Greenwich Library Oral History Project | Greenwich, CT

Julie Otsuka’s book, When the Emperor Was Divine, draws us into a time when Japanese Americans were not only viewed with suspicion but were also torn from their homes and forced to live in internment camps. Over the years these dark times have receded into distant memory, and Japanese Americans have long ago regained their rightful homes. So it is jarring sometimes to realize that today, when Japanese citizens come to this country permanently or for work-related extended stays, they may yet feel isolated in our towns and communities.

Of the various interviews in the Oral History Project pertaining to the Japanese community in Greenwich, there are a handful that illuminate recurrent themes. One in particular encapsulates the experiences of a family newly arrived to these shores. One focuses on the Japanese educational experience in the area, and another highlights the benefit derived from an enriching cultural exchange.

One of our interviews takes place in the home of the Kurokawa family. (“A Japanese Family Living in Greenwich,” September 8, 1995) at a time when many families were relocating to this area from Japan. Mr. Kurokawa, who had come to the United States in 1993 after having lived in Brazil and Indonesia, came to Greenwich with his wife and daughter for its family atmosphere. The Kurokawas were happy to be so near parks and other recreational facilities, to shop in the stores lining Greenwich Avenue, but he, his wife, and their daughter, Mai, all struggled with the language, hindering them from socializing with their neighbors. Mai counted among her friends those who attended the “Juku” or Japanese cram school, where she found a warm atmosphere and camaraderie with fellow Japanese students. For all their graciousness and high regard for Greenwich, in the interview, the Kurokawas seem removed from the community, in spite of their best intentions to plunge into American life in their new hometown.

Indeed, there was a time, long after World War II, when Greenwich did not extend a welcoming hand to its would-be Japanese neighbors. One of our interviews, “The Greenwich Japanese School,” May 2, 1996, is narrated by David Albert, an attorney who represented the school in their efforts to move to the Daycroft property where Rosemary Hall, an independent girls’ school, had been. Mr. Albert, experienced in zoning law and sure the application process to approve the new school would be an easy one, was shocked—and dismayed—by what transpired. Although he was first approached in 1989, the “simple” approval process took three years to complete, mostly, according to Mr. Albert, because of the many roadblocks put in place by the community.

Neighbors who had never joined forces before formed the “Save Lower Lake Avenue Association” to keep the school out, throwing up issues of traffic, zoning, and even floor area ratio issues, although the property had been a school previously. For each of the objections raised, for each denial, the Japanese applicants met the demands placed on them and did not give up. Finally an agreement was reached, and the school opened its doors in the fall of 1992.

Since that time, the Japanese School in Greenwich has been an exemplary neighbor, garnering praise from all quarters. An interesting sidebar noted by Mr. Albert sheds light on the kind of neighbor the Japanese School was destined to become. One of the most vociferous opponents to the school was a woman who ran a catering business out of her home (probably in violation of code, Mr. Albert adds), and when the property was finally settled and the school opened, who was the caterer the Japanese administrators selected for their first event? None other than that same vocal opponent.

Another of our interviews attests to the value of bridging our cultural differences by reaching out to one another, this one narrated by Kate McClelland*, then director of youth services for the Perrot Memorial Library (“Storytelling at the Perrot Memorial Library,” August, 1996). She tells of connecting with the Japanese community of Greenwich through Marian Phillips (one of our Oral History Project members) who was, at the time, tutoring Japanese women in English. Ms. Phillips happened to mention that one of her students, Masako Sueyoshi, was a storyteller and a puppeteer. Formally trained in Japan, she had brought with her a library of nearly 500 children’s books and was telling stories in Japanese in her home in Old Greenwich. Popular with the Japanese community, these storytelling events were so well attended, Ms. Phillips suggested holding the event in the library.

As it turned out, Masako Sueyoshi, “a brilliant storyteller,” proved to be a huge hit at the library.  Soon she immersed herself in American storytelling, although her English was limited. She began competing in events across state and after only a few months, she was “the hit of the evening” in the worldwide even called Tellabration, a storytelling event mounted annually the Saturday before Thanksgiving. From telling stories in her home in Japanese to a Japanese audience to reaching a diverse audience of many hundreds, Ms. Sueyoshi opened doors and minds with her storytelling across the state and the country. When she finally returned to Japan years later, she had left a cultural legacy that reverberates to this day—and she donated all her books to the Perrot.

*Kate McClelland died in a tragic car accident in 2009 after 29 years of service at the Perrot Memorial Library.

