History
25 YEARS AGO: A $1-million gift for library

Mar 20, 2008

Library president Alvin W. Hall Jr. announced someone had made an anonymous gift of $1 million toward the cost of a major expansion of The Ridgefield Library public, the March 17, 1983 Press reported.

Mr. Hall said it was probably the largest single gift to a public organization in the town’s history. It was just 80 years earlier that James W. Morris gave the library building as a memorial to his wife, Elizabeth W. Morris.  

There were two conditions attached to the gift. The library had to put up $500,000 of its endowment for the building project and the town had to agree to increase substantially its annual support from taxation of the library’s operating budget.  

Four years before this newest library addition proposal, voters rejected a $2.4 library expansion bond issue.

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With Ridgefield changing in the fall from its traditional three-member Board of Selectmen to a new five-member board,  First Selectman Elizabeth Leonard and her fellow Republican selectman, Paul Rosa, said they did not want to make an announcement yet and Democrat Lillian Moorhead advised that she hadn’t made a decision on whether she would run again.

Sue Manning, who had previously been defeated by Mrs. Leonard for the Republican nomination as first selectman, however, was emphatic about her decision to run for a slot on the board. “Yes, I’m going to.” Norman Craig, the well-known Main Street jeweler who had narrowly missed election as state representative said he wasn’t a candidate.  

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Although they were in favor of the plan the Board of Selectmen delayed action on a proposed $950,000 renovation and expansion of the athletic fields. The hold-up stemmed from a proposed agreement over maintenance of the fields once they were restored. First Selectman Leonard moved that the Board of Education and the Parks and Recreation Commission sit down with representatives of the athletic groups to work on a maintenance agreement.

At the time the work was being shared by the Board of Education and Parks and Recreation, with the board caring for the high school fields and the parks department maintaining the rest. Selectman Paul Rosa questioned the board’s “technical expertise” in being able to maintain athletic fields and representatives from some of the town’s athletic groups, including Dave Campbell and Roger Fingado of the Ridgefield Soccer Club, suggested that Parks and Recreation take over all responsibility for maintenance.

Alfred S. Kelley, a retired pressman who worked at the Ridgefield Press after moving to town in 1936, died at 79. He was married to Esther H. Nash of Ridgefield who survived him and the couple’s two daughters, Joy Allison Johnson and Marcia Jane Eppoliti.

Rose Frulla of North Street died at 94. She was Ridgefield’s last Gold Star Mother of World War II. Born in Monterado, Ancona, Italy, she moved to Ridgefield in 1910 and was the wife of Allesandro Frulla. A son, Alex, and five daughters, Mrs. Augusta Brusca, Mrs. Pauline Moylan, Mrs. Mary Montesi, Mrs. Quinta Montesi and Mrs. Elda Ruopp, survived her.