OLD LYME —On Monday, June 9, the Old Lyme Historical Society hosts its 20th Annual Meeting & Old Lyme History Trivia Night in its building at 55 Lyme St., Old Lyme.
The schedule for the evening is:
5:30 p.m. – Deep River Junior Ancients
6 p.m. – Meeting and Scholarship Awards
6:30 p.m. – Refreshments
7 p.m. – Trivia Contest and prizes
All are welcome.
LYME/OLD LYME–Lorraine Wilcox and Marcia Higgins are among those who refer to the Lymes’ Senior Center as a lifesaver.
Now, with 3,265 additional square feet and a layout that allows for multiple programs to be held at once, more older adults than ever can experience the resuscitative power of friendship.
While eating ice cream at the Center’s Grand Re-Opening Ceremony Saturday, Wilcox recalled becoming a member after the death of her husband almost eight years ago.
“It was a lifesaver,” she said. “I was depressed, and I could come be with other people, do things.”
“It’s a great way to make new friends,” she said.
Wilcox line dances. She takes exercise classes with up to 30 others in a space dedicated to the likes of weight training, Tai Chi and yoga. She sits quietly in the library room with a book. She gathers with others to await transportation to places like the JFK Museum in Boston, the mansions of Newport, RI, and the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall where the Rockettes are the stars of the show.
Higgins said she found herself in the same boat when she became a widow.
“It is a lifesaver,” she agreed.
The Center reopened earlier this month after being closed for a year and a half. The women credited Center Director Stephanie Gould and Assistant Director Caitlin Perkins with ensuring a full slate of activities from satellite locations across both towns during the closure.
“We were all over the place,” Wilcox said.
But Gould and Perkins kept the needs of all older adults front and center, according to Wilcox and Higgins.
“I think they love us,” Higgins said with sly certainty. “And we love them.”
Jeri Baker, chairwoman of the Lymes’ Senior Center Building Committee, took the podium during the early afternoon ceremony in front of a full house.
“We were focused from day one on one thing: That the seniors in these two communities didn’t get just what they needed, they got what they deserved,” she said.
Through the years, Baker has repeatedly described the committee’s vision for an open, airy layout marked by retractable walls and expansive windows to let in the light. The vision was tested by cost overruns and a slow grant funding process, but remained a priority for taxpayers in both towns through multiple votes on what added up to a $6.4 million project.
One million dollars is covered by state funding through a program that supports small town, quality of life projects.
State Sen. Martha Marx, D-New London, told the members they deserve the new space where they can be with others.
“We all know loneliness is hard. It’s hard for a lot of seniors,” she said. “When you have such a beautiful place like this where you can all come together, it’s going to change lives.”
Baker, Old Lyme First Selectwoman Martha Shoemaker, Lyme Selectwoman Kristina White and Lymes’ Senior Center Board of Directors Chairman Peter Lucchese all stood up to thank the dozens of people who made the renovation happen.
Shoemaker said there were about 1,100 members before the renovation. They combined for roughly 550 visits per week.
“In short, the Center was being used more frequently by more people than at any point in the history,” she said. “And at the same time, it had not undergone any renovation to its original structure since it opened in 1996, except, I believe, for a screened-in porch.”
The project was designed by Old Lyme-based Point One Architects and managed by Newfield Construction of Hartford.
Shoemaker acknowledged two garbage cans in the dining room to catch water from a leak in the ceiling related to the heating and cooling system.
“Anyone who’s built a house, done a home remodeling project, we all know that turning things on for the first time is a surprise,” she said.
The system is under warranty, according to Shoemaker.
When Gould, the Center’s Director, got up to give thanks, nobody ranked higher on her list than the seniors themselves.
“I want to thank our members, you guys, who I lovingly think of as ‘my seniors,’ for believing in this project and coming out in numbers to approve both referendums,” she said.
She credited their positive energy, understanding and support with keeping staff members in good spirits through the transition.
“This one’s for you,” she told the crowd.
The Day in Pictures
5/31 UPDATE: Details of the funeral service for Mrs. Lewis have now been announced. It will be held Saturday June 7, at 11 a.m. at St. Ann’s’ Church in Old Lyme. A luncheon will follow the service.
Joan Griswold Park Lewis, most recently of Merrimack County Nursing Home, Boscawen, New Hampshire passed away peacefully with family at her side on the first day of spring, March 20, 2025.