Since Greenwich Reads Together is now in full swing, we thought it would be a good idea to republish the post on the Arai family of Greenwich, since it is both a fascinating story in its own right and because it is so closely linked to the times depicted in Julie Otsuka’s novel, When the Emperor was Divine. Stay “posted.” There will be more to come this month on the Japanese community in Greenwich from the Oral History Project archives.

***

The 2013 Greenwich Reads Together selection, Julie Otsuka’s, When the Emperor was Divine, is a slim, taut novel about members of a Japanese American family who in 1942 are reclassified as enemy aliens and sent to a Utah desert internment camp.

As the events unfold for the characters in the novel, on the other side of the country in those same years, a very different but in some ways similar experience was unfolding for a Greenwich Japanese American family.
But first a little background…
In 1991, one of our interviewers went to the home of Margaret Tabell, a longtime resident of Greenwich, to record her recollections. The interview, entitled “Riverside and Old Greenwich Neighborhoods,” is a delightful mix of subjects, beginning with a description of Ms. Tabell’s service as an air raid warden during World War II. She tells of going house to house to enforce blackouts and to ensure that every family home was equipped with a bucket of sand, standard issue in case of incendiary bombs.
Before long Ms. Tabell recalls her years on Glen Avon Drive in Riverside, turning her attention to “two big old houses” built by a Mr. Arai and a Mr. Murai, two business associates in the silk business who had come from Japan in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The two neighbors prospered as their families grew, but Ms. Tabell’s story focuses on the Arais who had a son, “Yoni” (Yoneo) who in time grew up, stayed in the family house, and married a young woman named Mitsu.
It is here that the story becomes relevant to this family’s experiences during World War II. After Pearl Harbor, the Arai family, for all their prominence in Greenwich at the time (Yoneo Arai graduated from Harvard in 1912 and was a banker, among other achievements), had to register as enemy aliens. This did not deter them, though, from supporting the war effort.
According to Ms. Tabell’s account, Mitsu and Yoneo’s son, “Rio” (Ryo), who was in college at the time, enlisted in the military in order to serve his country. While Ms. Tabell recalls that Ryo was taken into the army as a pilot, he was actually with the Military Intelligence Service. He graduated from Camp Savage in Minnesota in December of 1942 and was a member of SEATIC, the Southeast Asia Translation and Interrogation Center, a group credited with strategic Allied victories. Full recognition of their contribution came on October 5, 2010 when the Medal of Honor was awarded to all the Japanese Americans who served during the war. Unfortunately, Ryo Arai did not live to receive this honor. He died in 1986 at sixty-five years of age in Danville, California, his home after leaving Greenwich.
But in 1942, while their son was in Camp Savage and then deployed to the Pacific, Mr. and Mrs. Arai also found a way to contribute. They taught Japanese at Yale to young officers. Ms. Tabell’s description of this time for the Arais is not without incident. She recalls that the couple had to stop taking the train between Stamford and New Haven because of opposition from fellow passengers. It seems they were subject to the same xenophobia during their commute that had gripped the rest of the country. After these events, the military intervened to provide safe passage for the Arais from their home in Riverside to the campus.

Mitsu and Yoneo Arai, putting aside any animosity toward them, found solace by opening their home to their students on weekends. Ms. Tabell remembers seeing young officers coming down the street, arriving at the Arais’ for the Friday and Saturday nights dinners or the Sunday lunches the husband and wife provided for them. “They were enormously patriotic,” Ms. Tabell says of the couple as she ends her recollection of the Arai family of Glen Avon Drive.

According to newspaper archives and the Arai Family Papers in the Online Archives of California, www.oac.cdlib.org, Yoneo Arai died in Greenwich at ninety-one years of age in 1980. Mitsu Arai died in 1984 at eighty-five after moving to Walnut Creek, California, near her son, Ryo. His service record is located in the Military Intelligence Service Research Center and is readily available on the Website, U.S. Militaria Forum, www.usmilitariaforum.com, search forum, “incredible Nisei.” The history of the Nisei of World War II can be found on Wikipedia.

On November 1, 1923, a fourteen year-old girl and her family arrive at the Port of Providence, Rhode Island two weeks after having set sail from from Athens, Greece. Their final destination is Greenwich, Connecticut, where cousins, aunts, and uncles are ready to help them begin their new lives in this foreign land.

