Take On Life

Hi everyone,

Alyson Meeker was sitting on the D train in New York City last January, heading downtown from the Bronx, when her heart interrupted the ride.

“We knew the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 was coming up and we all wanted to do something special to remember Candace,” Meeker said the other day from her Danbury apartment.

“All of a sudden, it came to me on the subway. What about a road race? We could have a road race and raise money for a scholarship to remember Candace.”

Candace, in this case, was Candace Lee Williams, a brilliant student at Northeastern University in Boston who died that awful morning when American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

So Meeker and four of Candace’s closest friends from Immaculate High School, Kate Ricci Resendes, Amy Pote Martins, Lauren Memoli and Beth Keane, founded Friends of Candace.

Never mind that no one in the group had ever put on a race.

Never mind that the women had months — not even a year — to raise all the money and lock up all the details: race registration, water stops, traffic control, race timing, awards, food, marketing and publicity, you name it.

The script usually went something like this: “Hey, do you do graphic design? Can you hook us up with a logo?”

More often than not, the answer was yes.

“We had no idea what we were doing. We didn’t know how much work it was going to take to make this happen,” Meeker said. “All we knew was that we wanted to do something special for Candace and the other victims.”

Mission accomplished.

On Sept. 24 at 10 a.m., thanks to all those tireless hours and the generosity of so many sponsors, The Candace Lee Williams 5K Run to Remember will kick off in Danbury.

Fittingly, the race will start at Tarrywile Park, where those who loved Candace planted a memorial tree two weeks after her death.

Proceeds from the race will be shared between the Candace Lee Williams Memorial Scholarship Fund at Immaculate High School and Tuesday’s Children, a nonprofit organization for kids of 9/11 victims. More race information is available at www.friendsofcandace.com.

“It’s been amazing to see a vision like this come together,” said Meeker, who credited Housatonic Valley Sports for helping Friends of Candace solve many of the race’s logistical issues. “It’s really been inspiring.”

Resendes agreed.

“It’s great to see how much this race already means to people,” said Resendes, who helped promote the race last weekend with the Friends of Candace at the Taste of Danbury.

And yet, even after 10 years, the emptiness never really goes away, Meeker will tell you.

Meeker was a junior at Boston University when terrorists killed Candace and nearly 3,000 other victims.

“I remember going into the student union and TVs were on everywhere. Everyone was just glued to them,” Meeker said. “I remember at one point, somebody said one of the planes that crashed had left Boston and was headed to California — and I knew Candace had left Boston and was headed to California.”

It was the worst kind of logic, the kind that adds up on the surface, but makes no sense in your gut.

To read more about The Candace Lee Williams 5K Run to Remember, check out my “Take on Life” column Friday.

Exclusively in the print edition of The News-Times.

Hi everyone,

Richard Pues is a proud man.

He is a fifth-generation stone setter and a father of six. He can flip through intricate blueprints and memorize nearly every detail as easily as he can lower a multi-ton slab of granite like he’s lowering a newborn baby into a crib.

“I love my family and I love my job,” said the 43-year-old Danbury man, a foreman and stone setter for Berardi Stone Setting of White Plains, N.Y.

“But this job — working on that sacred ground (where the twin towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001) — is an honor,” Pues said. “It’s definitely one of the biggest and one of the proudest jobs I’ve ever been involved with.”

Not a day goes by when Pues and his crew, including Jimmy Cofone, 39, of Brookfield, and Gary Raiano, 41, of New Fairfield, aren’t reminded of their important work in lower Manhattan.

There are ID cards to swipe and retinas to scan. There are armed officials with M-16s and 12-gauge shotguns.

Soon, widows will be running their fingers across names etched into eternity. There will be children without mothers and fathers.

There is no such thing as a shift when you’re building a living memorial with more than 400 oak trees, a sacred place to remember those who lost their lives in the attacks on the World Trade Center.

“I saw one name that said so-and-so and her unborn child and that just froze me,” Raiano said. “It reminds you that every one of these people has a story.”

It’s the difference between a job and a calling.

To read more about Richard Pues and his crew, check out my “Take on Life” column Friday.

Exclusively in the print edition of The News-Times.

Hi everyone,

As thousands of Connecticut Light & Power customers in Greater Danbury enter their sixth day without power — my family in Newtown among them — I offer this glimpse into “Take on Life” headquarters here at The News-Times.

Earlier this week, I wrote a pitch for today’s column and put it in the computer system at work.

This is what it said: “Enough with the CL&P bashing. The cleanup after Hurricane Irene is far bigger than provincial politics. Remember, this was the biggest power outage in the history of the state. This cleanup and restoration is all about triage. Trust me, I’m not happy about being without power, either. I’ve been in the dark since 7:30 a.m. Sunday. But there’s nothing to be gained from tantrums and finger-pointing.”

