This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.

Arlene Pressman: Speak Up!

Arlene Pressman froze in front of the audience when she had to give a speech in high school. But she is confident the five Valley Regional teens who will compete in a speech contest on Saturday, Feb. 24 sponsored by the Rotary clubs of Essex, Deep River, and Chester will not have that problem.

The contest, at Richard H. Smith Town Hall in Deep River at 4 p.m., is free and the public is invited. Arlene, a member of the Deep River Rotary Club, is one of the organizers of the event, along with Jan Taigen of Chester and Carolyn Blicharz of Essex.

The speech contest involves applying the Four-Way Test, a guiding tenet of Rotary ethics, to an issue of each speaker’s own choice. The Four-Way test is a quartet of questions Rotarians are advised to consider in their thoughts, words, and actions: Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

Rotary clubs throughout the United States have long held Four-Way Test speaking competitions, but this is the first time that the local Rotary clubs have sponsored one. All speeches must be between five and seven minutes, and though notes are allowed, completely written out texts are not. The winner advances to a semi-final competition and then a district final. Arlene, who has attended the later rounds of competition, says that the speakers did not even use a lectern.

“They just got up in front of a microphone and spoke from memory,” she says.

The first selectman of Chester and Essex will judge the contest, along with a representative from the selectman’s office in Deep River, as well as a Rotarian from each of the three local clubs, and Tari Marshall-Day, Rotary’s assistant governor for the district.

Valley Regional High School debate team coach Bobbi Nidzgorski and teacher Mary Hambor, advisor to the high school Interact Club, a Rotary-sponsored organization for teens, have helped local Rotarians with setting up the contest.

Winning is more than an ego boost; the top speaker wins $150. If the local winner advances from the semi-finals to the finals, the local clubs add another $100, and the winners in the final round earn $500, $400 and $300 for first, second, and third place.

Arlene has been a member of Deep River Rotary for 4 ½ years. Her late husband Alan was a longtime Rotarian, once president of the local club, and when he died in 2009, Arlene was urged to join. She didn’t feel quite up to it then. Still the club invited her to its annual picnic, and when she went, she enjoyed herself.

“I had a really good time, so I joined,” she recalls.

Now she is involved not only with the Four-Way Speech contest, but with the scholarship and backpack programs sponsored by Deep River Rotary

Arlene and Alan were familiar figures for four decades in Deep River. Alan, a pharmacist, owned Community Pharmacy, once located where Adams Market is now, for more than 40 years. The pharmacy opened in l959 and closed in 2001.

“It was getting very hard for independent pharmacists with the big chains,” Arlene says.

For many of those 40 years, Arlene worked by Alan’s side, doing much of the paperwork and running the non-pharmaceutical departments of the drug store like gifts, cosmetics, and jewelry—and paperwork was paperwork in those days.

“Remember we were doing it all without computers,” Arlene says.

The people who patronized the pharmacy, Arlene recalls, were not just customers or patients.

“They were friends. Sometimes Alan would call to say he was coming home to dinner and then he wouldn’t show up for an hour. Alan would say that somebody came in and they had some trouble, so he stayed,” she says.

When the pharmacy closed, she adds, “people told him it was hard to see him go.”

Still, the memory of Community Pharmacy lingered on. When the Walgreens pharmacy that is now in the center of Deep River opened, Arlene remembers walking through the aisles one day when she spotted first an old customer and then one of the store’s managers. The customer pointed to her and said, “There she is—Arlene.” The manager, Arlene recalls, already knew her name.

“He said ‘Arlene, Arlene, all I hear is Arlene,” she says.

After the pharmacy closed, Arlene thought she would be able to content herself with long delayed projects the house. They did not occupy her time. Instead she worked for another 10 years at Thurston’s, a now-closed dress shop in Old Saybrook.

“I had a ball there,” she says.

Arlene also had a ball when she started traveling. She and Alan had always wanted to travel, but the pharmacy made long trips impossible. Her trips began when the youngest of her three sons, who lives with his family in England, asked her if she would like to go on a trip to Croatia with his family.

The result: Once again, Arlene says, “I had a ball.”

Since then she has been to Scotland, Spain, Portugal, Israel, and repeated trips to England to visit family. Her favorite trip was an African safari to Kenya and Tanzania.

“It was on my bucket list,” she says. “I don’t think I could ever go a zoo after I’ve seen all those majestic animals in the wild.”

When Arlene, who was born in Brooklyn, and Alan settled in Deep River, she recalls her first reaction was, “Where are you bringing me?”

But that was 57 years ago. Now she knows the strengths of her community.

“I love this town. It’s a wonderful place, friendly, a great place to raise kids,” she says.

Arlene looks forward to being in the audience at the upcoming Four-Way Test contest.

“It’s a very exciting thing to do, to speak in front of people,” she says.

She knows the challenges of facing an audience from her unsuccessful attempt at public speaking in high school.

“I looked at that sea of faces. I had my speech all done, but I totally froze,” she says.

After what seemed an age (but Arlene says couldn’t have been more than a minute), the teacher rescued her.

“She said ‘OK Arlene,’ and I went back to my seat.”

Four-Way Test Speech Contest

The Rotary clubs of Essex, Deep River, and Chester hold their Four-Way Test Speech Contest on Saturday, Feb. 24 at 4 p.m. in the Richard H. Smith Town Hall Auditorium, Deep River. Admission is free and the public is invited. The auditorium is handicapped accessible.