Waramaug Becomes Year-Round Haven
by Christine Adams
When asked for our favorite time of year on our pristine pond, different responses are elicited from those of us who know and love Lake Waramaug. Many prefer the anticipation of Spring, when container gardens are carefully cultivated with brightly-colored annuals, refrigerators are stocked with bottles of water, soft drinks, chilled wine, and beer in preparation for Memorial Day weekend. Many look forward to the Fourth of July, when the lake seems more like a resort than it ever does, and loved ones gather for the fireworks spectacle and festive picnics. Others prefer the dead heat of August, when the cool waters of the Lake are revitalizing, and the pressures of the return to work still seem distant. A small subset prefer September above all else, when the sun sets a little further to the South, and the evenings are tinged with the cool suggestion of fall. The roads are quiet, the children have gone back to school, and a relative bucolic calm has returned to our shores.
Alas, our lakeside seasonal cycle was thrown entirely off balance in 2020 by a global pandemic, a public health crisis of grave circumstances that none of us had experienced in our lifetimes. By March, town officials in Washington, Warren, and Kent were shifting to emergency states of civil preparedness. On the 23rd of that month, the first case of COVID-19 was reported in Washington, and along with the rest of the world, Waramaugers slipped into a nervous state of quarantine. Many weekenders decided to remain. New Yorkers were particularly hard hit, witnessing the unimaginable: empty streets, boarded up storefronts, and Samaritan’s Purse setting up ad hoc hospitals in Central Park.
Lake Waramaug abruptly had become a year-round residence. The populations of Washington, Warren, and Kent inched up, and our schools across the board were either at or above capacity. Interestingly, Malcolm Gladwell highlighted the opposite problem in his 2013 book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. He wrote, “Shepaug Valley Middle School was built to serve the children of the Baby Boom—which came and went. Our bucolic corner of Connecticut where Shepaug is located—with its charming Colonial-era villages and winding country lanes—was discovered by wealthy couples from New York City. Real Estate prices rose. Younger families could no longer afford to live in the area. Enrollment dropped.”
Dimitri Rimsky spoke at length of our present hardships, and sited 60 new students at Shepaug in 2020. We are now welcoming a new population to our area, where newcomers have shown their dedication to integration by enrolling their children in our schools, both public and private. For families formerly without a community and suddenly in need of one, they have now found themselves relying on a social fabric not entirely familiar for their well-being. “They are very welcome,” Rimsky said. Rimsky is an artist, a long-recognized volunteer, a member of several town committees—including the recently formed COVID response committee in Washington—and a lifelong resident of Washington. He recently moderated a Gunn Historical Museum community discussion on Washington weathering previous storms, including the 1918 pandemic, the polio scare, and the flood of 1955. Incidentally, his father, artist Fedor Rimsky, led a team of volunteers in 1955, organizing tetanus vaccines in preparation for digging the town out of the muck to rebuild our washed-out town.
In many instances, part-time residents became full-time ones: the pandemic acted as a catalyst for a long-contemplated change in habitation. Community Table Managing Partner Joann Makovitzky mentions long-time patrons teetering on the fence of leaving the City tipped over to the countryside once the Coronavirus hit. She also reports selling out of take-away orders most weekends and reinventing their business model by offering outdoor dining.
A partnership between full-time residents and part-time ones is nothing new. Borne of societal transition from a working population made of farmers and small industrialists to that of vacationers, the Victorian Age ushered in a new era of coexistence with the arrival of the railroad to our area. Water-powered industries in New Preston had slowly shuttered after the Civil War, but new life was breathing here as several Inns opened lakeside. Decades later, when cars and planes made further-flung vacation destination more accessible, after two World Wars were waged, the post-war era of the 1950s and 1960s saw a working class influx to our rural area. With the 1980s came an economic shift of wealth, and weekenders became a new norm. The idea of Noblesse Oblige battled with more modern socio-economic principles borne of political impasse. Residents who have lived here for 30 years are still self-proclaimed “newcomers.”