Mrs. Lewis was born in Erie, Pennsylvania on March 30, 1930, daughter of William B. Griswold and Jessie Griswold. Rosalie Griswold McCook was her dear step mother.
The family moved to Old Lyme, Connecticut in 1945. She graduated from St Margaret’s School in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1948. In 1952, she graduated from Bouve Boston School of Physical Therapy and Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts as a registered Physical Therapist. She was married in 1953 to James B Park of Concord, New Hampshire. They moved to Sugar Land, Texas where Mr. Park was a banker and Mrs. Park was a physical therapist.
In 1975, she moved back to Old Lyme where she had her own physical therapy office and worked at Chesterfield Convalescent Home as a therapist for 18 years.
She moved to Concord, New Hampshire in 1996. Over the years, she enjoyed many hobbies including gardening, knitting, hiking, photography, crafts and traveling. Her greatest passions were her grandchildren and the Boston Red Sox!
Survivors include five children: James G Park and Lane P Litchford of Lynchburg, Virginia; David B. Park and daughter-in-law, Sidney of Albuquerque, New Mexico; Tracy P Barrett and son-in-law Chris of Loudon, New Hampshire; and William H. Park (Paula Hoch) of Denver, Colorado. A brother and sister-in-law David and Elaine Griswold of Old Lyme, Connecticut. Six grandchildren, Erin and Caitlin Barrett, Megan and Boyce Litchford (Jessie and Aiden), Brittany Litchford Guill (Austin Guill), and Cassandra Park; and one great grandchild, Berkley Guill. Two nephews, Jeffrey (Kim Forbes Griswold) and Eric Griswold (Maddy Farkas), and one niece, Laura Griswold Wentz (Joshua Wentz). Three great nephews, James, Daniel, and Matthew Wentz. She was pre-deceased by a brother, William B Griswold, Jr, and a half-brother, Lawrence Lee.
A private graveside service will be held later this spring at the Griswold Cemetery followed by a service at St Ann’s Episcopal Church in Old Lyme, Connecticut. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the McCurdy Salisbury Educational Foundation in Old Lyme.
OLD LYME–Ten small brass plaques installed Friday morning on the Sill Lane Green are there to fill holes left by untold stories.
Cesar was about 15-years-old when he was purchased for 80 pounds by Reynold Marvin Jr. in 1730. Zacheus Still, born enslaved to Richard Lord Jr. in 1726, served in the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. A 26-year-old known to history only as ‘Negro Woman’ was recorded as being healthy and “capable at housework” when she was sold in 1802 by Enoch Lord Jr.
The information was culled from scant references in land records, emancipation certificates, and other primary sources, according to the Witness Stones Old Lyme organization that for five years has been working to unearth the town’s history of enslavement.
The group on Friday held its fifth installation ceremony on the grounds of the Old Lyme Phoebe Griffin Noyes Library. The Sill Lane Witness Stones join 50 others laid in Lyme and Old Lyme since the organization began in 2020 as an offshoot of the wider Connecticut-based Witness Stones initiative.
The local group marks sites of enslavement and engages students in telling the stories behind the stones.
Witness Stones Old Lyme Chairwoman Carolyn Wakeman said the ceremony would be the last of its kind as the sun sets on the five-year-project.
“Together, we have restored missing history,” she said.
Wakeman described the map of Witness Stones as a wide circle extending from Lyme Street, past the Lower Town Green to McCurdy Road, south to the Black Hall section of town, north to Lyme and the East Lyme border, and back to Lyme Street’s northern end at the Sill Lane Green.
The 12 most recent installations were located on Sill Lane and at the Florence Griswold Museum.
“Even though we could easily place another 60 plaques to commemorate additional enslaved persons, the Witness Stones website will continue to provide new information about local enslavement, and middle school students will continue in the years ahead to engage with the Witness Stones curriculum and to focus on primary documents in the history of our town,” she said.
Kate Rushin, a poet and Connecticut College professor, read her poem “Fishing for Shad” as one of four artists selected to remember in verse people enslaved on Lyme Street.
Rushin, along with Antoinette Brim-Bell, Marilyn Nelson and Rhonda Ward, are the Witness Stones Old Lyme poets. The group received a Health Improvement Collaborative of Southeastern Connecticut (HIC) Partnership Grant for Racial Equity.
Rushin wrote the poem from the perspective of Jack Howard. He was born enslaved to Samuel Mather Jr. in 1795 and willed to Mather’s son James in 1809.
