Cos Cob Park, Before and After

Last March our volunteers commemorated the opening of the Cos Cob Park by going to our archives and highlighting here an interview conducted in 1989 with Gertrude O’Donnell Riska. Her interview is largely a retelling of the time her father, Lewis Grant O’Donnell, had overall responsibility for the Cos Cob Power Plant from 1923 until his retirement in 1940, long before the plant was demolished in 2001.

Gertrude O'Donnell Riska

Much has transpired since last year. This past summer the Cos Cob Park won the 2016 Sustainability ACE Award and the 2016 Environmental ACE Award of Merit from the Connecticut Society of Civil Engineers (CSCE). In September, on the fifteenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, the town hosted a remembrance ceremony at the new 9/11 memorial in the park.

September 11 Memorial, Cos Cob Park

But before these events, on March 18, 2016, just days before the park’s first anniversary, Gertrude O’Donnell Riska died, surrounded by family in her Cos Cob home.

Given these events it is fitting that we turn again to her interview, and the writer responsible for this year’s visit is a new Oral History Project volunteer, Olivia Luntz, a Greenwich High School senior. We are pleased and honored to publish her first blog entry below.

Cos Cob Park Today

By

Olivia Luntz

Walking through Cos Cob Park today, one could never imagine the huge significance the piece of land once held. When walking on the fields, hearing kids laugh on the playground, or skipping stones into the harbor, one would not think the now peaceful place was once essential for all train movement in New England. A century ago the site of Cos Cob Park held “the world’s first experimental station to use alternating current electrification to run trains.”

The unique location of the site was essential for the power plant, as the area has access to fresh and salt water, as well as access for barges, and proximity to New Haven and New York. Originally the plant supplied power to run trains from Long Island to New Haven and also gave power to feeder branches in Danbury, New Canaan, and White Plains. This huge undertaking occurred in the heart of Cos Cob and was staffed by fewer than 150 men, working around the clock. For the Chief of the Power Plant, Lewis Grant O’Donnell, the responsibility to provide Connecticut trains with power required many sacrifices. His daughter, Gertrude Riska, describes it as “a twenty-four hour job, whether he was there or at home….During emergency calls he would have to go at night.” The power plant opened in 1906 and O’Donnell was there from the start. He was eventually promoted to chief electrical engineer in 1923, a position he held until he retired in 1940, after working for the plant for 34 years.

Lewis Grant O'Donnell

Riska’s descriptions paint a vivid picture of the power plant. It was built four stories down into bedrock, with six-foot thick support pillars, and walls of two-foot thick reinforced concrete, while the floor was four feet thick. The turbine room was five to six stories high, with six to eight turbines the size of a house sitting in a row, and she recalls, “The minute you stepped inside you were engulfed in heat and noise.” The generators between the turbines produced the electricity. If one of the huge wheels inside of one of the turbines ever broke loose, which had happened in other power plants, “it would cut a path of destruction for ten miles…to the other side of Port Chester and destroy everything in its path.”

On a more cheerful note, the plant also housed hidden treasures. For example, on the wall where the workers’ timecards were kept there was a beautiful clock and above the clock was a mural that O’Donnell had painted himself in 1938 after several accidents at the factory. The mural was six feet long and three feet high and depicted a racetrack. It featured cutouts of horses, which were movable from the start line to the finish line. “Each department was represented by a racehorse, and they advanced or retreated according to their careless accidents for the month. Among the horses was a donkey named Carelessness. He represented the lowest score. And the winning department got awards.” The poem above the mural read “Our racehorse Safety who is fast on his feet/Can beat old Carlessness whenever they meet/So give him your support--obey all the rules/By taking no chances when working with tools.” Over the next seven years the competition between all of the departments was so intense that no accidents occurred at the plant. Riska believes that the mural and clock have since been taken to the Smithsonian. She recalls that the Smithsonian also claimed the plant’s switchboard “with its gleaming brass dials and rows and rows of gauges and needles….It was beautiful….Some of those dials dated back to nineteen hundred and they were still working when the plant closed [in 1987].”

