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01/25/2017 07:30 AMThe novelist William Faulkner once wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Lucinda Hogarty, who is the chair of the committee planning the celebration of Killingworth’s 350th anniversary, could tell you that Faulkner got that right.
“I had a meeting at one of the tables in the library about the activities of the 350th committee,” she says. “Two older women who were working at the computers, one to my right and one to my left, overheard and jumped in to share their own reminiscences about going to school in Killingworth in the 1940s in the one-room schoolhouses.
“A whole oral-history session spontaneously broke out,” Lucinda says. “I was taking notes like mad.”
Killingworth history just keeps coming. Lucinda and the committee intend to commemorate events ranging from the official naming of the town on May 9, 1667, to the induction of Jeff Bagwell, a Killingworth native, into the Baseball Hall of Fame, which was announced just a week ago.
“It’s just involving as many segments of Killingworth as we can draw in.” Lucinda says. “There’s going to be music and art and sports. There’s church history, there’s educational history. The approach we’re taking is, no matter what people’s interest is, there’s going to be something that will pique their interest.”
The commemoration kicks off officially this Tuesday, Jan. 31, at the Killingworth firehouse, with a presentation on Camp Roosevelt, the Civilian Conservation Corps’ worksite during the Great Depression, located in what is now Chatfield Hollow State Park.
“We thought we’d draw a good crowd,” says Lucinda, “but we’re on a waiting list now. It’s fully booked. We have over 75 people signed up.”
On Wednesday, Feb. 15, the Killingworth Library, where Lucinda heads the Program Committee, will be hosting an event called “Writing Your Life’s Story.”
“It’s basically a memoir-writing-workshop lecture,” says Lucinda, “and the idea is we don’t want to lose people’s personal histories. Oral histories are also a component of that, making sure that people tell their family members about their own background.”
Marking Women’s History Month, on Wednesday, March 8, at the firehouse, Velya Jancz-Urban, a Connecticut writer, will perform a dramatic presentation titled “The Not-So-Good Life of the Colonial Goodwife.”
Events will continue through the spring and summer.
“The 350th committee is working very closely, as you can imagine, with the Killingworth Historical Society,” Lucinda says. “The historical society is doing a series of oral histories, as well, and we’re going to try to keep those in as transcripts and recordings, as well as have some events that we’re calling armchair reminiscence sessions.
“Those will be held at Parmelee Farm during the summer, where we just invite a few people who want to talk about the one-room schoolhouses, or what farming was like in Killingworth 50 years ago, or what jobs were here. We may try to do it as an intergenerational project, involve some schoolchildren, invite teachers to bring students, that kind of thing.”
The commemoration will include some of the quirkier aspects of the town’s history.
“We’re hoping to have a program about Connecticut folk art,” Lucinda says, “focusing on the Killingworth Images” a group of waterwheel-powered wooden automata carved by a local man in the 1890s to amuse his grandchildren, one of which can be seen in the library.
The middle school will host a program about Cowboy Valley, a small Old West theme park that opened in Killingworth in 1957 and closed in 1959.
The Killingworth Chamber of Commerce, meanwhile, is putting together a book of Killingworth history, with the help of Thomas L. Lentz, a local historian.
The commemorations will culminate on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend with a parade, followed by a picnic at Parmelee Farm.
Lucinda has a long connection to Killingworth history. She was born in Newport, New Hampshire, which was founded in the 1750s by settlers from Killingworth.
She attended high school in Storrs, after her father, a freelance magazine writer, began teaching journalism at the University of Connecticut. She graduated from Tufts University, in Medford, Massachusetts, in 1973 with a degree in American history. Then she earned a master’s degree in American history at UConn.
Lucinda worked for two years at a medical publisher in Oxford, England.
“I had never thought of going into anything science related,” she says, “but I got very interested in this whole different field.
“I got my master’s in public health at the Yale School of Public Health, and then from that point on, I worked in the field of public health, which is what I still do.
“Now I’m the director of the Connecticut Cancer Partnership, which is housed at the American Cancer Society in Rocky Hill. I’ve been there for almost 10 years now.”
The job is part time, requiring about three days a week of her time.
Lucinda’s husband, Tom, to whom she has been married for 28 years, is a retired state police lieutenant. He also currently works part time as the zoning enforcement officer in North Branford.
Lucinda has two daughters from a previous marriage: Emily Rosenthal, who lives in Madison and has two children, and Hilary Axtmayer lives in Ashford and has one child.
“My grandchildren take up a good part of my free time,” Lucinda says, “and that’s a choice I make that I’m thrilled to be able to do.
“I’m really lucky having the grandchildren so close. I talk to other grandmothers who are just so envious. Rarely two days in a row go by without me having one of my grandchildren with me.”
She and Tom moved to Killingworth from Chester only four years ago. Lucinda joined the library board, then started a friends-of-the-library group.
“I always feel that becoming involved in the library is a great way to get to know a community,” she says.
She has been working with the 350th Anniversary Committee for almost two years.
The anniversary in fact commemorates the day that the town was named Kenilworth. Lucinda says that in the early literature, the two different names go “back and forth.”
Asked why this happened, she laughs and says, “My theory is dyslexia.”