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Edie Twining is Old Lyme’s 2022 Citizen of the Year!

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Edie Twining, second from right, was named Old Lyme’s 2022 Citizen of the Year at tonight’s Annual Town Meeting. She stands in this photo with the Old Lyme First Selectman Tim Griswold (second from left) and Selectwoman Martha Shoemaker (left) and Selectman Matt Ward (right.) Photo by C. Poirier.

Editor’s Note: LymeLine Exclusive: read Twining’s subsequent response to receiving the award in this article.

OLD LYME — At Monday night’s Annual Town Meeting held in Old Lyme’s Memorial Town Hall, Old Lyme First Selectman Tim Griswold enthusiastically declared, “We are excited to announce that Old Lyme’s Citizen of the Year for 2022 is the very talented Edie Twining. Edie is passionate about Old Lyme, its history, and its sense of place… and her local involvement speaks to that.”

He continued, “Edie is very active serving the Town of Old Lyme in various capacities.  Having served on the Economic Development Commission and now as the Chair of the Halls Road Improvement Committee, Edie has worked tirelessly to develop the Halls Road Overlay District that, if approved, will allow property owners along Halls Road greater flexibility to develop their properties.  The Committee is also planning to rebuild the Bow Bridge, a pedestrian bridge over the Lieutenant River which was part of the artistic heritage of Old Lyme.  On the Town’s Economic Development Commission Edie worked toward creating new opportunities for existing Old Lyme businesses and our future businesses.”

Griswold added, “Members of the Old Lyme Land Trust are pleased that Edie is on their Board. She has been a long-time steward of the Lohmann-Buck-Twining Preserve and Co-Chair of the Trust’s Outreach Committee.  She is often seen maintaining trails on Trust properties and she recently led the effort to design and construct benches for the enjoyment of hikers.”

Holding her just-received bouquet, Edie Twining acknowledges being named Old Lyme’s 2022 Citizen of the Year. Photo by M. Dickey.

The citation announcing Twining’s honor then stated, “Edie brings to everything she does a keen eye for design.  As an example, her hand drawn illustrations for the Old Lyme Historical Society’s Walking Tour of Lyme Street brochure continues to delight local residents and history buffs alike.  As a Board member of the Society, she also volunteers to seasonally refresh the Society’s display cases – in the Post Office, in Town Hall and in the Society’s building at 55 Lyme Street.

Edie has lent her talents to the Old Lyme Arts District, produced marketing materials for the annual Make Music Old Lyme event and helped create the Explore Old Lyme.com web site.”

Griswold concluded, “On behalf of the people of Old Lyme, the members of the Board of Selectmen offer their hearty congratulations to Edie Twining on being designated the Old Lyme Citizen of the Year for 2022.”

Others added words of support in the proclamation.

Cheryl Poirier, Chair of Old Lyme’s Economic Development Commission and of the Old Lyme Arts District, commented, “I am delighted Edie Twining is being recognized for her unwavering commitment to the Old Lyme community. Edie and I have collaborated on many efforts including the EDC, the Halls Road Improvement Committee, the Old Lyme Arts District, as well as the marketing materials for Make Music Old Lyme, and most recently, the creation of Explore Old Lyme.com.”

She continued, ” Edie is passionate about Old Lyme, its history, and its continued sense of place. Edie brings to everything she does a keen eye for design, which is reflected in the many things she has created, including the Historical Society’s Walking Tour of Lyme Street brochure. Her hand-drawn illustrations and easy to use fold-out brochure continue to delight local residents and history-buff visitors alike.”

Poirier noted, “As the Chair of the Halls Road Improvement Committee, and as past commissioner on the Economic Development Commission, Edie has spent countless volunteer hours collaborating to ensure Old Lyme continues to meet the needs of today’s residents while creating new opportunities for our future businesses. One of the great things about volunteering in Old Lyme is that you make wonderful friends along the way. I am proud to say that Edie and I not only challenge each other’s thinking on our many projects, but she is also my friend. Well done, Edie Twining!”

Another photo of Old Lyme’s 2022 Citizen of the Year Edie Twining (second from right) standing with the Old Lyme Board of Selectmen. Photo by K. Balocca.

