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08/26/2020 08:30 AMFor nearly 24 years, Jane Iannone taught elective business courses at North Haven High School: accounting, word processing, and use of office machines of the time—like the Dictaphone. Since then office technology has experienced a sea change, and the technologies Jane used in her courses prior to her retirement in 2000 are pretty much historical items themselves today.
It’s very fitting, then, that Jane loves to spend her time now as an active volunteer at the North Haven Historical Society & Museums, where she functions as both a preservationist and a teacher.
Born and raised in Windsor Locks, Jane met her future husband, Nicola “Nick” Iannone at Central Connecticut State College, and the young couple settled back in his native North Haven to marry and raise a family of two daughters.
“I started teaching once my two daughters were well into grade school,” Jane says. “I was home before that. My late husband and I both taught at the high school.”
Jane’s predominated subject as a teacher was accounting, plus keyboarding, word processing, and office machine use.
“Older types of machines, before computers,” Jane notes, adding, “It’s amazing how quickly technology changed. It seems as if every year I had to learn something totally new.”
During Jane’s years as an educator she also worked as the yearbook advisor for several graduating classes.
“I really loved doing this,” Jane recalls. “This was before we had computers. The text was typed using word processors, but all the layout was done by hand, on big sheets, and we had to use rulers, and crop the pictures by hand. It was very labor intensive.”
Jane also served as advisor for the Class of 1996 with Bette DeMayo, wife of local legend Bob DeMayo.
“Their daughter was in the class of ‘96, and Betty asked me to be co-advisor with her. I hadn’t been a class advisor yet and I was not doing the yearbook at that time. I can hardly believe that class will be having their 25th reunion next year,” Jane adds with a laugh of astonishment.
Before acting as a class advisor, Jane was involved in scouting as a Brownie and Girl Scout leader, when her daughters were little, and she was the town-wide scouting chairperson for North Haven, as well as the town-wide Girl Scout cookie chairperson for a number of years.
“The first year I did it, they delivered the order, and this huge tractor trailer backed up our driveway. It didn’t dawn on me we were getting so many cookies,” she recalls. “We had to move our cars, and they filled up the garage with cases of Girl Scout cookies. Within a few days a lot of them were gone. It was a lot of fun.”
She found similar enjoyment in the classroom.
“One of the reasons I got involved in the yearbook is because as a business teacher I had a select group of students,” Jane says. “The courses I taught were electives. There were a lot of students I never got to know, because I never had them in class. As yearbook advisor, I got to know that particular class that year. It was great for me to meet more students and to know each student as a person.”
After Jane retired from teaching in 2000, at the same time her husband retired, she took interest in following her husband once again, this time by joining the North Haven Historical Society, where Nick was already involved because North Haven town history was part of the school curriculum.
“They needed someone to present Native American history to the students,” Jane recalls. “So, Nick agreed to do that one year. The following year we tried to come up with some activities about the Native American history of North Haven, so I became involved in the background. I made what was the equivalent of cornmeal mush for the kids.
“Because I’m of Italian heritage, I made polenta, which is cornmeal, and I put craisins in it, even though Native Americans would have used nuts and berries, but we were concerned about nut allergies in the children,” she notes.
Jane was excited to present her polenta to the students, who had never tasted anything like it, she says. After that introduction, Jane continued to make her cornmeal polenta and help teach Native American history to the visiting 3rd-grade students for a number of years.
By this time Jane was hooked, and she started volunteering more at the historical society, “Doing whatever needed to be done,” she says, from researching queries from the public to helping with general administrative tasks.
A Renewed Mission
Today, Jane is very much a part of the improvements going on at the historical society. The main building, which was built around 1938 and once served at the town library, became the space for both the historical society and the North Haven Art Guild in the early 1980s, after the building was used temporarily for town offices.
“Unfortunately, the Art Guild is no longer in existence,” Jane says, so the entire building—all three floors—will now become the domain of the historical society as it expands and constructs new displays for the public.
Renovation has been a long and careful process, slowed down the last few months because of the novel corona virus pandemic. The building is on track, however, to be completed, Jane hopes, by spring 2021.
Similar renovation is also taking place at the historic Martha Culver House, a solid brick house built in 1857 by Martha’s father, Ammi Culver, who owned a nearby brickyard on the banks of the Quinnipiac River. Upon Martha’s death, the house and property were willed to the town for public enjoyment.
As part of the renovation of both the historical society’s main building and the Martha Culver House, Jane hopes to find corporate sponsorship for the hiring of a curator for the Native American artifacts room.
“Our mission is to preserve and document North Haven history,” Janes says, including Native American history. “We think it’s important that our young people today learn the history of where they are brought up. Town administrators, like [First Selectman] Mike Freda, had been very support of the society and its mission.
“We are very fortunate to have what we have here in North Haven, because an early group of people from the early 20th century felt they needed to preserve the town history,” Jane concludes. “Because of them, and what they saved, we have phenomenal archives.”