I’m not sure I can pinpoint when exactly I realized this would not be “just” another Friends of Cranbury Park bake sale – if there even is such a thing. When, instead, it became a bake sale on steroids.

I got a glimmer from Jen D’Andraia, who emailed me to say that although she and her (growing) family are now living in Ridgefield, she’d be happy to bake for us anyway.

I got another from Rosaria Konstantin, recovering from back surgery but eager to participate once again.

And yet another came from Holly “I’m Not a Baker” Cuzzone, who promised us six pumpkin cranberry breads.

By bake sale eve, Saturday, we knew this would be our best one yet – even before our newest Friend, Aimee

Hwang Russo, brought us ten pizza boxes, each containing a warm pumpkin pie.

And so it went. The donations kept on coming even beyond noon the next day, when we opened our doors to the biggest crowd we’d yet faced on Bake Sale Day. Supporters and friends of Friends descended on our lavish displays of pies, cakes, cookies, chocolates, muffins, cupcakes and more. By the time we closed the doors again, we had taken in $3,526.25, a new record.

As always, we have many Friends to thank.

Special mention is due Janet “Feathers” Coughenour and Lisa “The Scissors” Mendelson for beautifying everything they touched, from the library mantel to the very last muffin. Once again, our bake sale was drop-dead gorgeous because they worked very hard to make it that way.

Bravo to this year’s high-volume bakers. In addition to Ms. Russo, we applaud FCP President Celia Maddox, her mother, Patsy Dodds, FCP Secretary Ursula Caterbone, and our good Friends Dianne Gilmore and Ellen Tully. You six were responsible for a truly staggering quantity of delectable edibles.

We thank Laurie Brown yet again for donating a generous assortment of outstanding books enabling us to sell them for a song.

Thanks to Marti Coleman, who made the day a little sweeter for countless chocoholics with her much-loved hand-crafted butter crunch. And to Leslie Vincent, whose red pepper jelly has become a yummy FCP Bake Sale tradition.

Along with Marti, we thank Dianne Gilmore and Margee Rogers for running the Cranberry Café with their usual good humor and panache. Thanks to Mark Berns for documenting the day in photos. Thanks to Jeff Conrad, Amy Phillips and Ursula Caterbone for manning the till and handling the opening crush with aplomb.

Helping me help our shoppers were Susan Garland, Joan Cronin, and Roberta Schneider-Berman. Thank you, Friends. And thank you, Marcia Ciambriello, for showing up both Saturday and Sunday and doing a little bit of everything that needed to be done.

For invaluable help with the heavy lifting, we have lots of people to thank: Recreation and Parks Department employees Harold and Beverly Coswell, and FCP members Rob Anderson, Mark Berns, Ellis Cooper and Chris Greene, better known to some of us as Bear’s dad.

Coming as it does so close to Thanksgiving, our bake sale is a timely reminder of how lucky we are to live in a place of such beauty, surrounded by people like you. We wish you all holidays filled with blessings, along with sweet treats and good Friends.

Nancy Shulins

Friends of Cranbury Park got lucky last week, thanks to an observant and history-minded Norwalk couple.

When Stephen and Marie Haywood of Rowayton read news accounts of recent developments at Cranbury Park—placement of the park on the State Registry of Historic Places last year, the Gallaher Mansion’s listing on the National Registry this year, and a $20,000 grant from the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation—they realized that their casual tag sale purchase was something more than they had bargained for.

Stephen Haywood recognized the name on a diploma he had bought for its frame. Could it be that same Edward Beach Gallaher? He dug it from his garage and e-mailed the Friends of Cranbury Park’s web site, www.friendsofcranburypark.org,

Holly Cuzzone and I met with the Haywoods at the mansion to receive their gift of the diploma, an honorary PhD from Gallaher’s alma mater, Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken.

It was the first sofa-sized diploma I have ever seen. The gigantic diploma, handsomely framed in oak, seems part of a set. A portrait of Gallaher in doctoral robes is one of the few artifacts that remain of the Gallahers’ life in their home. The diploma must have been its companion piece, once proudly displayed somewhere on the walls of the now-empty mansion.

Gallaher received his super-sized honorary PhD diploma on February 8, 1950, fifty-six years after his graduation from Stevens Institute and three years before his death, just about the time he was arranging a super-sized bequest to his old school–his entire estate, worth millions, including a 22-room mansion, 220-acre property, and an internationally important business, Clover Manufacturing on Main Avenue, then one of Norwalk’s biggest employers. Upon Inez Gallaher’s death in 1965, Stevens Institute took possession, and, despite its promise to create a research facility there, had within the year sold the Cranbury property to the City of Norwalk for 1.5 million.