Howard Margules, who served as Co-Chair with Twining on the Halls Road Improvement Committee, said, “Grit, tenacity, smarts, no nonsense common sense, responsible, capable, integrity, caring these are the essence of my friend, Edie Twining. I have worked with Edie for over a decade on both the Economic Development Commission and Halls Road Improvement Committee, and I am always amazed at her dedication and sense of purpose.”

He added, “Edie’s connection to Old Lyme goes back, way back.  Her father played a leadership role in the economic development of Old Lyme in the 1950s and they share that same sense of purpose. Both on a mission to improve, enhance and secure the future of Old Lyme. Edie is not one for seeking the limelight, and I can see her squirming when she receives this award; It is unexpected, but certainly well earned. I applaud the town for recognizing her numerous contributions.”

Sabine O’Donnell and Lea Harty, who are member of the Old Lyme Land Trust Board, were gracious in their praise of Twining’s contributions to the trust saying, “The Old Lyme Land Trust Board is very fortunate that Edie has chosen to join its ranks. For the past four years, Edie has worked tirelessly to bring insights to board discussions on how the Trust can coordinate its mission and projects with other town organizations to benefit Old Lyme and its citizens.”

They said, “Edie is a longtime steward of the Lohmann-Buck-Twining preserve and co-chairs the Trust’s Outreach Committee. She enjoys rolling up her sleeves to join other volunteers to maintain the many trails on Trust preserves and, among her many initiatives, recently came up with a bench design and then organized a bench building party at her home that had three generations of local families involved in a fun activity. Edie’s many creative talents are also on display whenever new signs or brochures are needed, and she also maintains the Trust’s informative website.”

O’Donnell and Harty concluded emphatically, “We believe Edie’s designation as Volunteer of the Year of the Town of Old Lyme is very much deserved.”

Our Top 15 — The Most-Read Articles on LymeLine in 2022

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LYME/OLD LYME — It is always interesting in early January of one year to crunch the numbers and see which stories drew the highest number of readers in the previous year. This year was no exception — there were some predictable winners like the announcement of the Old Lyme 2021 Citizen of the Year and the unexpected (and unsuccessful, as far as we know) auction of the Old Lyme Shopping Center.

There were several pandemic-related articles such as the opening of applications for ARPA grants in Old Lyme and a dramatic increase in the number of Connecticut towns in the Red Zone in April. The decision by the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme to hold its White Elephant Sale after a two-year Covid-enforced hiatus was greeted enthusiastically by many readers as was news that Lyme-Old Lyme Schools had dropped their COVID mask-mandate.

Controversial issues always prompt a rise in readers and predictably the whole business about the then-insuperable obstacles facing Old Lyme’s Open Space Commissions’ efforts to acquire two parcels of the Ames property fell into that category. Similarly, people wanted to read all about the appointment of a new face to the OL Economic Development Commission against both the recommendation of its chair and over an incumbent. The still-ongoing saga of the Tantummaheag access dispute made the list as did the subject of armed guards in Lyme-Old Lyme Schools.

Sad news also invariably attracts increased readership and so the announcement of the passing of our beloved food writer Lee White is on our list as is the unanticipated departure of the then-director of the Florence Griswold Museum.

There were surprisingly few politically-related stories in our Top 15 for 2022, even though it was a feisty election year. The one that did make the list related to a well-known Old Lyme resident being the major funder of a new Republican PAC in the state.

We knew Maureen Haseley-Jones’s gardening columns were popular, but it was a slight surprise that February’s — of all months — crept into our Top 15. Congratulations , Maureen!

But the biggest surprise of all was the most-read story of the year, which, against all odds, was the second and final segment of a two-part-story about the history of tobacco in Connecticut!

It is a particularly topical article for today — Martin Luther King, Jr. Day — because (and who knew?), MLK worked in the summers of both 1944 and 1947 on a tobacco farm in Simsbury to earn money for tuition. He wrote to his father that, “there was no discrimination at all,” north of Washington DC, adding that up North, “We go to any place we want to and sit anywhere we want to.” 

King wrote in his autobiography, “It was a bitter feeling going back to segregation after those summers in Connecticut.”

Corey Kilgannon wrote in the New York Times that the dream of equality that MLK first glimpsed in Simsbury helped reshape his world view, adding, “It was during those summers that King began his path to becoming a minister.”

Congratulations to our very own Tom Gotowka on being the author of our most-read article in 2022!

We have a feeling the article was picked up by some research entities, which may have increased its readership numbers, but that takes nothing away from the simple fact that it recorded more readers than any other article in the whole of 2022!