Washington First Selectman Jim Brinton addressed these conflicts in his much-anticipated weekly communications from Bryan Hall in Washington Depot: “Washington is a wonderful tapestry of families who have lived here for ten generations, families who have just moved here, part-time residents, and vacationers—all of whom cherish the beauty, serenity, and culture of this town. This has been the case throughout Washington’s history, and this is what makes ours such a vibrant and special community. While we understand that many of us are nervous about the challenges we are facing, now is not the time for division. The current outpouring of caring and volunteering is who we are—together we are stronger and will weather this storm.”
Neighbors who knew one another only on the fringes had become intimates on their daily walks, or runs to the grocer in surgical masks and gloves. After dark, lights along the shore were illuminated more brightly than ever before. From a six foot distance, we came together.
Our citizens rallied together during this unprecedented crisis. The National Iron Bank in Washington saw to it that small business owners in town were aware and took advantage of the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act, which offered loans so that our “mom and pops” could stay afloat, covering payroll, healthcare, and rent expenses during the shut down. The Washington Community Foundation, an 86 year-old not-for-profit funded entirely by contributions, found their work intensified by the pandemic. The Fund’s mission is “to help independent and self-reliant individuals in the community overcome financial emergencies.” It has been anonymously reported that a special account was formed through the Foundation to keep local business afloat, and local people employed. Members of our town crews volunteered to deliver groceries and medications to our senior neighbors, both full-time and part-time residents.
Chrissy Armstrong, a local preservationist and Lake resident, rang the bell of the stone church on New Preston Hill every Spring evening at 5 o’clock, and invited first responders to join the Hill Community in a moment of gratitude. On Memorial Day, Lake residents lit flares, made joyous noises by clanging pots and pans, and invited the same first responders for a lake tour and a tip of the hat. Armstrong mentions with enthusiasm her contentment in personally knowing those that protect us.
We collectively ushered in a busy Summer of outdoor, masked activities. Fourth of July fireworks were replaced with a solitary bagpiper, sponsored by the Association and ushered around the Lake on the Task Force pontoon boat, usually used for field sampling and study and invasive weed harvesting. Businesses that formerly thrived by outdoor features found themselves overrun. The Hopkins Inn filled their terrace every evening, subject to limited capacity. Bliss and Hopkins Road were often clogged with cars hoping to taste Estate-bottled Chardonnay, Sachem’s Picnic or the Apple cider wines al fresco. Town and state beaches were clogged with visitors.
There are inevitable problems that come with crowds: sadly, clumps of trash were frozen into the ice at points where the current meets the shore, road and water safety has become on the high list of the Association’s priorities. Still, acts of kindness amongst Waramaugers abound. Joanna Seitz reports that our residents have turned to the local businesses to feather their nests, which in light of the pandemic have become areas of all-importance: a place of rest and respite, but also of work and play. She also reports a gentleness and gratitude from our neighbors, with whom we have become better connected as a result of slowing down.
Community support is recognized most eloquently by Eric Salk. A member of the Board of Directors of the Lake Waramaug Task Force and an emergency room physician at Charlotte Hungerford Hospital in Torrington, Salk left his home on Lake Waramaug when the Coronavirus hit our community. He found refuge in a lakeside neighbor’s guest cottage, where he isolated himself to protect his family from possible infection.
Regardless of the gruesome realities, Dr. Salk credits the public as the real heroes of combating this insipid disease: by taking all necessary but extraordinary steps to flatten the curve, including wearing masks, staying home, and making financial sacrifices while the medical community scrambled to contain the disease and develop a vaccine. He tips his hat to market employees who kept their shelves stocked and our bellies full.
Salk is the nephew of Jonas Salk, who developed and successfully distributed the polio vaccine from his immunology and infectious disease laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh. Our community of multi-generational families, weekenders, and vacationers are no stranger to polio, which hit New Preston particularly hard in the 1950s. Long-time residents recall Lake Waramaug as an unsafe place to swim, especially during the later summer months when cases of conjunctivitis would befall swimmers. Many locals preferred Mount Tom Pond as a safer swimming spot.