Flash forward to March of 1986, and Mary Condaras Milonas, that fourteen year-old girl, now an elderly woman, is telling her story to an interviewer with the Greenwich Library Oral History Project.

Flash forward again, this time to November, 2012, after Mary Milonas’ death, when Ms. Milonas’ extended family has lost touch with one another, and an office keeper at the Oral History Project receives a request for the 1986 interview whose existence has been unearthed by a long-lost family member searching for information. The request comes from Ms. Milonas’ goddaughter whose father, Ms. Milonas’ first cousin who, having learned of Ms. Milonas’ death, wants to put an obituary for his cousin in the newspaper.

What transpires next is a heartfelt exchange of emails, culminating in a thank you note from the goddaughter who is overwhelmed by all she has learned from reading the interview. A final grace note to this story of loss and retrieval: the goddaughter’s office at work overlooks the Port in Rhode Island, the Port of Providence, where young Mary Condaras and her family first arrived so many years ago. The story of how the interview made its way finally to family members eager to have it has a lovely symmetry, but Mary Condaras Milonas’ interview is worthy of interest to a much wider audience.

She begins by telling of her family’s hardships during World War I. Turkey had become an ally of Germany, and Smyrna (today Izmir), where the family had been living, was blockaded by the Turks, forcing the family to relocate. After the war, the family returned to Smyrna, but there was more trouble ahead. Mary’s father had the foresight to send the family away in 1922—before the destruction of Smyrna at the hands of the returning Turkish invaders.

Mary’s father stayed behind and was taken prisoner. Luckily, after being interrogated, he was released and sent to Lesbos, where his family anxiously awaited work of his fate. After several more separations, the family once again reunited in Athens, took passage to Rhode Island, and ultimately, traveled to Greenwich where Mary’s uncle, Harris Pappas, owned the Olympia Restaurant on Greenwich Avenue.

In many ways, the move to Greenwich marked the beginning of Mary’s adventures. When she and her family arrived, there was a thriving Greek community in town, which must have been a godsend for children who did not speak a word of English. But Mary was industrious, a quick learner, and soon she distinguished herself as an excellent student. By 1925 she had already mastered the language enough to win second prize in an essay contest.

After graduating from Greenwich High School in 1930 and having worked at a number of different jobs, Mary’s love of literature brought her to the Greenwich Library in 1932 and from there five years later to the Pratt’s school of library science. She describes her year at Pratt—the independence and camaraderie with the other students, her free time filled with museums, plays, and opera—as one of the happiest of her life. The next years were filled with library work and more opportunities for advancement for this motivated self-starter.

Then, in 1942, in order to help with the war effort, she joined The Women’s Army Corps and was sent to Camp Lee, Virginia where she provided training material for future officers in the Officer Candidates School.
After the war and after returning to school in New York, she received her Bachelor of Science degree from New York University in 1948 and became a cataloger at the Scranton Public Library. She worked there until 1951 when Miss Mary Condaras became Mrs. Milonas, having met her future husband, John, through friends. He, coincidentally, was also from Smyrna. “It’s a small world,” she says of this coincidence.

Mary continued her library career for many years. She worked at the Darien Library for fifteen years, retiring in 1969. But that was not the end of her library career. She returned to her alma mater, Greenwich High School, and worked in the library there as a substitute as well as in other libraries in the area until 1974 when she gave up working to care for her ailing mother—who lived to be ninety-six. Mary and her husband John lived and worked and traveled until his death after thirty-five years of marriage.

Mary Condaras Milonas died twenty-six years after giving her interview to the Oral History Project. She was 103 years old at the time of her death. And her first cousin and her goddaughter saw to it that she had a proper obituary for the newspaper.

What could be more appropriate for Women’s History Month than to celebrate two aviation pioneers who achieved many of their flying feats right here in Greenwich?

The two remarkable women are Molly Cummings Minot Cook, who was recently interviewed by the Oral History Project, and her mother, Marian Engle Cummings, born in 1891 and who died in 1984. Together with Molly’s brother, Wilbur (“Billy”) Love Cummings, Jr., also a pilot, the threesome won the nickname, “The Flying Family of Greenwich.”

Marian Cummings was the first woman to make a parachute jump and the first woman to hold a commercial license. Molly Cook, born in 1917, was also a flying marvel, earning her pilot’s license on her eighteenth birthday. Soon thereafter, she and her brother, Billy, bought a small plane, a Luscombe, and began competing in meets.

Since both son and daughter inherited much of their mother’s spirit, it may be worthwhile to know a little more about her.