Racehorse painting above the clock

Along with caring for his workers’ safety, O’Donnell also fought to keep his workers’ jobs during the Great Depression. When informed that twenty of his men had to be laid off, he was distraught. All of his workers had children and there were no other jobs available. He asked if they would take a cut in pay to keep everyone working, but many who had been working at the plant for years claimed seniority and asked O’Donnell to fire the newer workers. O’Donnell, however, had a different strategy in mind. The next day he re-gathered the workers, and standing at the top of the stairs, he announced, “I have a hat in my hand which contains slips of paper with each man’s name on it…the first twenty names [pulled out] are the men that will be laid off.” As none of the workers wanted to rely on luck, they all agreed to the pay cut and no one was laid off. O’Donnell saw these workers as his family and could not let any of them go.

According to Riska, the most exciting events at the plant were the several times a year when a deep sea diver would go down to clean the flumes. Barnacles growing on the sides of pipes would, over time, block the flow of water to the plant. “The diver sat on an old wooden bench, the huge suit was put on him…then the heavy over boots each weighing fifty pounds. That’s so when he got down to water, he wouldn’t float; he would be upright. Then, lastly, the headpiece and the breastplate….At this point, the tender would start the air flowing, by using this little hand pump. The diver would shuffle—he couldn’t walk because the shoes were too heavy—over about ten feet to the open manhole. And he did look like Frankenstein.” From there, as Riska explained it, he would wave up and disappear into his work. The task of scraping all of the barnacles off took a few days.

Other important events at the plant included the 1938 hurricane, in which the tide rose so quickly and so forcefully that it swept up the flume, short-circuited the plant, and flooded the lower floors. O’Donnell did not leave the plant for a week, until he was able to get the trains running again. Later, during World War Two, the plant was guarded by F.B.I agents, because if the plant were bombed, there would be no train movement in or out of New England. Additionally, an armed guard protected the plant from a shack under the Riverside railroad bridge. His job was to stand, rifle in hand, whenever a train came along.

Power Plant Boiler Room

Outside of the power plant O’Donnell also made a major impact on the Cos Cob community. He was one of the founders of the Cos Cob Fire Department and built the first pumper for the fire patrol. He also drew the plans for the present firehouse and raised the money to build the firehouse. O’Donnell also used the burned coal residue from the plant to fill in a swamp in Cos Cob, which is now part of the Cos Cob School playground, and created a mini-park beside the Cos Cob firehouse. “My father had established many flower beds where beautiful giant flowers thrived in a mixture of fly ash and soil. The paths were neat and edged with whitewashed stones. At Christmas time there were at least ten Christmas trees, ablaze with colored lights, a lovely sight for the people to see from the trains.”

O’Donnell retired as chief electrical engineer in 1940 and the power station was decommissioned in 1987. Although the plant was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990, it was demolished in 2001, after a local and national debate. If you ever find yourself in Cos Cob Park today remember that what is now a beautiful place for children to play was once capable of powering trains across New England. More importantly, however, remember Lewis Grant O’Donnell and the lessons that we could learn from his life, such as his dedication to his job and community and his commitment to the wellbeing and safety of all of those around him.

Gertrude O’Donnell’s interview, “Chief of the Power Plant,” 1992, is available through the Greenwich Oral History Project office located on the lower level of the Greenwich library or in the reference area on the first floor.

The Power Plant at Mid-Century

Sue Hout Baker: Teacher, Conservationist, Preservationist

In June our thoughts naturally turn to summer, and in Greenwich they often turn to the beach and Tod’s Point where today we can enjoy sun and sea and the loving restoration of the buildings nearby, the Innis Arden Cottage and the historic old barn, dedicated recently as the Sue H. Baker Pavilion, in honor of Sue Baker, retired Greenwich High School teacher and active preservationist who has been instrumental in the restoration work at Tod’s Point from start to finish.

In March 2011, Greenwich Oral History Project interviewer, Richard M. Blair interviewed Sue Hout Baker just two months before the official opening of the Cottage.

