There were decorated bikes galore … All photos by M. Shoemaker.
OLD LYME—It was a beautiful day for a parade and yet again, Sound View put its best foot forward with a wonderful one. The crowds came out to join the celebration featuring decorated bikes, a cheery band, esteemed veterans, local dignitaries and much more. Awards were presented in categories including best-decorated bike or wagon, most patriotic outfit, best float, and funniest outfit.
There was patriotic music …
Looking out toward Long Island Sound, the flag at the foot of Hartford Ave. was appropriately saluted.
Uncle Sam and Mr. Eagle joined the happy throng …
Awards were presented …
And still more awards, this one presented by Gail Fuller, rounded off another memorable parade.
The Sound View Beach Association (SVBA) hosts the parade. It is an all- volunteer, non-profit, civic organization, which owns and manages the Shoreline Community Center and also provides the flags in the Sound View area.
Everyone is invited to join or help. The SVBA welcomes new members, volunteers and donations—all donations are tax deductible and the SVBA is registered for “matching gift” grants with many companies.
Jim and Christine Levasseur and family floated away with the 2025 Rogers Lake Boat Parade trophy.
OLD LYME—There are new Independence Day champions on Rogers Lake.
Rogers Lake Boat Parade organizers Christina and Dave Evers in an email said this year’s trophy for the “most enthusiastic, patriotic, and best decorated” boat has been awarded to Jim and Christine Levasseur and family.
The Evers said the family’s enthusiasm put them over the top during Friday afternoon’s parade around the lake.
“They never stopped dancing,” the organizers said. “There was a close second place winner, but the Levasseur family really brought that energy!”
The Levasseur family was recognized for their enthusiasm during the parade, as well as for their decorations.
Judges were placed randomly along the water.
The winners keep the trophy for 12 months and then return it to be presented to next year’s winner. The Levasseurs took the title from the King family.
This year marked the sixth annual boat parade. The trophy added friendly competition to the festivities in 2022.
And so it begins again— the Grand Marshal’s car leads the Lyme Independence Day Parade down Cove Rd.
LYME—The parade that began over 60 years ago with a beloved doctor’s pot-and-pan band remains a short and timeless tradition.
There’s not much in the way of rules at Lyme’s Fourth of July Parade, and the clock is more of a suggestion than an absolute. You could even say time stops for this simple slice of Americana.
But nobody told that to Lyme Selectman John Kiker.
“We’re running five minutes late,” he said shortly before the scheduled 10 a.m. start.
The first vintage car set off not much later from the apex of Cove Road with Grand Marshal Bill Hawthorne in the seat of honor. Less than a quarter of an hour later, the final MINI truck cleared the Esther and Bill Irving Bridge below.
Trailing the MINI across the 10-foot span over the cove, Kiker had the answer for those wondering just how much time had elapsed.
“Twelve minutes,” he said.
Lyme First Selectman David Lahm put it this way: “Don’t blink.”
Parade founder Dr. William D. Irving was memorialized in his obituary 10 years ago for starting the tradition “on a whim” in 1958. He stepped down as grand marshal in 2008.
For a half century, Irving maintained the parade “starts promptly at about 11 a.m.”
This time around, the annual town wide celebration got underway promptly at about 10 a.m.
Grand Marshal Bill Hawthorne, 88, served as the town’s treasurer for 26 years and treasurer of the Lyme Fire Company for 15 years. The lifetime resident was a volunteer firefighter from the age of 16 until his 50s. George Willauer served as Hawthorne’s chauffeur.
The Hamburg Fair contingent of Lyme’s Fourth of July Parade prepares to toss candy into the crowds lining Cove Rd. and Rte. 156.
The Lyme Parks and Recreation group brought along candy for paradegoers.
Kids from Camp Claire have been a mainstay in the parade since Irving’s time. The beloved Old Saybrook pediatrician also served as the camp physician.
Campers could be heard singing along to songs like Miley Cyrus’ Party in the USA and chanting “USA” along the parade route.
Lyme Ambulance filled out a heavy contingent of first responders as part of the town’s volunteer tradition.
Ambulance volunteers from the back of this Jeep broadcast the message “Lyme Ambulance thanks you for your support” throughout the parade route.
