This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
07/07/2021 08:30 AMHere’s what Sally Carlson Crowell told a representative of Congressman Joe Courtney. He was going to meet her to give her a congratulatory letter for Deep River resident Sophie Giza’s 100th birthday, which Sally organized. “I told him to look for an old lady with red curly hair,” she says.
Okay for the hair description, but Sally’s ageless vitality precludes ever using the word old. And the hair color has been different at different times in her life. It has been dark and then, she says, “stringy blonde.” As for those curls, Sally admits they are a perm.
Sally is the president of Deep River’s 60 Club, which organizes activities for its members. As its name makes clear, the club is for residents who are 60 or older. This year the club is celebrating its 45th anniversary. It was started, according to Sally, by Olive Shumway, who was a teacher at Deep River Elementary School; in fact, she was Sally’s teacher.
Just before her high school years, Sally’s family, with roots in Deep River, moved to Clinton. Her father George Carlson had once been first selectman of Deep River. She graduated from Morgan High School in 1960 and still has occasional lunches with group of her classmates. “We just can’t seem to let go,” she says.
Sally has been dancing since she was a child. By the time she was in high school she was already teaching dance with Audrey Palm in Deep River and after high school, she went to Boston Conservatory to study dance and drama. But she says she was impatient to start a career.
She left and went to New York. She appeared in several Off-Broadway productions, one with Hal Linden, best known for the television series Barney Miller. She was cast in a Broadway show she says was a complete flop. “It was called Nowhere to Go but Up, but it went down,” she says.
Sally’s Broadway career, however, was temporarily ended not by the show that failed but by romance. “I met a guy from Texas and fell in love. He was a grad student at American University so we went to Washington,” she says.
She finished her degree at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
“I got a scholarship,” she remembers and adds they also had a good theater program. She played Blanche DuBois in Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire, and Lulu in LeRoi Jones’ Dutchman. (Jones later changed his name to Amiri Baraka.)
She subsequently got a Master’s Degree in education and human development from George Washington University and founded the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, teaching creative movement to mothers and children. She spearheaded a drive to renovate a dilapidated and unused school to serve as the group’s headquarters and in 1987 received a Capitol Hill Community Achievement Award for her work.
Sally was also was the founding director of the Erika Thimey Dance & Theatre Company which performed in schools, senior centers, and churches in Washington, D.C. area. In addition, she wrote a biography of Thimey, a German dancer and dance educator, who spent most of her time in Washington D.C.
Some 20 years ago, Sally moved back to Deep River. “Every 20 years or so it is time for a new avenue,” she says.
She found a part time job as a para-educator at Deep River Elementary School where she still works with kindergarten. “I still get a kick out of teaching little kids,” she says.
She has also appeared in some local productions, among them a haunted night extravaganza at the Connecticut River Museum, and Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit at the Puppet House Theater of Stony Creek in which she played Madame Arcati the clairvoyant whose extrasensory powers conjure up spirits of the dead.
“I think I get all the weird roles,” she says.
Despite the theater’s name, it was a live show, not a puppet production.
Wherever she is, she is always dancing. She has four rectangles of wood placed at COVID-compliant distances from each other in her garden.
“I saw a group of dancers over at the Estuary Seniors in Old Saybrook,” she says. “They said come join. They practiced over in Old Lyme and then the pandemic came. I told them I had a place outside and half of them came over.”
She also has a dance studio, which she added, at her house, not only to dance but as a place to display some large paintings she owns. Along with a piano, there is a drum set in the studio. She describes herself as a self-taught drummer.
“Just a high hat and a snare; I wanted to go ta-ta-ta,” she says.
Sally has just applied to the town of Deep River to use the auditorium in Town Hall for a program she is eager to do for members of the 60 Club, She would like to continue what she started with the 100th birthday party she organized several months ago for longtime Deep River resident Sophie Giza, who now lives at Aaron Manor in Chester.
Giza grew up on Warsaw Street when it was the heart of Deep River’s Polish community. Sally is eager for Giza and others who recall what the area was like to share their memories. The program, if Sally gets approval to use the auditorium, will also have singing and, of course, dancing. Sally says she is very eager to have activities for Deep River’s senior citizens integrated into the Park and Recreation Department’s activities.