This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
05/24/2017 12:00 AMA widely respected statistics blog says the average American moves between 11 and 12 times in a lifetime—but no one said Peg Lieberman was average; she has never moved. She still lives in her childhood home in Chester.
She remembers being told that as a baby she was sheltered in the middle of the house during the great Hurricane of l938, so she would be safe if exterior walls blew away. Luckily they didn’t and the house still stands on West Main Street.
“The yellow Victorian, everybody knows it,” she says.
Like the house, Peg is a fixture in town, a living piece of Chester lore. So it’s understandable that she is a member of the Chester Historical Society, which will start its summer season at the Museum at the Mill with a reception for new members on Friday, June 2. The museum opens to the general public the next day, Saturday, June 3. The following week, on Saturday, June 10, the museum will participate in Connecticut Open House Day, a statewide event to showcase Connecticut cultural attractions.
This year the museum features two exhibits, Three Chester Notables and a selection of post cards with images of the town. The noteworthy personalities include the late federal judge Constance Baker Motley, who had a weekend home on Cedar Lake Road in Chester for some 40 years; artist, photographer and longtime Chester resident Hugh Spencer (1887-1975); and the Leatherman, the itinerant figure of regional legend whose circuit through Connecticut and New York in the last decades of the 19th century brought him to Chester every 34 to 36 days. Local sculptor Weymouth Eustis has created a life-sized representation of the Leatherman that will be shown in the upcoming exhibit.
Peg is the daughter of a Chester doctor, David Leonard Lieberman, known locally as Doc Lieberman. She recalls patients sitting on chairs in the hall of the family house during office hours waiting to go in to see her father. Sometimes, when there was an overflow, patients sat on the staircase.
“That was fun. I would come out of my bedroom and go talk to them,” she says.
The Chester of Peg’s childhood had a different look.
“We didn’t have the same kind of stores; there was a drug store, a meat shop, a barber shop, garages,” she says.
She recalls Halloween parties and dances at the Chester Meeting House, but her fondest memories are all the time she spent playing outdoors.
“A lot of football and baseball, roller skating, with the old fashioned skates, the kind that had a skate key,” she says.
There was one thing to be careful of as she skated on the sidewalk in front of her house: “I didn’t want to wipe out any of the patients going in,” she says.
Peg has always loved sports. Chester resident Peter Zanardi brings his copy of Sports Illustrated to the United Church of Chester every Sunday for Peg, but Peg doesn’t open the pages right away.
“I never read it in church,” she says.
Peg has been active in the church for many years, serving as moderator and chairing many different committees. She is also a longtime board member of the Visiting Nurses of the Lower Valley.
Peg played second base on softball teams in both high school and college and still roots for the Yankees as she did when she was a child. In 3rd grade, she wrote to the Yankee hero of the day, Joe DiMaggio, to say she hoped he recovered from a bone spur—and she got a letter back.
“I don’t know whether it was really his autograph, but it was exciting,” she says.
Current Yankee heroes include Derek Jeter, whom she calls a “classy guy.” Still, she has some kind words for the Bronx Bombers archrivals, the Red Sox. She likes Dustin Pedroia—after all another second baseman—and she has a special compliment for recently retired Red Sox slugger David Ortiz.
“He reminds me of Mickey Mantle,” she says.
She is also an avid fan of the University of Connecticut Women’s Basketball team—”One of those white haired old ladies who follow them and go through withdrawal at the end of the season,” she says.
Love of the team got her involved with a women’s quilting group. She heard them talking about the team at The Wheat Market at their regular lunches and after listening for some weeks, she joined the conversation. Now she is a regular at the lunches, though she has never been a quilter.
“I don’t sew; I don’t think I’ve even sewed on a button,” she says.
Peg left Connecticut for MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois, and she still expresses great fondness for the college and her years in mid-America.
“I loved the Midwest; the beautiful cornfields, the rich, fertile-looking soil,” she remembers.
Graduating with a degree in education, Peg came back to Connecticut for a job, teaching 1st and 2nd grade for 39 years at Deep River Elementary School. For 12 years after she retired, she continued to volunteer at the school as mentor.
She also became involved in business activities with her family. Her father bought Chesterfields Health Care Center, which she says her family owned for some 35 years. She recalls overseeing recreation with patients there in the summer. The Lieberman family also built and for a time owned Chester Village West. In addition, they were the proprietors of the Inn at Chester from 1994 to 2003. In that case, Peg herself was listed as the owner.
“The family bought it, but I guess my name was on the dotted line,” she says.
She wasn’t a desk-based executive.
“I did everything. I was a go-fer; I picked up meat, put wood in the fireplaces, made beds, folded laundry,” she says.
At one time, Peg’s ambition was to attend a ball game in every National and American league stadium.
“That was when I was younger, in better shape,” she says.
So far, she has been to Fenway, Shea, Busch Stadium in St. Louis, and, of course, Yankee stadium, both the old and the new facilities.
She would also love to boat again; for many years she used her boat, which she describes as a glorified Boston Whaler with a 150 horsepower engine, in both the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound. She remembers chasing after Moran tugboats, long a fixture on the New York waterfront, when they used to bring oil up the river to Portland and Hartford. Her nephew in Maryland now uses the boat.
“He tells me it is still going like new,” she says.
For many years people teased Peg because she didn’t have a computer, but that has changed.
“They can’t harass me about it anymore,” she says.
She got a laptop as a Christmas present and now emails, checks weather and news, and searches for information online. But she still balks at some computer pastimes.
“I’m not going on Facebook,” she says.
In fact, Peg makes it clear she is not going anywhere.
“I love this town,” she says of Chester. “It’s always been my home and I am going to go out from here.”
Upcoming Historical Society Events at the Museum at the Mill
9 West Main Street, Chester
Opening reception Friday, June 2 at 5:30 p.m., welcoming both members and others who are interested.
The museum opens for the season on weekends on Saturday, June 3 through October, Saturdays 1 to 4 p.m. and Sundays 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
For Saturday, June 10, Cultural Attraction Open House Day in Connecticut, the museum will open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Refreshments will be served and visitors receive a 10 percent discount on publications.