At the time, septic systems along the Lake as well as the East Aspetuck River were less than rudimentary, expelling sewage directly into our waters. Polio is a viral disease, borne of the body through the mouth through contact with fecal matter, or exposure to an infected person through phlegm or mucus. It isn’t hard to imagine how New Preston became a hot zone of polio cases. The same locals who recall Lake Waramaug as an unpleasant place to swim also remember being scolded by their parents if they didn’t roll up their windows while driving through the Village after a trip to Waramaug. One former New Preston resident, Charlie Gross, recalls Robert Woodruff contracting the disease and stricken to a wheelchair for the latter part of his life, a stark contrast to the virile and strong owner of the iconic red mill on Route 45. “Woodruff, working for the Defense Department, here manufactured a vital piece for a then highly specialized, top secret automatic gun called the Orlikien, used for both land and marine fighting.” (The Litchfield County Times, November 6, 1982). He was ostensibly a local war hero.
Sally Woodroofe’s family—no relation to Robert, whose surname is spelled differently—has lived for generations in the Cogswell Tavern at the base of Baldwin Hill. As a girl, her family lived in Pittsburgh and summered in New Preston, enjoying the Lake Waramaug Country Club beach as well as neighboring pools as a respite from the mid Atlantic heat. She remembers a particularly warm summer in the 1950s when she was thwarted by a short-lived summertime fever and a stiff neck. Upon returning to Pittsburgh, her mother enrolled her in Salk’s vaccination trial there. Woodroofe was found ineligible as she tested positive for antibodies.
There is very little written about the 1918 flu pandemic. Coupled with a World War, one might imagine there was too much despair to record with any enthusiasm. Yet thanks to the excellent research of David Babbington of the Gunn Historical Museum, we know that ten Washington residents died in the Fall of 1918. All of them were under the age of 60, amongst them, Frederick Gunn’s granddaughter Abigail Brinsmade. A Vassar-educated nursing student, Brinsmade also served locally as a Farmerette, growing vegetables to keep our community fed while the farmers were at war. At the time, she was living in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia, training. She attended that ill-fated late September parade, a super spreader that tragically resulted in 12,000 deaths. Abigail was 21 years old.
Crises can elicit the extraordinary in individuals, and the best in communities at large. They also have a way of intrinsically changing our lives. Looking to the future, the Association is contemplating what they will mean to our Lake dwellers, neighbors, and all who love the Lake. Spring and Summer saw more runners, walkers, bikers, cars, boats. Winter may have slowed, but the cold temperatures brought cross country skiers, skaters, and hikers onto the frozen waters. Gone was the sense of desertion after the New Year, when local businesses planned extended vacations in preparation for a new season. Our time-honored annual rhythms quite simply changed this year.
How the pandemic has affected our community long-term is yet to be seen. As of the date of this publication, there have been 7,725 deaths in the State of Connecticut, 281 of them in Litchfield County, but these grim statistics now make room for vaccination rates in the headlines. Connecticut has offered a strictly age-based vaccination rollout to its citizens, which although controversial, has proven efficient. The Association is hopeful that we will be able to resume some of our traditional programming this summer, and are brainstorming ways to support a growing community that may have decided to spend fewer days in their offices and more in their virtual, “Zoomed” Lake-side ones. For if one valuable lesson can be learned from this tragedy: we work to live, not live to work. The Lake beckons us to enjoy what we so gratefully have, and the community reminds us of the complicated yet rich relationships we have cultivated here.
Dimitri Rimsky said, “when you live in a community over a lifetime, you see a lot of its changes. You’re more invested in its history because you become a part of it.” (The Hartford Courant, April 12, 1998). The experiences of those who have lived here during the pandemic are history in the making. The extraordinary efforts required to protect ourselves, our families, and our neighbors have become our collective experience. Perhaps those who have lived in the area for 30 years will continue to call themselves newcomers, but they’ll do so in jest as they banter with their neighbors who share names with the street signs and bridges. We have formed a renewed coexistence, unlike the one we had before: one of greater understanding and mutual reliance.