• great blue heron rookeries

    working together to provide sustainable breeding habitats By Jude Mead Great Blue Herons are a familiar sight in Norfolk and are one of the largest of all North American herons, standing up to four feet tall with a wingspan of close to six feet. They are most noticeable in flight as they soar across the […]

  • Norfolk Then…

    Tennis at Town Hall? The building we know as Town Hall was originally the Eldridge Gymnasium, built in 1892. Located within easy walking distance of hotels and boarding houses in Norfolk at the turn of the last century, the Gymnasium was a popular gathering place for both residents and visitors. People played croquet on the lawn […]

  • Looking Back Over the Years

    The End of an Era for Norfolk Now By Colleen Gundlach After 10 years and over 30 issues, Ruth Melville has put on her Norfolk Now editor’s hat for the last time. In June, the paper marked the end of an era with the publication of Ruth’s final issue as one of the executive editors […]

  • A Look Into Norfolk’s Past

    Exhibit Explores Pupin’s Haven of Happiness on Westside Road By Patricia Platt The Norfolk Historical Museum graces Norfolk’s village green with the reserve and understated elegance of a New Englander well worth getting to know. Visitors who step inside will find exhibits that tell the stories of the town’s past, often with intriguing ties to […]

  • Norfolk Past and Present

    The Summer Chapel Eases Gracefully Into Its 130 Years By Elizabeth Bailey Ayreslea Rowland Denny began attending services at The Church of the Transfiguration in Norfolk in 1939 on the eve of World War II. A New Yorker, she was a student at the Chapin School in New York City, but her family had been […]

  • Church Steeple Shines Once Again

    Local dignitaries and friends of Norfolk’s Church of Christ Congregational gathered on Saturday, May 25, to formally celebrate the completion of the steeple restoration project. The Rev. Erick Olsen thanked the community for supporting the years-long effort and welcomed everyone to enjoy a splendid cake featuring an image of the steeple.

  • Making the Native… Personal

    Cheryl Heller Builds a Wild Garden in Norfolk By Joe Kelly Gardens are best when they’re personal, argued the late Fred McGourty, who remains Norfolk’s best- known plantsmen. McGourty’s 1989 book, “The Perennial Gardener,” recounts the gardens he and his wife, Mary Ann, created at Hillside, their home near Dennis Hill State Park. Were he […]

  • This Old Norfolk House

    Stevens House By Joe KellyWhen our Puritan forebears arrived on these shores in the early 1600s, they were no doubt surprised todiscover how the traditional thatched roof cottages they knew from back home were no match for thewind and cold of a typical New England winter. But it would have likely surprised them even more […]

  • Can wildlife safely cross Norfolk’s Roads?

    By Shelley Harms Where are animals crossing Norfolk’s roads? Are they making it across? Is it possible to make theircrossings safer? Julia Rogers, Senior Land Protection Manager at the Housatonic Valley Association (HVA), helped agroup of interested Norfolk residents explore these questions at a training session sponsored by theNorfolk Land Trust on March 22 at […]

  • Great Mountain Forest’s New Executive Director Returns to His Connecticut Roots

    By David Beers Mike Zarfos started his new position as executive director of Great Mountain Forest (GMF) at the end ofFebruary. It has been a lively time for Zarfos and his family; in addition to moving from Washington,D.C., to Connecticut, they are expecting a baby in April. Zarfos grew up in Deep River, Conn., where […]

  • Norfolk Then…

    In the late 19th century, the arrival of every train at the depot on Station Place was widely anticipated.There were freight trains, milk trains and passenger trains unloading throngs of summer visitors. Theattractive station pictured here was built in 1898, replacing an earlier modest structure. Constructed ofnative granite, it was designed by Hill & Turner, […]

  • Focus on New Firehouse shifts to funding

    Costs likely to rise beyond initial $5 million estimate By Joe Kelly After months of sometimes contentious public hearings, plans for a new Norfolk firehouse are nearing the end of the wetlands/zoning part of the approval process and heading into a decisive new phase: finding the money to pay for it all. The Planning & […]

