Co-founder bows out but the play goes on

By Colleen Gundlach

With the retirement of Rosanna Trestman from its editorial staff, the curtain falls on the opening act of Norfolk Now. The overture began when Lloyd Garrison, a retired foreign correspondent for the New York Times, met a freelance journalist and photographer and together they decided that Norfolk needed a reliable news source. But the chronicle of how Trestman ended up in Norfolk gives insight in to how her background prepared her to help give birth to the primary source of news in town.

Writing and editing has always played a part in Trestman’s academic and professional career, first as an English major at Bennington College in Vermont, then as the editor of Modulus, the architectural journal of the University of Virginia and later as a freelance architectural journalist based in New York City.

Upon graduating college in 1978, Trestman decided to pursue a career in architecture. However, while studying at Parson’s School of Design in New York City, she was influenced by one of her teachers to change course. “She made the history of architecture come alive,” Trestman says. Come fall she was at the University of Virginia School of Architecture, where she studied architecture and earned a master’s degree in architectural history.

Back in New York, Trestman embarked on a career as a freelance architectural critic, writing primarily for the trade magazines. At the same time she stumbled into a parallel profession as an architectural photographer. “My father was a very talented amateur photographer,” she says. “He gave me a Nikon for my 16th birthday, which was a blessing and a curse.”

While photographing a symposium at Columbia University, Trestman met the renowned architectural photographer Cervin Robinson, who invited her to be his assistant. Eventually, she went out on her own, adding a 4 by 5 view camera (“the kind with the black cloth over your head”) to her “arsenal” of Nikons. “People laughed that a small woman wasn’t up to the physical challenges of this kind of equipment, but I used strong, tall men as assistants. However, a woman’s touch can be very effective when you want to get a UPS truck out of your shot.”

Many photography jobs required her to travel, scout locations in advance, and put in 14-hour days. When her first son, Lior, was born, Trestman decided to postpone her professional photography career. “I was committed to being a full-time mother, and not in a big city.” After a short stint in the northern suburbs, which had “a rural look, but still an urban mentality,” Trestman and her husband, Robert, now with a second son, Moss, progressed even farther north.

“We knew of Norfolk from bicycling,” Trestman says. “Back when we were weekenders in Columbia County, many of our cycling friends had homes in the area.” Rides along the back roads of Dutchess, Litchfield and Berkshire counties gave the Trestmans their first exposure to the town where they would eventually settle.

In 1999 they purchased Riggs Hill Farm in South Norfolk, about as far from the center of town as one can go, and at least a half mile away from the nearest neighbor. Although she loved country life, “it was very quiet out here,” she says.

Her trips to town and “gossip at Botelle while waiting to pick up the kids” were her main sources for news about what was going on in Norfolk. While pregnant with her third son, Dov, she decided to gather news herself and pass it on to others. Trestman started with Town Hall, where she gathered information about activities and events. On her computer she put together a weekly newsletter that she e-mailed to a growing list of recipients.

That is how ex-newsman Garrison first heard of Rosanna Trestman. One day he showed up unannounced at her doorstep and proposed that they combine forces to turn the e-mail newsletter into an actual print newspaper. The curtain was raised on the Lloyd and Rosanna show, Norfolk Now.

They convened a group of advisers and expanded the cast to include more editors, business people and a staff. This first act lasted 11 years. As Trestman puts it, “We got weary, but we never got tired of doing the paper.”

With Lloyd’s death and Rosanna’s retirement, Norfolk Now is raising the curtain on the next act – this one without its founders. “I feel very comfortable leaving the paper at this time,” says Trestman. “There’s nothing the editors cannot do without Lloyd and me. It’s their paper now.” With a look of satisfaction she adds, “For now, I am going to sit back and look forward to finding Norfolk Now in my mailbox every month.”

Photo by Bruce Frisch