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01/03/2017 11:00 PMThanks to Chet Blomquist, residents of Branford can take a walk around town—literally. Chet created the Branford Trail, a 28-mile trail that goes around the town’s perimeter. Thirty years ago, he also founded the group that walks the trail twice a year in spring and in fall: the Branford Walkers. The group walks every Friday morning year-round. And Chet, 90, still leads the group on many of their walks on trails and through town.
However, Chet doesn’t consider the Branford Trail his masterpiece.
“My favorite place is the Branford River Gateway,” Chet says. “I get over there several times a week.”
The Gateway is a scenic overlook and boat launch located on both sides of Montowese Street at the Branford River. Chet helped create the area more than a decade ago. From sidewalks to boardwalks, the improvements today attract everyone from fishermen and kayakers to bikers and walkers.
“The state got $800,000 to do a study on the then-14 scenic byways in the state,” Chet recalls. “I was asked by the first selectman to take this landscape designer along the roadways so he could see what it looked like and get started.”
As a result of that walk, the town received a grant for $256,000 to improve the area, which lacked even a sidewalk. Today, Chet still takes care of it—though he hopes he won’t be the only one to do so.
“I still to this day look after it and pick up litter and encourage people to take care of it,” he says. “People make good use of it and we get people from out of town to go fishing and crabbing. It’s quite a thing.”
Chet also served on the Branford Conservation Commission for a number of years, and is currently co-chair of the Branford section of the Shoreline Greenway Trail.
“It’s been going along kind of slowly, but pretty well,” Chet says of progress on the greenway trail, which is envisioned as a 25-mile continuous trail from East Haven to Madison; its longest section is in Branford.
Before becoming so heavily involved with Branford’s scenic areas, Chet served as a physical education teacher in town for more than 30 years. He helped plan the physical education facilities when Walsh Intermediate School was built, including its pool. Beyond his 34 years with the Branford Board of Education, he also served part-time with the town’s Recreation Department, teaching canoeing and also running a men’s volleyball league—he played volleyball for about 40 years, starting at Springfield College, which he entered on the GI Bill for veterans.
Drafted out of high school, Chet served in the Navy on four different ships for 21 months starting in 1944. He met his wife Daryl on a blind date in college—the two spent 18 summers at a Boy Scout camp in the Catskills, where Daryl, who has since passed away, worked as a live-in nurse and Chet worked as the waterfront director in charge of swimming and boating.
In 1955, Chet moved from Massachusetts to Branford. Today, he’s left his mark in countless areas of town—and the town has recognized those efforts, from a day in June 2011 declared as Chet Blomquist Day for his work on local trails to the town’s volleyball tournament named in his honor and more.
“My name is on the wall at the Community House in several places,” Chet says. “I earned a sports Hall of Fame award and an Education Hall of Fame award.”
Chet has four children, now with families of their own. His youngest, Krista, traveled all over the country and the world as a professional full-time beach volleyball player.
“She is teaching her daughter how to play,” Chet notes.
There’s one more place in town where residents may have noted Chet’s work without knowing who was behind it. For the past three years, Chet has decorated an eight-foot evergreen near the river with ribbons and solar lighting for the holidays. It’s the perfect example of Chet’s mark on town—scenic, conservation-minded, and, like a trail, residents are just happy that it’s there.