Articles

Ian Robinson: An Educational Safari

By Joel Howard Maru-a-Pula, a name which translates to “promise of blessings”, is an apt name for the innovative African school where Norfolk resident and recent high school graduate Ian Robinson is spending time as a volunteer teaching assistant. The educational facility, established in 1972, has grown from a student enrollment of 25 to 660, […]

Local Scholarships Await Graduates

By Joel Howard Litchfield County University Club (LCUC) awarded its first scholarship over 100 years ago, soon after a handful of philanthropic locals banded together to achieve a goal of aiding deserving students in furthering their education. Having been the idea of Norfolk patrons Carl and Ellen Battell Stoeckel, the group held its first meeting […]

Time is Running Out For Norfolk’s Aging Sewer System

Residents could see a big hike in user fees By Kurt Steele Norfolk faces a major challenge in planning a complex project to rehabilitate its 100-plus-year-old sewer system that could cost $3 million according to a preliminary estimate. While the sewer system has certainly stood the test of time, time is running out. Built in […]

Mystery Woman is Finally Revealed

Genevieve Cook’s journal details an affair with Obama, then 22.  By Lloyd Garrison In his 1995 memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” Barack Obama wrote discreetly of his romance in New York with a young woman who took him one fall weekend to Norfolk. Obama, who withheld the woman’s name, wrote that he was struck by […]

Gridleys in Norfolk 50 Years Later

In Pursuit of Clean Air Rosanna Trestman In the tradition of city dwellers of the early 20th century who flocked to the country for the restorative value of its clean, cool air, in 1962, New Yorkers Bill and Barbara Gridley whisked their four-year-old son, who suffered from asthma, and his older sister, to Norfolk, CT. […]

State Education Bill Makes Ripples in Norfolk

Decrease in state’s funding for Botelle possible By Wiley Wood When the U.S. Department of Education parceled out $4.35 billion in 2010 to states whose schools showed measurable student gains, Connecticut failed to qualify. Its three neighbors—Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island—received almost $1 billion between them. The Education Reform Bill pushed through the Connecticut […]

Scouting for a Contiguous Wilderness

Norfolk Land Trust pursues purchase of Grantville Road property By Colleen Gundlach A 1957 newspaper clipping reported that the Bridgeport Area Girl Scout Old Timers Association sponsored a benefit card party to raise money “toward buying several acres of land for the new Girl Scout camp, Iwakta, at Norfolk,” to add to the small tract […]

Havemeyer Receives Doctorate

A degree 30 years in the making By Lindsey Pizzica Rotolo There’s a new doctor in town.  Not a general practitioner, but tireless Norfolk Historical Society Curator Ann Havemeyer, who received her Ph.D. from Yale University at their graduation ceremony on May 21. Her 250-page dissertation, “An Architect of Place and the Village Beautiful: Alfredo […]

More Healthy Life Choices Open to Norfolk residents

Joel Howard Norfolk is undergoing a fitness craze. From Pilates to yoga to Zumba at church, people have more venues to pump it up and shake it out than seen in the recent history of this town. A unique link in this chain is 7day recreationalists, a holistically designed exercise program devised by partners and […]

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Well, Almost

Town budget promises an inconsequential hike in taxes By Lloyd Garrison Norfolk’s Board of Finance Chairman, J. Michael Sconyers, may be no Santa Claus, but with a creative shift of funds from one column of the budget to another, he has given the town something to cheer about come tax time in 2012. The budget […]

New Arrest Warrants Issued in Curling Club Arson Case

Defendants charged with tampering with pump station valves By Lloyd Garrison There was supposed to be another hearing last week in Litchfield Superior Court to advance the case of the State vs. Mathew Carey and Kyle Majewski, but nothing went right for the two 19 year olds accused of multiple felonies that led to the […]

Lecture Offered on Conservation of Sandy Brook

An ambitious plan to protect the Sandy Brook watershed, a 17-mile expanse of land that crosses northeastern Norfolk as well as parts of Colebrook, Sandisfield, and other surrounding towns, is being spearheaded by Aton Forest. A broad coalition of land-preservation groups, municipalities, and landowners will be called on to bring this effort, known as the […]