Nancy Kalal, known for working with oxen at her Cranberry Meadow Farm in East Lyme, brought a livestock contingent to the parade. Kalal said it was the first time out in public for Red, a 400-lb, 4-month-old red Holstein in training to be an ox. “Red behaved admirably,” she said afterward in an email. “He seemed to enjoy all the attention, and still pull the cart on my commands.”
Members of Lyme Pollinator Pathway represented butterflies, bees and other pollinators at the parade.
While kids all along the parade route dove into the road for candy, adults looked forward to bulbs of fresh garlic that were handed out again this year.
The Lyme Fire Department came out in force as a perpetual highlight in the community parade.
Enthusiastic honks and beeps reverberated across the cove as this vintage Chrysler brought up the rear of the parade.
Paradegoers on the sunny morning included those of the four-legged variety.
Fire apparatus prepared for the right turn into the Hamburg Fairgrounds as traffic resumed on Route 156, which was closed for the brief duration of the parade.
While Dr. Irving was known to hand out popsicles after the parade, members of the Lyme Recreation Commission laid out free hot dogs, hamburgers, chips and drinks at the Grange.
And that’s it until next year.
Editor’s Note: This article was updated with more information about Red, the ox-in-training.
Witness Stones Old Lyme poets at the Juneteenth celebration. From left to right: Rhonda Ward, Antoinette Brim-Bell, Kate Rushin and Marilyn Nelson. All photos courtesy of Witness Stones Old Lyme.
OLD LYME—The north lawn of the Florence Griswold Museum earlier this month filled with music and poetry as the community gathered for a Juneteenth celebration honoring those who once lived enslaved in the historic town of Lyme.
The Avery Sharpe Quartet performing at the Juneteenth event.
The June 22 event in partnership with the Witness Stones Old Lyme organization featured a powerful performance by renowned bassist and composer Avery Sharpe and his Quartet—Zaccai Curtis on piano, Haneef Nelson on trumpet, and Yoron Israel on drums—whose dynamic jazz rhythms set the tone for an afternoon of remembrance and hope.
Artists gather at the Juneteenth Jazz & Poetry event on Sunday, June 22. Left to right: Poets Marilyn Nelson, Kate Rushin, Rhonda Ward and Antoinette Brim-Bell with musicians Zaccai Curtis, Avery Sharpe, Yoron Israel, and Haneef Nelson
Interwoven with the music were readings by four of Connecticut’s most distinguished poets: Marilyn Nelson, Kate Rushin, Rhonda Ward, and Antoinette Brim-Bell. Their verses, inspired by the lives of those commemorated through the Old Lyme Witness Stones Project, gave voice to the past and called listeners to deeper understanding and reflection.
Audience members enjoy the sounds of live jazz and poetry on the lawn of the Florence Griswold Museum.
The poets, who began their partnership with the Witness Stones Project in 2021, created a cycle of poems that was later published in Poetry magazine. Their verse continues to serve as a poignant tribute to the lives, labor, and humanity of those long forgotten by history.
Photographer William Earle Williams signs copies of the exhibition catalogue for poets Rhonda Ward (left) and Kate Rushin.
Following the program, the Florence Griswold Museum welcomed guests to view Their Kindred Earth: Photographs by William Earle Williams on its closing day. Drawn by his interest in the Witness Stones Project, Williams became the museum’s third artist-in-residence and made stunning photographs that reveal historic sites of enslavement in Old Lyme and elsewhere in Connecticut.
Witness Stones Old Lyme
Between 1670 and 1826 at least 300 enslaved and indentured African Americans and Native Americans labored in the historic town of Lyme.
Today, Witness Stones honor the humanity and the contributions of vital members of our community. The bronze plaques that mark sites of enslavement on Lyme Street restore forgotten history and serve as memorials to those once held here in bondage.
Each of the 60 Witness Stone placed on Lyme Street, McCurdy Road, Old Shore Road, the Sill Lane Green and at the Lyme Public Library includes the name of an enslaved individual, along with details about their lives and circumstances derived from land records, emancipation certificates, and other available historical documents.
An interpretive sign installed on the lawn of the Old Lyme Phoebe Griffin Noyes Library provides a map showing the locations of the small brass plaques that are installed flush with the ground on Lyme Street and elsewhere in the community.