Great luck for Norwalk –it had gained its largest and most beautiful park. The mansion’s contents, however, had vanished.  Where? Who knows? Into the depths of Hoboken, dumped along the way? The real life of the mansion had vanished, reappearing only here and there in somebody’s basement or the occasional tag sale, to be noticed by lovers of old houses and history.

And that describes the Haywoods, whose 1790 house stood in Stamford until they dismantled it to rebuild it in Rowayton, thereby proving a point: history is slippery. It doesn’t always stay where you left it but resurfaces in unexpected places.

Marie Haywood, once a volunteer tour guide at Norwalk’s Lockwood Mansion, remarked that the Lockwood was luckier than the Gallaher in one sense. A set of stereopticon slides remained at Lockwood, offering historians at least a glimpse of that mansion’s grand interior.

The Gallaher Mansion came to the city stripped to the bone—not a chair nor a letter, no stray snapshot or check stub, not even a cracked plate.

Holly and I have recorded some great stories from neighbors and a fascinating misplaced history of the property in our research, but a sense of this heirless couple’s life in Norwalk remains elusive. In an interview, Frances Murphy Keene, a 101-year-old former employee of Gallaher’s Clover Manufacturing, described Inez Gallaher as a tall striding figure in stylish tweeds who composed witty birthday poems for employees, a handsome, vibrant woman who endeared herself to the staff when she took over Clover management at her husband’s death. Tantalizing. Who wouldn’t want to know more about such a woman—do you see Katherine Hepburn?

But not one single photograph of Inez Henry Gallaher remains.

Hats off to the Haywoods. May their observance be followed by other sharp readers with a memory–or some tag sale relic—that will give new life to the Gallahers, their house, and their moment in our local history.

Celia Maddox

The head of the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation on June 15 presented the city and Friends of Cranbury Park a $20,000 check to help develop a master plan for the Gallaher Mansion at Cranbury Park.

“On behalf of the Connecticut Trust, I want to thank the delegation here from Norwalk,” said Helen Higgins, trust executive director. “You are giving us the opportunity to make this generous award to the Gallaher house. It is a stunning house and this is one of many investments we’ve made in Norwalk.”

The grant will be combined with $20,000 in city funds and $5,000 from The Friends of Cranbury Park to develop a master plan, including building assessment and feasibility study, for the 80-year-old Tudor Revival mansion.

From The Hour – See http://www.thehour.com/story/506494 for full article.

SATURDAY JUNE 4 at 9:30 AM
(RAIN DATE SUNDAY JUNE 5 at NOON)

Here it is again–that annual rite of summer in Cranbury Park, so dust off your farmer costume and rosin up your hoe.

You’ll be glad to hear that we’re going easy on the chipping this year, as in none or just a little in the orchard. Instead, let’s focus mainly on the trails. We’ll target a few areas where sprawl has become a problem, using fallen limbs and boughs to line some of the main trails. This will help define the real trails and discourage use of shortcuts that have been created by golfing. We can manage a few more objectives, so if you have ideas for things that need doing, just say the word.

We’ll end with a picnic lunch in the orchard. FCP will bring ice, water, beer, soft drinks and some sandwich makings. Variety always makes the party better, so an edible contribution from you will be most appreciated and will add flavor to the feast.

Bring what tools you have—rakes, pitchforks, shovels, carts. This year small saws, and clippers big and small, will be in fashion. FCP will have gloves, bags, pickers and extra implements for the tool-deprived. Child and canine labor is encouraged and welcomed.

This is what we’re all about—making friends while making a big difference in our favorite park. Your RSVP will help us plan for food and projects, so please go ahead and hit reply now.

See you then, Celia and the FCP Board

As you walk through the park you’ll notice that some of the trees now have signs identifying them by their English and Latin names along with an indication of whether they are native or non-native and invasive. This project was conceived and planned by member Ellen Tully. The project has been funded by a generous grant from The Friendship Fund, a private foundation located in New York.

Something of a tree identification expert herself, Ellen put together a team that includes board member and Arborist James McLaughlin and Jon Borysiewicz, an Arborist with Bartlett Arboretum.

Ellen, Jon, James and Duffle

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We have Jack Kaczmarczyk of Wilton to thank for the four wooden bag-holding boxes situated throughout the park.Their presence leaves no excuse for not cleaning up. Let’s keep those boxes well-stocked with bags we bring from home.

The boxes, and the clearing of invasives from a ‘pilot plot’ just south of the lower parking area were part of Jack’s Eagle Scout project. He and his team designed, constructed, painted and mounted the boxes. The clearing project—far more complicated than just pulling and cutting weeds—is a pilot because it’s the first step in a program to combat the problem of invasive plants throughout the park.

