Forty years later: Experiment gives ‘enormous return’

Written by Andrew Kersey, Assistant Editor
Saturday, 07 November 2009 06:22

This is the second installment in a series about the 40th anniversary and legacy of a New Canaan educational venture. Click here for parts one and three.

Soon after 10 black Norfolk State University student teachers arrived in town in the fall of 1969 for a cross-cultural endeavor, the New Canaan Experiment, the social intricacies of the exchange began to take shape.

“One of the [project’s] objectives was to expose the New Canaan students to more people of color, as Mrs. Elaine Foster and I were the only two African-American teachers in town,” said Marilyn Washington, a lifelong “Next Station...” resident and social director for the newly arrived interns. “I thought the idea was terrific, but I reminded [Assistant Superintendent of Schools Harold Kenney] that they would need some social activities outside of school, as the town is so spread out and they were bound to feel isolated and lonely.”

Washington, who was New Canaan High School’s first black cheerleader in 1962, had returned to her hometown after graduating from the University of Connecticut in 1968 to teach third grade at West School. Her shared role as a teacher provided a further point of connection between her and the new arrivals.

She and another black resident, Beverly Watkins, were tasked with easing the transition for the town’s Southern guests and preventing them from feeling “homesick.”

“I was provided with a list of phone numbers and who was living with whom,” Washington said of interns and their host families. “I was still living with my parents and we had a nice large rec room, so I planned the first party. I had friends in town, working adults, who I also invited. It became a weekend thing.”

She also drove some of the interns around on the weekends, taking them shopping in Norwalk or Stamford or to church and local sports events, Washington said. Each intern was given an honorary membership at the New Canaan YMCA. Some enjoyed car privileges from their host families.

Culture shock

Above all, said participants, the weekend get-togethers afforded them a chance to share stories about their new environment and contrast it with scenes from back home.

“There was definitely some cultural shock,” said Washington. “These were city kids. I explained to them that their hosts have large homes; to keep the heat up to 75 [degrees] all day and night, they don’t do that.”

Meals were another common rallying point.

“It’s hard eating casseroles when you’re used to fried chicken and pork chops,” Washington said. “One girl told me, ‘We had macaroni and cheese for dinner.’ I said, ‘What else?’ She said, ‘No, that was the whole meal.'”

Kenney’s wife, Margaret, reportedly scoured Fairfield County grocery stores for ingredients to prepare “down-home soul food” like collard greens and sweet potato pie. The interns thoroughly appreciated the gesture, said Washington.

Match-making

Washington’s parties also provided a setting for the project’s first budding romance.

Interns Vince Mitchell and Mary Harris began dating after their arrival in town and each acknowledged the match-making skills of their social directors and host families in helping to make that happen.

The couple soon fell in love and married the following year, honeymooning in New Canaan.

Mitchell said of the experiment, “It’s how I got the chance of a lifetime and met the girl that would become my wife. She had been at Norfolk State University all along — we were even in the same very large biology class one semester — but I had to go to Connecticut to find her.”

Mary Mitchell echoed her husband’s affection for the project’s influential role in their shared future.

“Mrs. [Elizabeth] Burnes and Mrs. [Joann] Hart were truly first-rate New Canaan match-makers, if nothing else,” she said of her host mothers. “They knew when two people were destined to be together.”

A new home life

Both private school teachers themselves, Raymond and Elizabeth Burnes were Mary Mitchell’s primary hosts, though she spent time living with Robert and Joann Hart while Mrs. Burnes was hospitalized for a week.

“I had this huge split-level, four-bedroom home with finished basement all to myself,” she recalled of the Burnes’ home. “It was wonderful sharing meals with this loving couple.”

“To keep in touch with my mother and three younger brothers,” she said, “I was granted weekly phone privileges each Sunday. This was much better than squabbling with my brothers over our one phone at home. I am the only girl in my family; in New Canaan I lived as an only child.”

Her short stay with the Harts also made an impression on her, including her time with their “beautiful pre-teenage children, Nancy and Steve.”

“Nancy talked like a young adult,” Mitchell said. “She was so smart, and her parents encouraged her comments on the issues.”

Her husband recounted similar scenes with his hosts Dr. David and Charlotte Brown, who gave the 24-year-old at least one thing he had never experienced — “the privacy of my own bedroom.”

“Dr. Brown and I worked together in the garden, played tennis with area enthusiasts, and I occasionally went for a swim at the local YMCA pool,” he said. “At the end of my work day, we often engaged in stimulating conversations about news events or my latest lessons from Shakespeare’s plays.”

He even got a chance to see a screening of “Romeo and Juliet” in Darien one night with his “new found friend” Mary Harris and the Brown’s daughter Isabelle.

Remembering his young guest’s fondness for Shakespeare, Dr. Brown told the Advertiser, “He was so enthusiastic about it; that really impressed us.”

'Enormous return'

In a contributed Advertiser story on the project from several years ago, Brown wrote of the interns, “Our town should be very proud of the enormous return on their gift of substance and heart to these impressive young people.”

Unable to attend the project’s 40th anniversary reunion later this month, the Browns nevertheless keep in touch with their former house guest and his wife.

Washington said lasting interfamily bonds were a common and desired outcome of the project, which continued for several years after an uncertain start.

The Browns and the Mitchells — who now live in Ocala, Fla., — recently reconnected and reopened their homes to each other for visits. Host families from subsequent years have likewise attended their one-time house guests’ weddings and other personal milestones.

Participants said this was the essence and “true genius” of the project.

“A couple of interns were almost sorry they came at first,” Washington recalled of that first year. “I’d make sure I called them once a week to tell them to hang in there. At the end of it, one of them, she told me she had the best experience and fell in love with the host family and the kids.”

“That was fantastic to see,” she said. “the relationships that were built.”

For information about the reunion or to RSVP, e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call 757-823-9068.