs.

Barlas was a master sergeant in the U.S. Army when he arrived at the demolished Japanese city, barely two months after the United States dropped the first atomic bomb there in August 1945.

“There were just three buildings left standing — city hall, the phone company and the police station — and that’s just because they were made of concrete,” Barlas said Thursday from The Watermark at East Hill in Southbury, where he lives with his wife of nearly 70 years, Ruth.

“The other buildings, I remember, were completely destroyed except for their safes, so you could tell where the stores were before the bomb.”

On Veterans Day — and plenty of other days, for that matter — Barlas stops and thinks about those who served during World War II. Many of them never made it back to Brooklyn and Queens, N.Y., his old neighborhoods.

“Everyone else,” the 93-year-old Barlas said, “gave the best years of their lives.”

Somehow, in the charred and broken nightmare of Hiroshima, Barlas and his men with the 1067th Engineering Design Group were supposed to fix a water treatment plant.

Clean water was vital to Hiroshima’s recovery, of course. But the Americans weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms after killing and wounding an estimated 150,000 people there.

“When I spoke to the water plant supervisor, I asked him for drawings of the damaged area of the plant,” Barlas said. “He gave me one — and only one — drawing of the damaged area.

“After it was translated into English and my plan to fix the damaged area was translated into Japanese, we left for the day. The next day, the plant supervisor greeted us with an armful of drawings. We had earned his trust.”

On so many levels.

For Barlas, a former Danbury resident, reconstruction after World War II wasn’t just about rebuilding cities. It was about healing the wounds of war inflicted by the United States and its Allies.

A few months before the trip to Hiroshima, Barlas and the 1067th Design Group — a collection of engineers, surveyors, draftsmen and architects — were ordered to design a 1,200-foot bridge over the Rhine River in Cologne, Germany to replace the five bridges the Allies had blown up.

The German snipers on the other side of the river, however, weren’t so keen on the idea.

So Barlas launched a rowboat at 1 a.m. with three men inside — one to row, one to measure, and one to use a flashlight to signal back to shore — to get the numbers he needed.

“It was pure triangulation,” said Barlas, who worked during an era when a transit and a slide rule were a civil engineer’s best friends.

Barlas didn’t stick around long enough to see the bridge completed with its 39-inch “meter beams,” the only steel available. After he finished his drawings, Barlas was sent to the Philippines to design an airfield on his way to Hiroshima.

Orders are orders, after all.

After the war — Barlas was honorably discharged in January 1946 — he landed a job with an “engineering construction outfit” and moved around New York City before he and his wife settled on a basement apartment in Astoria, Queens.

“We paid $30 a month,” Barlas said with a grin and a nod.

A few years later, in a 1950 edition of The New York Times, Barlas finally saw a photograph of the completed Cologne bridge. The span was built next to a bombed-out bridge, whose broken skeleton stuck out of the river like two jagged dorsal fins.

Barlas earned his civil engineering degree from Brooklyn Poly in 1952 with a transcript that included 50 credits from a year of study at Georgia Tech while he was in the Army.

He had earned his first credits more than a decade earlier.

After studying design, calculus, surveying and other high-level courses at Brooklyn Technical High School, Barlas took night classes at Brooklyn Poly before he enlisted in the Army in April 1941.

“We were generally the children of immigrants,” Barlas said. “We worked hard because that’s what our parents did. They loved their country and so did we.”

David Barlas never forgot that message, even when the Army took him to the other side of the world to repair a water plant and the ugly wounds of war.