That was Monday.

On Wednesday, I learned from CL&P that Newtown’s projected service restoration date was next Wednesday, Sept. 7. My immediate and mind-numbing reaction was, “Wait! What?”

For the record, the Newtown Area Work Center includes Newtown, Ridgefield, Danbury, Brookfield, Bethel and Monroe. If misery loves company, the address is the Newtown Area Work Center.

By Thursday afternoon — still seething over a possible 11-day power outage in the 21st century — I heard that some of my Newtown neighbors were told by CL&P their power would not be restored until Thursday, Sept. 8.

Twelve days!

That awful message — and the Sept. 8 restoration date — was the same in Brookfield.

Once again, I thought to myself, “Wait! What?”

Add these miserable restoration dates to enduring power outages in Danbury, Ridgefield, Brookfield and other local communities and the electrical carnage is complete.

Needless to say, my column pitch changed dramatically Thursday — 180 degrees dramatically — by the time I sat down to write at my computer.

So I borrowed a page — or at least, a tweet — from my Twitter account Wednesday: “@CTLightandPower Really? A week from today is your restoration date for Newtown? That’s the best you can do? #nothappyinnewtown”

To be honest, I’m actually OK with a week-long power outage in this case. I know this was an extraordinary storm.

I appreciate the massive scar left behind by Hurricane and then Tropical Storm Irene as it roared up the East Coast from North Carolina to Vermont, racking up $7 billion in damage along the way, according to many estimates.

I appreciate the fact that CL&P has made significant progress in its restoration efforts, although not necessarily so much around here.

But the moment CL&P pushed the envelope to a week-and-a-half without power, maybe longer, this became a competency issue in my book.

This was no longer an exercise in restoration, but rather, an exercise in futility.

To read more about the CL&P power outages in Greater Danbury, check out my “Take on Life” column Friday.

Exclusively in the print edition of The News-Times.

Hi everyone,

Somewhere between turning the page on summer and ducking for cover from Hurricane Irene, I’m reminded there is a home heating oil contract out there with my name on it.

Now, if I could only find it.

What’s the urgency, you say? Who cares, it’s not even September yet. Why not relax and enjoy one last hurrah of summer next week for Labor Day.

Here’s the short answer: Right now, home heating oil prices are running roughly $1 more per gallon than last year. If your family uses 1,000 gallons annually, that’s an extra $1,000 to heat your home this winter.

Or more.

But what if you don’t have an extra $1,000 this winter? What if you don’t have any extra money to spend on fuel after paying your bills each month?

Phyllis Kinlow, operations manager of the Community Action Committee of Danbury, knows the feeling.

Last winter, as the CACD’s energy assistance contact, Kinlow helped more than 4,500 households in 19 western Connecticut towns and cities get the aid to pay their energy bills.

“We took in 5,331 applications in 2010 and 4,667 were eligible for assistance,” Kinlow said, pointing out that a family of four earning a household income of up to $60,986 can get help. “We know it’s getting harder and harder for people (to pay their heating costs).”

A year ago, Kinlow said, energy assistance grants ranged from $580 to $880 with an additional “crisis benefit” grant of $400 awarded to all qualified applicants.

This program helped seniors on fixed incomes keep the heat on. It helped low-income families keep the oven on for food, not for heat.

Much of the funding comes straight from the federal government’s Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Earlier this year, lawmakers debated gutting LIHEAP to help balance the federal budget.

Suddenly, this safety-net program became one-part hot air, one-part hot potato in Washington; U.S. Rep. Christopher Murphy, D-5th, for one, was having none of it.

“I’m not afraid to sound like a broken record when it comes to this issue: efforts to balance the federal budget can’t and shouldn’t start with energy assistance to the poorest and most needy,” Murphy told The News-Times via email.

“If anyone proposes cuts to LIHEAP in the coming budget negotiations,” he said, “I’ll be the first to raise my voice in strong opposition.”

For those fortunate enough to pay their heating bills, saving money and cutting costs is a huge priority. That’s where home heating oil cap plans and fixed rate programs enter the discussion at my house.

To read more about reducing home energy costs this winter, check out my “Take on Life” column Sunday.

Exclusively in the print edition of The News-Times.

Hi everyone,

Right about the time John F. Kennedy challenged the nation to put a man on the moon, George Devol was tackling his own version of manifest destiny.

After seven years of working to build a programmable robot, Devol did exactly that in 1961, when he sold the first Unimate — short for universal automation — to a General Motors plant in New Jersey.

Devol’s robot wasn’t some talking head from a bad science fiction movie. Instead, his robot worked with a mechanical arm mounted on a turret. It performed real-world applications, some with as many as 200 steps.

The Unimate could spot weld cars like nobody’s business. It could pick up red-hot die castings straight from the oven and perform other jobs that were hazardous to humans.