Jack Kaczmarczyk and Wilton Boy Scout troop taking a well earned pizza break

By Nancy Shulins
FCP Vice President

Our fifth annual bake sale is history, and our organization is nearly $2,500 richer as a result. Before we move on to our individual Thanksgiving celebrations, I want to express my heartfelt thanks to everyone who played a part. It says a lot about FCP and the Friends who sustain it that in the midst of a prolonged recession, with recovery still stalled somewhere en route, forty people took time from their own hectic lives, family obligations and holiday preparations to chop and slice, whip and frost, beat and bake, all for the common good. And the results, once again, were sweet indeed.

Your pies, cakes, muffins, dog treats, tarts, cookies, brownies, jellies, sauces, crisps, breads, candies, cupcakes and nuts arrived at the mansion on Saturday in a stream almost as steady as the one in which they departed the following day. The weather smiled on us – we’re now five for five, Friends – and by noon we had a line out the door. To say we had our usual opening rush would be putting it mildly. The first hour was bedlam. We loved it.

This was easily our most beautiful bake sale yet, thanks once again to the artistry of Lisa Mendelson, who swiftly and skillfully gift-wrapped every goodie, and Janet Coughenour, whose headdress of feathers and greens transformed the library mantel into a backdrop worthy of a magazine cover.

Our intrepid behind-the-scenes volunteers included Marcia Ciambriello, who cheerfully pitched in both days doing whatever needed to be done; David Pearson, who hauled box after heavy box down from our storeroom with characteristic good humor; Joan Cronin, who darted back and forth from the selling floor to the holding table, efficiently keeping buyers’ hands free; Susan Garland and Lisa Harding, who helped consolidate and rearrange our ever-shrinking inventory, and Mark Berns, who helped with all aspects of the sale.

Thanks to our seasoned cashiers, Ursula Caterbone, Amy Phillips, Celia Maddox and Jeff Conrad, and to our gracious café hostesses: Dianne Gilmore, Marti Coleman and Margee Rogers, all of whom hung around to break down and clean up after the sale, aided by Ellis Cooper, Susan Garland, Mark Berns and Jane Cohen, who came to shop and stayed to help, a very good Friend indeed.

Speaking of which, there are a few additional Friends who deserve to be singled out, among them Laurie Brown who, along with her fabulous rum cakes, donated carton upon carton of wonderful books, including two rare signed first editions of Philip Roth’s Nemesis, raffle prizes won by Les Fontleyden of Wilton, and FCP member and bake sale contributor Joan Dale of Norwalk. The third raffle prize, Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan, went home with Ellen Campbell of Wilton, whose husband had brought us two warm loaves of homemade bread just before the start of the sale.

A special thanks to our big volume bakers: Dianne Gilmore, Celia Maddox, Amy Phillips, Liz Halpin and Stephanie Forero. You are this year’s MVBs.

And finally, a shout out to two fallen Friends, Patsy Dodds and Linda Olson, previous bake sale heroines both, unable to participate this year due to illness and injury respectively. Get well soon. You are both sorely missed.

To everyone reading this, Happy Thanksgiving. Here’s to a safe, healthy holiday and a year filled with blessings, along with good food and good Friends.

FCP’s fifth annual bake sale will be Nov. 21st, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, from noon to 4 p.m. at the mansion at Cranbury Park, scene of our previous triumphs at bake sales one through four.

If you participated in any or all of them, you already know what a fun and festive event this is. If you are new to our ranks or just new to our sale, this is your chance to find out. We have less than six weeks before we face the ravenous hordes, the Pie People, the Fruit Bread Freaks, the Nut Nuts, and more.

And that, Friends, is where you come in.

We urge you to roll up your sleeves, plunge your hands into flour and bake up a virtual storm. We can sell almost anything as long as it’s homemade: pies of all kinds and all manner of cakes, be they frosted, sheet, coffee, or cup. Fruit crisps and fruit breads, cookies for dogs and their people, jams, jellies, sauces, and more.

With open arms and a sign-in sheet, we’ll await you and your baked goods at the mansion on Saturday, Nov. 20th, between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. If you can’t drop off your donations on that Saturday, let us know and we’ll make other arrangements.

If you’re a non-baker, we still need your help, posting signs, putting up fliers, and helping out at or after the sale. And of course, we’ll need everyone to come by and buy, if not the whole enchilada, one perfect piece of the pie at the Cranbury Café.

If you haven’t already, please let us know what you’re making to help make our fifth annual big beautiful bake sale a sweet and spectacular success.

Thanks!

Nancy Shulins

VP, FCP

A Shot in the Park
A Pictorial View of Norwalk at Play

Celia Maddox

It’s always a little scary to try something totally new, but there was no need for nervousness. The opening reception for our first photography show on Sunday afternoon June 13 was a big hit and FCP has once again expanded its horizons.

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