The complete list of our Top 15 most-read articles for 2022 in descending order is as follows:

  1. A View from My Porch: The Shady History of Connecticut Tobacco — The Finale by Thomas Gotowka

  2. Has the Pandemic Affected You or Your Business? Old Lyme Opens Applications for ARPA Grants to Businesses, Nonprofits, Town Entities

  3. Old Lyme Shopping Center Goes Up for Auction

  4. Old Lyme’s 2021 Citizen of the Year is Cheryl Poirier!

  5. April 21 COVID-19 Update: More Than Half of CT Towns Back in Red Zone, Including Lyme, Old Lyme; Three New Cases in Lyme Raise Cumulative Total to 268, Two in OL Take Total to 1085


  6. Old Lyme Open Space Commission Announces Efforts to Acquire Two Parcels of ‘Ames Property’ Have Ended, Obstacles “Impossible to Overcome”

  7. Letter to the Editor: Armed Guards in Lyme-Old Lyme Schools — More Questions from Betsy Groth

  8. Death Announced of Our Beloved Food Writer, Lee White

  9. After Two Year COVID-Enforced Hiatus, Old Lyme Church’s White Elephant Sale is Back

  10. Griswold, Ward Vote to Appoint Colwell to Old Lyme EDC Against Recommendations of Commission Chair

  11. Mask Mandate for Lyme-Old Lyme Schools Lifted From Feb. 28, But Masks Still Recommended; “Individual’s Decisions” Must be Respected (Neviaser)

  12. Old Lyme Town Attorneys Issue Findings on Tantummaheag Dispute, Owners Describe Report as “Filled with Factual, Legal and Historic Errors“

  13. Old Lyme’s Florence Griswold Museum Director Beaulieu Leaving to Become President/CEO of Cincinnati’s Taft Museum of Art

  14. Old Lyme RTC Chair Kelsey Donates $500,000 to Launch New PAC

  15. Gardening Tips for February from ‘The English Lady,’ Lift Your Spirits by Thinking Spring … and Beyond

Tidings of Comfort (Food) and Joy

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Editor’s Note: We are delighted to re-publish this mouth-watering piece by our friend and former colleague at ‘Main Street News,’ Linda Ahnert of Old Lyme. She wrote it back in 2005 but has recently updated it for us.

In England, ‘Figgy pudding’ has morphed into the traditional Christmas pudding pictured above, which is served in all parts of that country on Christmas Day. Photo by Hello-I’m-Nick on Unsplash.

“There’s a happy feeling nothing in the world can buy, when they pass around the coffee and the pumpkin pie” . . . and, of course, “Everybody knows a turkey and some mistletoe help to make the season bright.”

Have you ever thought how many food references there are in Christmas songs? It runs the gamut from figgy pudding to popcorn! And food plays a starring role in many Christmas stories and in our own memories.  

​I was about 10-years-old when I received “Little Women” as a Christmas present. It is the beloved book about the four March sisters growing up in New England. As the story opens, it is a Christmas during the Civil War and the March family is living in straightened circumstances. But when the girls hear of a needy family in the neighborhood, they gladly give up their Christmas breakfast to feed the hungry children. Even self-centered Amy sacrifices her favorite things—“the cream and the muffins.”

Jo March laments, “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents.” And for most of us, Christmas wouldn’t be the same if we didn’t have some particular food in the house during the season.

Holiday cookies are a signature Yuletide food … both to give and receive! Photo by Joshua Doherty on Unsplash.

​For instance, one of my early food memories of Christmas is tangerines and walnuts.  My paternal grandparents came to this country from Germany.  On Christmas Eve, everyone would gather at their home.  I remember my grandfather playing the mandolin and singing “Stille Nacht” and other German carols.  My grandmother decorated the buffet in the dining room with evergreen boughs.  Interspersed in the greens were tangerines and all varieties of nuts in the shell.  Before we left, my grandmother would stuff our mittens with the fruit and nuts.  

​Another family that I spent many hours with as a child were the Ingalls in the “Little House” books.  How I loved reading about the adventures of Laura, Mary, Carrie, Ma, and Pa as they crossed the prairie.  The author, Laura Ingalls Wilder, describes the delight of the children one Christmas morning.  The girls have reached into their stockings to find shiny tin cups and each has a “long, long stick” of peppermint candy, striped red and white.   