She said she used Wakeman’s research, her own understanding of others, and her experiences to imagine how she might feel if she were the enslaved child.
“I don’t know where I belong/but I know I don’t belong here,” she wrote in the poem’s opening lines.
Rushin is also the author of Meditations on Generations, written for Jane. Born enslaved to Joseph Peck Jr. in 1726, Jane was sold for 25 pounds at the age of 3. No more information about her has been discovered.
“I’ll remember you, Jane,” she wrote in the poem’s final lines. “You were here./I will honor you, respect you;/hold you in my words.”
The poet, who identified herself as the great-granddaughter of an enslaved woman and the free man who released her from bondage, grew up in the first incorporated African-American town in New Jersey.
“This project is very personal to me, as it is to the other Witness Stones poets,” she said.
Eight Lyme-Old Lyme Middle School students followed Rushin with their own poems honoring those whose plaques were laid Friday.
Michelle Dean, curriculum director for the Lyme-Old Lyme Schools, described the five-year collaboration between Witness Stones Old Lyme and the schools as a shared commitment to telling the stories of “those whose voices for far too long have gone unheard.”
She said historical documents allowed students to confront complex truths and explore diverse perspectives that shaped the history of Lyme and Old Lyme.
“If our past is indeed our greatest teacher, then let it teach us this: We each have the capacity to honor others with dignity and respect,” she said. “Let us honor the past and our future by choosing humanity every day.”
Editor’s Note: This article was updated with the most recent Witness Stones Old Lyme map and to correct Wakeman’s name in one reference.
OLD LYME–Two young men sitting with their parents in the auditorium of the Lyme-Old Lyme High School Wednesday night were recognized at the end of the 2.5-hour Town Budget Meeting for making it through a crash course in the New England town meeting form of government
First Selectwoman Martha Shoemaker acknowledged the boys after a record-setting crowd of more than 200 residents and taxpayers approved the $45.39 million 2025-56 budget and five new or amended ordinances.
No meeting in the last seven years had drawn more than 60 people, according to Shoemaker.
“You have received the best education in what a town meeting can be like,” she told Joseph Jewett, 11, and Joshua Jewett, 9.
The budget passed 167 votes to 40 in a year when a property revaluation left a majority of homeowners in town facing a tax hike in excess of 4.7%. Those whose property values rose more than average are looking at relatively higher tax increases.
The town meeting is a form of direct democracy that allows all eligible voters 18 years old and up to discuss and decide important matters rather than letting elected officials do it for them.
While October 2024 data from the state Office of Policy and Management shows that 103 towns in the state have a town meeting form of government, many of them leave the ultimate budget decision up to a machine vote at a day-long referendum as a way to encourage more participation.
Shoemaker applauded the Jewett family for showing the boys that their “voices matter.”
“Even though (the votes) may not go the way you want, your voices are heard,” Shoemaker said.
Fire Marshal Dave Roberge said he counted 222 people in the auditorium Wednesday night. With 207 people voting on the budget, that leaves about 15 people like the Jewett children who were there to watch and learn.
Procedural questions about how to vote dominated the early part of the meeting, with an early motion to use a paper ballot on all seven questions failing by a vote of 87 to 110.
Voters decided to use a hand vote for the budget, which proved the most contentious issue on the call to meeting. They raised fluorescent green chits in the air to signify their voting status as Democratic Deputy Registrar of Voters Katherine Thuma and Republican Deputy Registrar of Voters John Mesham counted the chits row by row.
When the results of the vote to approve the budget were counted, Town Meeting Moderator Fran Sablone put it this way: “The motion carries.”
Voting down the budget would have required the town to bill taxpayers based on the current budget until a new spending plan was approved, according to town officials. That means the town would be locked into paying its share of the Region 18 education budget, which voters passed in a referendum earlier this month, even though the expense wouldn’t be reflected in tax bills.
Board of Finance Chairman Bennett J. Bernblum, who during the meeting used the word “stupid” to describe such a scenario, was asked to clarify what he meant.
“It would be stupid because it would put us into disarray,” he said.
The meeting, originally scheduled for May 19, was postponed due to overcapacity at the Town Hall. Fire code there allows only 124 people in the meeting room and lobby.
Tax Impact
The finance board immediately after the Town Meeting convened to set the tax rate for the coming year at 16.23 mills.
The current tax rate is 24.4 mills. After taking the property revaluation into account – and if spending did not increase at all in the coming budget – the tax rate would have been 15.5 mills.