Old Lyme resident Amy Gamerman on Wednesday will discuss her first book, “The Crazies: The Cattleman, the Wind Prospector, and a War Out West” at the Old Lyme’s Phoebe Griffin Noyes Library.
Amy Gamerman to Give Book Talk at Old Lyme Library
OLD LYME–Journalist Amy Gamerman’s first book has its origin story in the Crazy Mountains, a freestanding range of windy Montana peaks where one billionaire purchased 44,000 unspoiled acres and tilted at windmills to keep them that way.
Gamerman, a decades-long resident of Old Lyme and established Wall Street Journal contributor, traced the book’s genesis to a tour of oil and gas tycoon Russell Gordy’s Montana in 2017. That’s when Gordy told Gamerman, who was there to write a profile on the prolific landowner, about a neighboring rancher with plans for a wind farm that could sully the paradise stretching from the Yellowstone River to the spiky crests of The Crazies.
But the smallholding rancher to the south declined Gordy’s offer to buy him out.
The seemingly tangential anecdote stayed with Gamerman “like an itch” long after Gordy’s profile was published in the Journal’s luxury real estate section, she said. The urge to scratch wouldn’t quit.
Who was this rancher, she recalled wondering. What was it like to say “no” to Gordy, a man with so much money and influence? And whatever happened with the wind farm?
“There was something that happened out in the shadow of those Crazy Mountains when I was walking around with Russell Gordy, and he told me the story of his neighbor,” she said.
That “something” is The Crazies: The Cattleman, the Wind Prospector, and a War Out West, published in January after years of exhaustive research into what publisher Simon & Schuster labeled as a “ruggedly beautiful western for a warming plant.”
It’s the account of several billionaires and the fifth-generation rancher struggling to make a living off the land. It’s also the legend of those who got there first, and an allegory about what comes next in an isolated landscape that cannot hide from rising temperatures and powerful storms.
Gamerman will discuss the book at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday in Old Lyme’s Phoebe Griffin Noyes Library. All proceeds from copies sold that evening will go to the local library.
Stranger than Fiction
Gamerman, a fiction lover at heart, said wide ranging interviews with colorful personalities and drama-laden courtroom transcripts helped turn her journalism into a tale that reads like a novel.
She characterized it as liberating to get out of her own head by mining the stories of others.
“Here’s the thing,” she said. “I don’t feel like I have a great imagination. And this story had so many outrageous twists and turns I wouldn’t have had the balls to invent.”
She credited a significant amount of the book’s success to painstaking research into the history of Montana and the people drawn there. Some of that work was done while the deepest throes of the pandemic rendered the world remote.
The months-long quarantine was an “extraordinary gift in disguise” that gave her the time and space to focus on backstory, she said. With research came an understanding of the external forces, some of them as old as the land itself, that drove the characters’ personal decisions.
“You couldn’t really understand the present-day conflict without understanding the past,” she said.
She also came to know, for the first time, the immediate dangers of climate emergency.
Gamerman described the billionaire trophy ranchers depicted in the book as consumed by the notion of the unspoiled landscape, even as their resistance to change threatens the region’s continued existence – and the livelihood of the working ranchers who depend on it.
She cited an epic drought and wildfires that played out “in real time” as she wrote the book.
“There were moments where I felt like these guys were admiring the view from the deck of the Titanic,” she said.
Late Bloomer
Gamerman, educated at Yale University in New Haven and Cambridge University in England, worked at a news wire service in Washington D.C. and then as arts and culture reporter for the Wall Street Journal before stepping back to raise her children in Old Lyme. She joined the newspaper’s emerging Mansion section as a contributor more than a decade ago.
Gamerman’s four children with bestselling author and acclaimed journalist Kevin Conley range from 25 to 18 years old.
The author, 61, called herself a late bloomer.
She recalled lamenting her delayed arrival to book publishing in a conversation with writer and audio host Anna Sale, known for the Death, Sex and Money podcast. Sale also narrates the audio version of the book.
Gamerman credited Sale with reminding her that she was able to write the book because of the lifetime of personal and professional experiences that led to it.
“And it’s true,” she said. “I had to draw on everything I had.”