As described by her daughter, Marian Engle was in her youth a force of nature. She proved such a challenge to her parents that she was sent east from her home in Seattle to be made a lady—a not entirely successful venture. From sliding down spiral staircases at her finishing school in Middlebury, Connecticut to illegally harboring kittens in her room, she was a handful for the headmistress who nevertheless appreciated her spunk.

After graduating with honors and returning to Seattle for her coming-out party, she met Wilbur Love Cummings, a young New York lawyer out west on assignment. It was love at first sight. Their romance, on the eve of World War One, culminated in marriage. Then at the height of the Spanish Flu epidemic, the Cummings family traveled to New York for Mr. Cummings to resume his work there. On this perilous journey, the young couple had their two children, Wilbur, age Three, and new baby, Molly. To avoid exposure to the deadly flu, the young family wore facemasks and stayed in their cabin.

After a brief time in New York, there was a stint in Cuba where Molly acquired Spanish as her first language. Back in the states, the family finally settled in Greenwich and bought an old farmhouse on John Street.

But life in Greenwich may have been too uneventful for Mrs. Cummings. To feed her hunger for adventure, she began taking flying lessons at North Beach, now LaGuardia airport, soon earning her pilot’s license. Mr. Cummings congratulated her on her accomplishment and asked if she would like an airplane. And so she got her first Reliant Stinson. Before long, mother, daughter, and son were all flying at Armonk.

According to Ms. Cook, Armonk was not a proper airport, but rather a potato field off Route 22 just long enough for landing small planes. Those must have been heady days for Greenwich’s flying family. While daughter and son were earning their wings, their mother was busy racking up firsts and awards.

When Ms. Cummings earned her commercial license, another first for this pioneering woman pilot, her husband said she could put her training to use by flying him around, which she did. The two traveled in the states and in Central America, wherever Mr. Cummings had legal proceedings underway.

When in Greenwich, Marian Cummings was an award-winning horsewoman, an excellent gardener, and an artist. Later in life, she worked the family ranch in Montana, earning the nickname, “Hellcat,” by those who soon learned there was no taking advantage of this woman rancher.

But the story of her prowess does not end there. It turns out she was something of an amateur archeologist, with a passion for Mexican artifacts. Flying over “middens,” or mounds of cultural remains, with a friend from the University of Southern California, the two would mark a spot from the air, later going in on packhorses, digging up treasures eventually to be displayed at the University.

Mrs. Cummings must have been a powerful influence on her two children. They, too, followed in their mother’s footsteps, both also accomplished and daring. While still in college, they became popular at “stunting” meets at airfields in Armonk, Hartford, and Long Island, among others.

Ms. Cook describes one maneuver involving a roll of toilet paper being thrown out of the plane at three or four thousand feet creating a streamer effect. “The trick was how long it took you to cut that strip twice,” with your plane. She also describes an event called a spot landing, having to land your plane neatly and precisely within a circle made of flour.

All this was good practice for what was to come in 1942 when fun and games would be replaced with the serious business of piloting during wartime.

During the war, Molly Cook and her mother joined the Civil Air Patrol. Ms. Cummings’ role was ferrying pilots between destinations stateside. Ms. Cook taught Morse code and aerial navigation. Her brother went into the Navy Air Corps as a transport pilot, taking new planes from factories here to England where they were deployed in the war.

It was on one of these trips that the family suffered a devastating loss. A plane piloted by young Wilbur Love Cummings crashed on takeoff, killing this cherished son and brother.

His death was not the first loss for this extraordinary family. The elder Mr. Cummings had been killed the summer before the war in a riding accident at the Montana ranch. He sustained several broken ribs and a punctured lung, dying within hours.

After these losses, Molly Cook went on to marry and have a family of her own. She continued flying and engaging in many other interests, from ranching, to teaching art, to conservation, making substantial donations to the Land Trust.

But it is when she talks about flying that she is most clearly in her element:

“ I loved stunting. In the summer…I would be in my white flying suit and helmet and goggles—oh, I was just the big cheese—and get into my little Fleet plane. All these people on Sunday, that was the thing to do in those days, that people would drive up to Armonk to watch the planes, sort of a—what would you call it—a bullfight feeling. Is the matador going to make it or—I’d go up and do a spin or a loop and a something, and then come down. Then we’d sit, and then somebody said, ‘Well, I think I’ll go up and amuse them a little bit.’ It was fun on Sunday.”