A mill represents $1 in tax per $1,000 of assessed property value.
Bernblum in his presentation said a house appraised at $400,000 with a valuation mirroring the average 57.4% increase to the grand list is now worth $629,600. The tax bill for that homeowner based on the 2025-26 budget will be $7,153 – an increase of $321, or 4.7%, over the current tax bill.
Assessor Melinda Kronfeld has said 3,312 properties in town will see their tax bills go up more than 4.7%, while 2,331 properties will be looking at an increase less than that, or even a tax decrease.
The finance board last month voted to use $800,000 from the town’s predicted $14.2 million ‘Rainy Day Fund’ to help mitigate the impact to taxpayers. The vote was a compromise between Republicans, who wanted to use less, and Democrats, who wanted to use more.
Bernblum said the town’s healthy savings helped secure a AAA bond rating from S&P Global Ratings, which translates to the most favorable interest rates when the town goes out to bond. He said he was advised that the finance board’s decision to dip into the Rainy Day Fund should not adversely affect the town’s rating.
Bernblum said the $800,000 allocation, combined with $171, 350 in cuts identified by Shoemaker and town hall department heads at the request of the finance board, reduced the original budget proposal’s impact on taxpayers by almost a million dollars.
New and Amended Ordinances
The remaining issues on the meeting call were determined by voice votes. The most controversial was an ordinance codifying golf cart use in the Sound View and Hawk’s Nest beach areas.
The golf carts must be outfitted with numerous safety features to qualify as the kind of “low speed vehicle” authorized last year by the state to operate on any public roads with speed limits of 25 mph or less.
Previously, state statutes left it up to cities and towns to decide if they wanted to allow golf carts on local roads. Now, it’s up to those municipalities to specify if they don’t want them – or to limit where they can travel.
Shoemaker said the ordinance adds several streets in Hawk’s Nest Beach to a program established by the Sound View Commission a few years ago in cooperation with the previous administration of the Board of Selectmen.
Golf carts registered with the town will be allowed to travel on town-owned roads in the beach areas from sunrise to sunset.
There will be an initial fine of $90 for those caught driving an unregistered golf cart, driving outside the allowed areas and hours, or missing necessary equipment. The second offense comes with a $180 fine, while the third offense will result in the golf cart being impounded.
Golf carts must be registered annually and can only be operated with a valid driver’s license.
Sound View Commission Chairman Frank Pappalardo said the program has “worked out very, very well safety-wise” without being a hardship on residents. He cited 25 golf carts registered currently, with more joining each year.
Shoemaker described the ordinance as a way to keep communities safe in a town with only six full-time police officers to patrol the streets. She said voting the proposal down would result in the Board of Selectmen, which serves as the local traffic authority, outlawing golf carts completely.
“A ‘no’ vote will mean that we will prohibit golf carts in the Soundview and Hawks Nest area,” she said. “Because we cannot have people riding around in golf carts without some rules.”
Resident Steven Ross objected to the take-it-or-leave-it approach on what he described as an overly restrictive ordinance.
“That’s a threat. It’s heavy-handed. It’s inappropriate,” he said. “I think this ordinance should be reviewed and redrafted and brought to another town meeting.”
Shoemaker said the town can consider expanding the ordinance to include the Rogers Lake area in the future if enforcement goes smoothly this summer.
Other changes outlined on the call to meeting and approved without controversy included updating the volunteer fire and ambulance tax abatement ordinance to increase the maximum amount of the abatement from $1000 to $2000 and to extend it to retirees; revising requirements regarding publication of notices of special and regular Town Meetings in newspapers read by seasonal residents; revising the Old Lyme Harbor Management ordinance to slow down boats and jet skis and increase fines for violations; and revising language affecting parking areas on private property in the Sound View Beach area to, among other things, provide for on-site attendants.
A Learning Process
Joseph Jewett after the meeting said he ended up at the meeting with his brother because their parents, Dave and Daphanie Jewett, didn’t give them a choice.
While 9-year-old Josh Jewett said he really didn’t think they learned anything, Dave Jewett said the kids got a lesson about the importance of voting and having a say in where tax dollars go – even if they didn’t realize it.
Dave Jewett said he voted in support of the budget.
“I’ve been in the town my whole life,” he said. “Now I’ve got my kids growing up in this town.”
Editor’s Notes: i) Bennett Bernblum is a financial supporter of LymeLine.com, but has no input to the editorial process, which remains completely independent.