“No one had ever seen anything like it,” said Wilton’s Robert Devol, still as proud of his father today as he was 50 years ago. “No other machine even came close to the versatility and autonomy of the Unimate.”

Or its creator.

George C. Devol Jr., the father of industrial robotics and the co-founder of Unimation Inc., died Aug. 11 at his home in Wilton. He was 99 years old.

Devol’s seminal invention was developed with his partner, Joseph Engelberger, at Unimation Inc., a Bethel-based company on Durant Avenue. Almost overnight in the early 1960s, Unimation became the little company with the big idea.

The Unimate learned its tasks quickly. All the robot needed was for someone to guide it through the sequence of commands to finish the job.

One time.

From then on, the series of steps — the amount of force, the angle of the robotic arm, the elapsed time from one task to the next — all of it was recorded on a magnetic drum that controlled the robotic arm, the hydraulic fluid and other components.

Although Devol is best remembered for his cutting-edge engineering with the Unimate, he had at least another 40 patents to his credit, according to William Wardlow, one of Devol’s five grandchildren.

One of Devol’s earliest inventions was the “Phantom Doorman,” the predecessor of today’s motion-detector doors at department stores and grocery stores everywhere.

Devol also experimented with bar code scanning in the 1930s, long before the technology became commercially viable with the use of lasers.

In addition, Devol explored microwave cooking technology in the 1950s with the advent of the “Speedy Weeny,” a machine that cooked and dispensed a hot dog for 10 cents.

Devol was one part engineer and one part entrepreneur, a man more interested in application than theory.

Even without a high school diploma — he later received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bridgeport — Devol found genius and inspiration in whatever he imagined.

One of the earliest Unimates is part of the Smithsonian Institution’s permanent collection. Even now, a half-century after that first robot was sold to GM, you can still buy Unimates on eBay.

In fact, if you’re handy, there’s a guy in Arizona selling an old Unimate that needs work for $1,700.

To read more about George Devol, check out my “Take on Life” column Sunday.

Exclusively in the print edition of The News-Times.

Hi everyone,

Anne McCarthy still remembers the ship’s first mate swinging his ax against the tangled bow rope to drop a lifeboat 30 feet into the sea.

“It was a typhoon in the Philippines on Christmas night, 1948,” the Danbury woman said. “The captain thought the storm was so violent it would break the bow if we tried to dock, so we stayed 10 miles off shore.

“Eventually, the ship nose-dived and went under. It was the longest 10 miles of my life,” Anne said. “Twenty-nine people made it, but 33 people perished that night.”

Anne McCarthy — mother, wife, veteran, college graduate, golfer — was one of the lucky ones. She made it to shore the next morning.

Anne survived to work as a physical therapist for the U.S. Army during the Korean War, after serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

She lived to raise a family in New Jersey with her husband, Robert, an Ivy League-educated dentist. She lived to heal broken bodies at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Paterson, N.J.

“We lived in New Jersey for about 45 years before we came up to Danbury in 1988,” Anne said. “My husband died about 12 years ago, after a five-year battle with Alzheimer’s. It was terrible what happened to him, but I’m still happy we came up here.”

On Sunday, Anne McCarthy will turn 90 years old. She’ll share her birthday with her daughter, Susan, the laboratory technician, just like she’s done every year since 1958.

But first — with many of her friends watching from the links and the gallery — Anne will play in Saturday’s member-guest tournament at Richter Park Golf Course in Danbury.

“I’m really looking forward it. Golf is a wonderful game,” said Anne, who joined the Richter Park Ladies Golf Club after playing for years in Essex County, N.J. “I don’t play as well as I used to, but I still enjoy it.”

On this particular afternoon, Anne ignores the tarnished treasures of past triumphs, the golf trophies with the fancy engraving, until she is asked about them.

One of the plaques commemorates Anne’s first hole-in-one. It came on the 120-yard, 13th hole at Richter Park back on July 1, 1997.

“It was the cheapest hole-in-one ever,” Anne said with a grin. “I bought two sodas for the boys and there was nobody to buy a drink for when I got back.”

To read more about Anne McCarthy and her 90th birthday this weekend, check out my “Take on Life” column Friday.

Exclusively in the print edition of The News-Times.

Hi everyone,

When Socheata Thai tells you life was hard in Cambodia, she means it.

“I moved here when I was 6 years old,” said Socheata, a sophomore at Danbury High School. “We came from a very small village. I didn’t go to school and I pretty much wore the same clothes every day.

“We didn’t know the (English) language when we came here,” Socheata added. “And we really didn’t know anything about college — how to pay for it, how to apply for it. We didn’t know anything.”

Thanks to TRIO — a group of federally funded programs that help kids from low-income families ramp up to college — Socheata knows a lot more about good grades, writing a surefire college essay, studying for the college boards, and applying for admission and financial aid.