A wonderful way to spend an afternoon—and a life.

Alberta E. Bausal, “Service in Greenwich” First a schoolteacher in Dyersburg Tennessee, then a domestic worker in Greenwich, Alberta Bausal was a member of the Bethel A.M.E. Church, and volunteer with Church Women United. This is a story of community and church.

Andrew and Louise Blackson, “Black Experience in Greenwich” The Blacksons tell of their experiences from service during WWI to Greenwich in 1924, when the only employment was as domestic workers. The couple note improvement over the years and hope for greater opportunity in the future.

Louise Van Dyke Brown, * “Church and Community” Born in Greenwich in 1893, the daughter of one of the town’s first black families, Louise Van Dyke Brown married in 1919, worked as a housekeeper, and was an honoree of Bethel A.M.E.

Ethel Jones, “North Greenwich, 1902” Among memories of rural Greenwich are recollections of a grandmother who, after surviving the Civil War, died in Greenwich years later, strong and able-bodied to the end. A future generation would include a graduate of Yale and Stanford.

Eugene J. Moye, Sr. * “Soldier, Policeman, Teacher: Overcoming Discrimination” Born in in New York City in 1922, Eugene Moye grew up in Greenwich. A veteran of World War II, he was the first African American to become a Greenwich police officer. Also a schoolteacher and continuing as a substitute after retirement, Mr. Moye reflects on his accomplishments, his happy marriage and family, and the experiences he and his family shared overcoming prejudice.

Alver W. Napper, Sr. * (Three interviews) “The Lee Haven Beach Club,” “History of the Crispus Attucks Center,” and “Reflections on Being Black in Greenwich” Alver Napper, born in 1910, in Georgia, came to Greenwich in the late 1930s to become a toll collector when the Merritt Parkway first opened. Long a leader in the black community, he was director of the Crispus Attucks Center and an early and staunch supporter and active member of the NAACP in Greenwich.

Robert Perry, (Two Interviews) “Black Community in Central Greenwich,” “Boyhood in Greenwich,” This is the story of a Greenwich first family who resided on what was then known as Perry Lots and is today Perryridge Road. Robert Perry went on to become a leader in Greenwich, receiving recognition for distinguished service awarded by the Masons and from the Chamber of Commerce of Greenwich for his contributions to the town.

Wesley Robinson, “Growing Up in Greenwich” Growing up in Cassidy Park in what was called the Fourth Ward, Wesley Robinson narrates this interview about his youth. Graduating from Greenwich schools, he decided to pursue his creative interests at J.M. Wright Technical School. He learned printing and graphics there before finding employment at the Greenwich Library. This interview was conducted at the library in 2003 for Oral History Day.

Winston Robinson “NAACP in Greenwich” Born and raised in Greenwich, Winston Robinson attended university in Virginia before returning to town to become president of the NAACP as well as contributing to many other local organizations. But it is with the NAACP that Mr. Robinson has devoted most of his energy, being primarily interested in ensuring peoples’ civil rights.

Edna Harris Smith “The Black Community in Greenwich, 1930-1988” Edna Harris Smith came to Greenwich from Charleston, South Carolina as a teenager to be reunited with her mother. Much of the interview is devoted to memories of Henrietta Miller who founded a home for young black women who needed housing while working and saving for college. Edna Smith also reminisces about her youth in Greenwich and her years with years with Bethel A.M.E. Church.

Gertrude Johnson Steadwell, * “A Civil Rights Activist” Born in 1909 and a lifelong resident of Greenwich, Gertrude Johnson Steadwell graduated from the New York School of Interior Design and became an interior decorator. She was a founder of the local chapter of the NAACP and instrumental in promoting fair employment practices by forming the FEPC, the Fair Employment Practices Committee.

*Available as books for purchase through the Oral History Project office, lower level of the library, across from Elton’s Cafe

The 2013 Greenwich Reads Together selection, Julie Otsuka’s, When the Emperor was Divine, is a slim, taut novel about members of a Japanese American family who in 1942 are reclassified as enemy aliens and sent to a Utah desert internment camp.