​But their stockings weren’t empty yet.  The girls pull out small packages and unwrap them to discover heart-shaped cakes.  “Over their delicate brown tops was sprinkled white sugar.  The sparkling grains lay like tiny drifts of snow.”  It might be a simple Christmas on the frontier, but the girls can’t imagine being any happier.  

​Across the pond in Merrie Olde England, Charles Dickens included numerous descriptions of food in “A Christmas Carol.”  You may not look forward to your weekly trips to the Big Y but, trust me, your mouth will water reading Dickens’ descriptions of the produce in the London grocery shops at Christmas.  

​And who could forget the account of the Cratchit Christmas dinner? (“There never was such a goose.”)  To complement this “feathered phenomenon,” Mrs. Cratchit “made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot, Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigor, Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple sauce  . . .  ”

“Some hot mixture” … or cold … Who can ever refuse a holiday-themed cocktail? Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash.

​Bob Cratchit rolled up his threadbare sleeves and “compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and stirred it round and round, and put it on the hob to simmer.”  In 21st century parlance . . . I’ll have what they’re having.

​Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory” is an autobiographical story set in rural Alabama in the 1930s.  It opens on a November morning when the elderly cousin who is raising seven-year-old Buddy announces that “It’s fruitcake weather!”  For Buddy this means the official start of the Christmas season.  They begin the yearly ritual of gathering pecans in an old buggy and scrimping together their meager funds to buy the ingredients to bake 30 fruitcakes.  

For days “eggbeaters whirl, spoons spin round in bowls of butter and sugar, vanilla sweetens the air, ginger spices it; melting, nose-tingling odors saturate the kitchen, suffuse the house, drift out to the world on puffs of chimney smoke.”  When the work is done, the “cakes, dampened with whiskey, bask on windowsills and shelves.”

​In our family, too, the holiday season always began on a November day.  A week or two before Thanksgiving, we would receive a package of pecans from Louisiana. They were from the trees in my aunt’s yard, and she sent them each year in time to bake our holiday desserts.  My mother was born and raised in Louisiana, and it wouldn’t have been Christmas in our house without cornbread and pecan pies.  

​And so, gentle readers, whether your Christmas traditions include roasting chestnuts on an open fire or whipping up a batch of wassail, may God bless us, everyone. 

Editor’s Note: This is another offering from our friend and Linda Ahnert of Old Lyme.

Death Announced of Jill Garrison Buydos of Old Lyme, Wife of Chris

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Jill Garrison Buydos

OLD LYME — Jill Garrison Buydos of Old Lyme, CT passed away on Sunday December 11th, 2022, at the age of 55. She was born in Ft. Worth, Texas where she grew up.

After graduating from the University of North Texas, she worked as a fashion designer in Dallas for a few years before following her passion for SCUBA diving and becoming a PADI Dive instructor. Jill met her husband, Chris, in the British Virgin Islands where they worked as sailing and dive instructors respectively. Jill then moved to Connecticut with Chris where they were later married at the Mystic Seaport and settled down in Old Lyme, CT. Upon relocating to Connecticut, she worked for a short time at Yale in the Foreign Students and Scholars Office facilitating issues regarding immigration. From there she transitioned into a career as a highly respected immigration Paralegal working for a few law firms in the New Haven area before finding her current home at Carmody Torrance, Sandak & Hennessey LLP.

She was actively involved in sailing, SCUBA diving, skiing, and hiking the wonderful trail system of Lyme and Old Lyme. She also enjoyed spending time relaxing at White Sands beach.

Jill is preceded in death by her father, Dale Garrison, and mother-in-law Susan Buydos.

Jill is survived by many loving family members, including her husband Chris, her son Trevor, her mother Ginger Garrison, and her sister Tracey Garrison as well as Jim Buydos, Mike Buydos, Megan Leahey, Robin Crisman, Rhonda Hammond, and numerous dear friends that could be counted as family.

The family would like to thank the doctors and nurses at both the Smilow Cancer Center at Yale and The Connecticut Hospice for the care and compassion they showed our loved one in her final days. We would also like to thank all of Jill’s incredibly supportive colleagues at Carmody Torrance, Sandak & Hennessey LLP.

In lieu of flowers, please consider making a donation in Jill’s honor to The Connecticut Hospice in Branford, CT https://www.hospice.com/donate/.