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50 Years with Florence, and Counting

When you learn why Florence Verdurmen values the impact of gymnastics on a young life, it helps to explain why her Guilford Parks & Recreation programs have been in demand for 50 years, and counting.

From the age of 20 months to about 5 years old, Florence and her mother were forced to live in a Japanese internment camp for women and children in then-Batavia, Indonesia. Florence’s family had been living in Indonesia, then still a Dutch colony. Her father served in the military.

“I grew up in a concentration camp in the second World War,” says Florence. “The Germans had the war in Europe, but in Indonesia, the Koreans and Japan, they were fighting against the Dutch because it was a colony of Holland. So that’s how I got there, in Batavia.”

After the war, a Red Cross transport to Holland reunited the family, where Florence’s lifelong love of sport began.

“I needed to do a lot of exercise because I had malnutrition and everything, so I got really involved in swimming and gymnastics. That became my second life,” says Florence, who, at 81, retains the lovely lilt of her Dutch heritage.

She continued swimming and competed as a gymnast growing up. Inspired in part by her younger sister with Down syndrome, Florence also pursued her passion for working with special needs children. In 1969, Florence, now married, immigrated to the United States. The house that would become their Guilford home was waiting for them, and her future with Guilford Parks & Recreation was just around the corner.

“Dutch people had a house for sale, and that’s how we ended up here in Guilford,” she says. “The people across the street, their friend was the chairperson for Park & Rec, and we were at a party together and we started talking—and he said, ‘Oh come over here! We need you.’”

Back then, Parks & Rec had no gymnastics program in its building, located in a converted school on today’s Church Street site. Florence asked for permission to get something started for families interested in having their kids give gymnastics a try.

The answer was ‘Yes,’ with the caveat, “...we don’t have anything!” Florence recalls.

“So I talked to one of the fathers and I said, ‘If you can find a 2 x 4 which is 16 feet long, and you shave it up and put canvas over it, we have a balance beam.’ And he said, ‘Oh, I like that!’”

Florence debuted Guilford’s first community house gymnastics class in June 1972, featuring that homemade balance beam. She had also started up her own local business, The Dutch Gymnastics School, in a building on the Boston Post Road. Florence had been running her school for about five years when a new Parks & Recreation director, Jack Fenwick, was hired and came to her with an offer.

“He was a real go-getter,” says Florence.

He convinced Florence to make a go of really building up Parks & Recreation’s gymnastic programs, and to bring her equipment along to assist. She closed her school and made the leap.

“There wasn’t enough room [for the equipment], so we had it at the Baldwin School,” Florence recalls. “It was stored in the hallway upstairs, and a half an hour before classes, the janitor would clean up the tables and the chairs, and I would roll the equipment down and set it up. And then I would have four or five hours [of classes], and then in the evening, I rolled everything back up!”

Florence says she didn’t mind the extra effort, because “it’s for the kids. It’s good for them.”

Speaking of extra effort, in her years with Guilford Parks & Recreation, Florence also offered swimming lessons, ran summer camp, pitched in to make muffins and coffee for the seniors, and eventually helped oversee the development of the community house kitchen, where she took on cooking meals for seniors as well as some memorable holiday dinners.

“We called it Fanny’s Kitchen, and it’s still there!” she says, pointing to name over the windowed opening of the kitchen in today’s community house, which first opened as a new building more than 30 years ago.

Through helping Guilford Rotary in cooking up its annual holiday meal for seniors, Florence became involved as a Rotarian, herself. In the kitchen’s early years at the old building, Florence remembers cooking Thanksgiving meals while also running gymnastic classes.

“I had the turkeys in the oven and I could still do classes, because all I had to was keep an eye on the turkeys,” she says. “And if I wanted to do the pies, I’d just come in at 6 [a.m.] and do the pies, and Jack Fenwick would come in at 7 and set up the tables. I had great help in him, but if he needed someone to make lines on a field, he was like, ‘Come on, Florence!’”

Current Parks & Recreation Director Rick Maynard can verify the hands-on help Florence has always been there to offer.

“She’s been such an asset to the department in so many ways. Over the years, she was camp director, she was a lifeguard at the lake, she was a cook for the seniors—and she just told me she helped change the oil on the bus one time!” he says.

Florence taught outdoor swimming lessons for the town, beginning at Jacobs Beach and then moving over to Lake Quonnipaug. She also led the town’s summertime camp program, Camp Menunkatuck, at Jacobs Beach for four years.

To say Florence was active in her work and community involvement would be an understatement. The mother of two also became involved with SARAH (including starting up a work training program with the SARAH Tea Room), volunteering with CT Special Olympics, and serving with Girl Scouts, where she became a service unit manager. Eventually, she let go of her Parks & Rec swimming instruction, but continued cooking at the community house for many more years while also always continuing gymnastics instruction.

“I was juggling it all back and forth; because there were a lot of things to do here in town,” she says.

Following the passing of her second husband, Harold “Buddy” Chittenden in 2011, Florence took up her maiden name of Verdurmen, but many of her students, past and present, still call her “Mrs. C.”

“I had kids who now have kids, and I even have a grandmother who took swimming and gymnastics from me!” she says, laughing. “I also had the privilege of growing up with my students, who became my assistants, who brought their kids back to me. And I have fathers coming up to me saying, ‘You don’t remember me, do you? I took tumbling with you.’ I always look at their eyes, because there’s that little sparkle.”

To this day, many kids who came in to tumble with Florence as tots come back as young adults to assist her. Among her current helpers are Courtney Vivona and Anna and Eliza Hastings. Another current helper, Christen Backes, met Florence years back, while volunteering in 6th grade as a buddy with Florence’s Special Olympics gymnasts.

“Special Olympics was really fun—every one kind of buddied up, and then that got me into these [recreation] classes,” says Backes, who also earned her Girl Scout Silver Award with the Special Olympics program as her project’s focus.

Florence has been involved with CT Special Olympics for 33 years, including four world games. In 1995, she was the Special Olympics commissioner for gymnastics when the games came to New Haven. She works with Special Olympic gymnasts of all ages, kids through adults.

“They have much more courage than you or I could think of,” she says. “You can learn so much if you can be open-minded and listen and work with them, so that’s what I do.”

On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, Florence can be found running Parks & Rec gymnastics classes for kids of all levels (up to age 15) spread across many hours each day. Kids as young as 18 months, joined by a parent, can sign up to work with Florence and her assistants among some of the many gymnastics classes she currently offers.

“I have them walking on the beam or they try the bar,” says Florence of her tiniest tots. “I tell the parents how to spot, because safety is very important and kids don’t think—they just go!”

In addition to gymnastics’ great benefits for growing bodies, Florence has seen her share of those with potential go on to train with outside competitive programs or compete in high school or college.

“I have one mother, she used to come here as a little one; she has three daughters who were coming to my class because she loved the gymnastics here, and her daughters are going for nationals now,” says Florence. “So, it’s just a full circle. I’m not saying it’s because of me, but maybe it’s because I brought a little love in there.”

To help celebrate Florence’s 50 years of programming, Parks & Rec has posted news of the milestone in its registration guide.

“She’s just one of those people that’s such a value to have around,” says Maynard. “To stay with us all those years is a real asset for the department, the kids, and the parents who were her kids, and are now bringing their kids to her!”

For her part, Florence says she has no plans to retire anytime soon.

“How can I retire from all this beauty?” she says of the little ones she works with. “Kids are important. I’ve always felt if I can make just one child happy a day, I did my job. Because I didn’t have that. So I know what it is.”