As the events unfold for the characters in the novel, on the other side of the country in those same years, a very different but in some ways similar experience was unfolding for a Greenwich Japanese American family.
But first a little background…
In 1991, one of our interviewers went to the home of Margaret Tabell, a longtime resident of Greenwich, to record her recollections. The interview, entitled “Riverside and Old Greenwich Neighborhoods,” is a delightful mix of subjects, beginning with a description of Ms. Tabell’s service as an air raid warden during World War II. She tells of going house to house to enforce blackouts and to ensure that every family home was equipped with a bucket of sand, standard issue in case of incendiary bombs.
Before long Ms. Tabell recalls her years on Glen Avon Drive in Riverside, turning her attention to “two big old houses” built by a Mr. Arai and a Mr. Murai, two business associates in the silk business who had come from Japan in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The two neighbors prospered as their families grew, but Ms. Tabell’s story focuses on the Arais who had a son, “Yoni” (Yoneo) who in time grew up, stayed in the family house, and married a young woman named Mitsu.
It is here that the story becomes relevant to this family’s experiences during World War II. After Pearl Harbor, the Arai family, for all their prominence in Greenwich at the time (Yoneo Arai graduated from Harvard in 1912 and was a banker, among other achievements), had to register as enemy aliens. This did not deter them, though, from supporting the war effort.
According to Ms. Tabell’s account, Mitsu and Yoneo’s son, “Rio” (Ryo), who was in college at the time, enlisted in the military in order to serve his country. While Ms. Tabell recalls that Ryo was taken into the army as a pilot, he was actually with the Military Intelligence Service. He graduated from Camp Savage in Minnesota in December of 1942 and was a member of SEATIC, the Southeast Asia Translation and Interrogation Center, a group credited with strategic Allied victories. Full recognition of their contribution came on October 5, 2010 when the Medal of Honor was awarded to all the Japanese Americans who served during the war. Unfortunately, Ryo Arai did not live to receive this honor. He died in 1986 at sixty-five years of age in Danville, California, his home after leaving Greenwich.
But in 1942, while their son was in Camp Savage and then deployed to the Pacific, Mr. and Mrs. Arai also found a way to contribute. They taught Japanese at Yale to young officers. Ms. Tabell’s description of this time for the Arais is not without incident. She recalls that the couple had to stop taking the train between Stamford and New Haven because of opposition from fellow passengers. It seems they were subject to the same xenophobia during their commute that had gripped the rest of the country. After these events, the military intervened to provide safe passage for the Arais from their home in Riverside to the campus.

Mitsu and Yoneo Arai, putting aside any animosity toward them, found solace by opening their home to their students on weekends. Ms. Tabell remembers seeing young officers coming down the street, arriving at the Arais’ for the Friday and Saturday nights dinners or the Sunday lunches the husband and wife provided for them. “They were enormously patriotic,” Ms. Tabell says of the couple as she ends her recollection of the Arai family of Glen Avon Drive.

According to newspaper archives and the Arai Family Papers in the Online Archives of California, www.oac.cdlib.org, Yoneo Arai died in Greenwich at ninety-one years of age in 1980. Mitsu Arai died in 1984 at eighty-five after moving to Walnut Creek, California, near her son, Ryo. His service record is located in the Military Intelligence Service Research Center and is readily available on the Website, U.S. Militaria Forum, www.usmilitariaforum.com, search forum, “incredible Nisei.” The history of the Nisei of World War II can be found on Wikipedia.

Toward the end of this year, Cathy Ogden, the Oral History Project Chairman of nearly twenty years, resigned, fulfilled, we hope, by her outstanding contribution to the project. Her leadership has brought us to what we are today, a community resource of more than 850 interviews and 137 books, all highlighting the people, places, and events of Greenwich. In a recent article in the Greenwich Citizen, Cathy made mention of her favorite interviews. Among these are the stories of the following narrators:

Louis Imbrogno on racing pigeons, a dying art, he tells us;
Gertrude Howland, on replanting Greenwich Avenue trees after the devastation of Dutch Elm disease;
Mainiero Margenot, a daughter of immigrants, about her dream to get an education;
Alver W. Napper, Sr. who tells of his experiences as a Black man in Greenwich;
Frank Nicholson, on growing up on Lewis Street in the 1920s;
Madelyn and Horton O’Neil, about their interesting property in Cos Cob—with its own amphitheater.

Each of these suggests the depth and breadth of the project’s collection. Whether drawing back a curtain on the Greenwich of yesterday, or opening our eyes to the challenges many of our neighbors have faced, or painting a vivid picture of local color, the project’s interviews provide a chance to sit back and enjoy a piece of history as told through the voices of our town’s residents.

In 2013, we will dip into many of these fascinating stories. In the meantime, we at the Oral History Project wish you and your families the very best this holiday season.