At least for now.

The TRIO programs, including the Upward Bound program that Socheata attends at Western Connecticut State University with more than 100 other Danbury kids, are on the chopping block in Washington as part of the debt ceiling debate.

Is this really where we want to cut back?

Is it really worth cutting $26 million — literally, .000186 percent of a $14 trillion debt ceiling — to stop kids like Socheata from going to college, earning a degree, and making a better world for herself and her country?

I don’t think so.

Consider: Twenty-one students from Danbury’s Upward Bound program and its state counterpart, the Connecticut Collegiate Awareness and Preparation program, will attend college this fall at WestConn, UConn, Wesleyan, George Mason, Rochester Institute of Technology, Southern Connecticut, Central Connecticut, Norwalk Community College and Naugatuck Valley Community College.

And that’s just from Danbury.

These 21 at-risk students, who come from families where neither parent has a college degree in many cases, earned $179,197 in grants and scholarships to help pay for their college educations.

For Jenny Yung, a 15-year-old junior at Danbury High School who hopes to study pre-med in college, Upward Bound and ConnCAP are programs that are worth saving — not just for her, but also for her brother, John, a student at Rogers Park Middle School.

“Even though my parents didn’t go to college, they know how important education is for a better life,” Jenny said. “For underprivileged kids and kids from families with low incomes, this is a chance to get a college degree someday.

“The college tours we take, the SAT prep classes, the extra academic help, it really, really helps you,” Jenny said. “I know a lot more about what it takes to go to college than a lot of kids who are older than me.”

According to the Council for Opportunity in Education, more than 800,000 students across the country benefit from TRIO programs each year.

The kids come from every racial group — black, white, Asian, Hispanic and everything in between. They come in search of an education to earn a good living, and to contribute to the economy and tapestry of our nation.

TRIO isn’t a drain on America. It’s an investment in America.

Just ask media mogul Oprah Winfrey or ABC News journalist John Quinones.

Go ahead, ask actress Angela Bassett or former NBA superstar Patrick Ewing.

And don’t forget Franklin Chang-Diaz, America’s first Hispanic astronaut, a man who took advantage of TRIO as an undergraduate at the University of Connecticut.

All of these accomplished professionals are TRIO alumni.

“They don’t guarantee you a college degree with this program,” said Aelijah Ward, 17, a Danbury High School senior. “That’s up to you.”

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

Exclusively in the print edition of The News-Times.

Hi everyone,

James Edmund Dyer was 33 years old when he sat behind the mayor’s desk at City Hall for the first time.

“The kid mayor,” as Dyer was often called after the November 1979 election, was a son of John F. Kennedy as much as he was a son of Danbury, the city he loved.

On Tuesday, Dyer’s lifelong commitment to Danbury, its people and its politics came to a sudden end when the Democratic stalwart was found dead at his home. He was 64.

A copy of Dyer’s self-published memoirs, “When the Leaves Begin to Turn,” sits on a shelf in Danbury Public Library’s local history room. It’s a fitting repository for the story of Dyer’s life.

After winning two terms in Hartford from the 110th District, Dyer launched his bid for mayor from the local history room on June 10, 1979, with his parents at his side and a Republican incumbent, Donald Boughton, on the ballot.

Five months later, after sweeping all seven wards in the city, Dyer beat Boughton and fellow challengers Pat Cicala and Sarah Rothkoph.

He served four terms as mayor from 1979 to 1987.

“I have always spoken on behalf of young people and elderly citizens. I consistently sought innovative approaches in the fulfillment of a far-reaching public service agenda,” Dyer wrote in his memoirs, which were printed to coincide with his 50th birthday in 1996.

It’s a story worth sharing.

Dyer entered the world as the last of Tom and Mary Dyer’s six children. The future mayor grew up on Davis Street, well within earshot of the Morris Street School bell, he recalled.

“In those days, everyone just kind of went from one house to the next to visit, unannounced,” Dyer wrote of his childhood, which included summertime visits to Rider Dairy on New Street for ice cream.

His father, Tom Dyer, worked as an engineer at General Electric in Bridgeport and bought his cigars from Susnitzky’s. His mother, Mary Dyer, a former Newtown girl, raised the kids and fixed whatever needed attention, from the boiler to the bushes.

As a boy, Dyer traveled extensively with his father, including a 1952 train trip to Washington, D.C. Dyer never forgot the white-gloved waiters in the dining car.

Each trip was a journal entry, another memory for the ages.

“At Gettysburg, I ran up the hill with a Confederate flag. Then I would run down the hill with a ‘Yankee’ soldier’s cap. Playing both sides hasn’t ever been difficult for me,” Dyer wrote in his book, presumably through a grin.

To read more about Jim Dyer’s memoirs, check out my “Take on Life” column Wednesday.

Exclusively in the print edition of The News-Times.