Sue Baker’s history with the Innis Arden Cottage goes back to her earliest teaching days at Greenwich High School. Having taught in the area since the 70s, by 1980 she had secured a position as a marine biology teacher at the high school and, as she says, became “joined at the hip” with Dan Barrett, the highly regarded science teacher and founder of the school’s oceanography program. Because of its enormous success, over time, the program was integrated into the curriculum and became a two-semester course, both of which entailed fieldwork. The old Queen Anne building, now the Innis Arden Cottage, at Greenwich Point was appropriated for lab work, and it was at that time in a state of disrepair.

Sue remembers that “great chunks of plaster were falling off the upstairs ceilings, the second-floor ceilings and walls, and the roof damage was so severe that water was just running down to the ground-floor walls, and all those were mildewing and falling apart. It was a beautiful building. Those of us that ever were inside could see architecturally how interesting it was.”

Sue never forgot her time there and her regard for the historic building. In 2004 Sue and others concerned with the state of the building founded the Greenwich Point Conservancy in hopes of saving the building that, as fate would have it, had been put on the docket for demolition. The preservationists set out immediately to raise funds to save the old Queen Anne Building of Greenwich Point.

In her interview, Sue shares the history:

“…this Cottage was built right at the periphery of the property for a member of the family. His [the owner, J. Kennedy Tod’s] sister-in-law had become a young widow with three children....[It] was built for her and her young daughters to occupy and to be close, because she had lost her husband, a very young man, and she was, I think, forty, with three young daughters, or maybe not even forty, and that’s when it was built, and she occupied it. Then when she moved on in her life and remarried, that became a dedicated R&R summer resort for the nurses.”

The nurses were from Presbyterian Hospital of New York City. Sue’s account continues, with the history of the nurses:

“…there was one that was very famous. Her name was Anna Maxwell, who is kind of the Florence Nightingale of the United States with Clara Barton, you know, started the whole concept of nursing as such a career, with so much special education, special training, and military adjunct, military army nurses.

So it has a very rich history, in those summers—and most of those were maiden ladies. I mean, the ones that showed up, most of the nurses were maiden ladies with no place to go to escape the heat of New York City, and so when they had their two weeks or maybe even more vacation, they came out to the shore at Greenwich and were the guests of J. Kennedy Tod and his wife.”

Sue and the Greenwich Point preservationists were able to save the building from the bulldozers.

The restoration incorporated the best materials, “roofing, shingles, cedar shake.” The project restored the building to its original condition. The preservationists did their research and according to Sue, “tons” of it.

Today the new building, renamed the Innis Arden Cottage is “totally green,” a LEED certified building providing education and resources to the entire community. The Bruce Museum operates the Seaside Museum there. The Cottage provides space for the Shellfish Commission and for other civic organizations.

Through her work with the Conservation Commission, the Shellfish Commission, the Greenwich Point Conservancy, and other organizations, Sue has never truly left her role as an educator behind. She continues to teach and to guide her community into the future.

She ends her interview with this quote from Baba Dioum, a Senegalese ecologist, a quote she used to teach her students at Greenwich High School:

“In the end we conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught.”

The Greenwich Oral History Project interview, “Sue Hout Baker: Teacher, Conservationist, Preservationist,” March 2011, can be found in the reference area on the first floor of the Greenwich Library or through the Oral History Project office, located on the lower level of the library.

Remembering Our Veterans and the Work of Interviewer, Janet Klion

As we remember our war veterans this Memorial Day, we at the Greenwich Oral History Project also remember interviewer and photographer, Janet Klion, who died on April 18 of this year, and who over the years contributed many veteran interviews to the project’s archives.

Oral History Project Interviewer
Janet Klion

Twenty-one of Janet’s interviews reside in the Veterans History Project of the American Folklife Center (http://www.loc.gov/vets/about.html). The project’s mission is to collect, preserve, and to make accessible “the personal accounts of American war veterans so that future generations may hear directly from veterans and better understand the realities of war.”

Of the interviews Janet conducted for the veterans project, fifteen have also been contributed to the Greenwich Oral History Project. Last year’s Memorial Day blog post was dedicated to our Greenwich World War II veterans. (http://glohistory.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2015-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&updated-max=2016-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&max-results=6)

This year we turn to the war in Vietnam. Only one of Janet’s interviews in the veterans project database pertains to that war, the interview of Patrick Michael McDermott, U.S. Navy, lieutenant, junior grade. (Interview #2871, “Vietnam War Experiences,” 2013, in the Greenwich Oral History Project listing.) In his interview, McDermott, as a Navy man, notes that when two of our destroyers came under attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats in the Tonkin Gulf and when Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, “that immediately led to expanded combat operations....So I think,” he adds, “there was justification for our being in it,” meaning the war. 

McDermott recollects difficult losses and sacrifices and reflects on moments of dismay when after his honorable discharge in 1970, he returned to co-workers who refused to shake his hand because of his participation in the war. He is delighted that today returning men and women in uniform are greeted with expressions of gratitude for their service. While attesting that he does not “hold a grudge,” he also notes that there are no Jane Fonda videos in his home.

An interview Janet conducted for the Greenwich project not appearing in the veterans’ database is that of Joseph Kantorski who served as a field medic from 1968 to 1970 (Interview #2753, “Conscientious Objector in Vietnam Era,” 2007). Opposed to the war, Mr. Kantorski was granted conscientious objector status as a result of having been in seminary for five and a half years, studying for the priesthood. He knew that if he were to be drafted, he would most likely be a non-combatant in the medical core. Soon after leaving school at the Pratt Institute in New York, he was indeed drafted and would go on to be trained as a medic.

He was sent to Fort Gordon, Georgia, for training and was told by a sergeant there that he would never be able to make a living in America because he was “a traitor to the country.” He was next sent to Fort Sam Houston in Texas for further training. He was ultimately stationed near Frankfurt, Germany in the 31^st Surgical Hospital as a result of his status as a conscientious objector. Mr. Kantorski notes that he was passionate about his objections to carrying a weapon and participating in combat. He also reflects on the fate of many other conscientious objectors trained as medics who were stationed in combat zones and who, unarmed, lost their lives aiding the wounded.

Panel from the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial Wall

Any recollection of the war in Vietnam will eventually include its controversy, including the fraught domestic “battle” concerning those who served and those who, because of moral objections, did not. The news of the period abounds with reports of objectors fleeing to Canada to avoid the draft and of those labeled as “draft dodgers,” fairly or not, who used various exclusions to avoid serving.

To lend a local perspective, there are among our interviews, two, not conducted by Janet Klion, that comment on the attitudes and opinions toward conscientious objectors, including how over the years public opinion changed as the war became increasingly unpopular.

The first, conducted in July of 1975 is with Leatrice Fountain, 1924-2015 (Interview #970, “Teenagers in the 1960s in Greenwich”), who worked as a draft counselor during the war. She is better known as the daughter of John Gilbert and Leatrice Joy, actors, but her role as a counselor cannot be undermined. 

Leatrice Fountain

As a result of her involvement with the Quaker Friends, she was instrumental in helping young dissenters who sought her counsel to become conscientious objectors. She notes the hostility she faced during this time as a result of her role, but also comments on changing attitudes as the war continued. Eventually, she notes, many who had been critical of her actions came to understand and to regret their behavior.

The second interview, January 1977, is with Emile Jacques, Greenwich attorney, who was on the draft board during the war and who openly expressed his anti-war views from the start. As a member of the board, he was responsible for reviewing the applications for conscientious objector status that came before him. (Interview #2136, “The Draft Board.”) He notes that it was customary before his time on the board to reject applications out of hand and to pass them along to appeals. He drew fire objecting to the percentage of denials as he fought to ensure that those with legitimate claims would be granted conscientious objector status. The conflict and hostility he originally encountered changed during his tenure and as attitudes toward the war grew increasingly negative.

Taken together, these Vietnam era interviews in the Greenwich Oral History Project collection contributed by Janet Klion and others weave a telling story of our community during this period, one rife with conflict, heartache, and passionate emotions on all sides. It is a story worthy of a Memorial Day tribute to our veterans and to those who out of conscience objected. It is also a time to pay tribute to our narrators and interviewers, and this year especially to Janet, who through her work has bequeathed us an enduring legacy.

The interviews referenced here are available in the reference area on the first floor of the Greenwich Library or through the Oral History Project office, located on the lower level of the library.