10-Year Reflection: NCHS Class of ’09

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My class at New Canaan High School is to have its 10-year reunion in a couple of weeks, a chance to reconnect with friends as well as to remember classmates we lost too soon. A decade ago, when we walked off Dunning Field, it felt like we were on top of the world. Some of us also felt we were on our way to conquering it, when the truth is we hadn’t even conquered how to do a load of laundry. The thought isn’t solely ours—I know, because in addition to attending our own New Canaan High School graduation ceremony, I’ve covered the past four for NewCanaanite.com. And while the day absolutely marks an accomplishment, my own experience has been that the world can knock you down a peg or two in the decade that follows.

Around Town

3rd Annual Addiction Awareness Vigil Draws Hundreds to Downtown New Canaan

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For the third consecutive year hundreds gathered at the corner of South Avenue and Elm Street on Thursday evening to attend New Canaan’s third annual Addiction Awareness Vigil, hosted by the New Canaan Parent Support Group and the New Canaan Community Foundation. Community members of New Canaan and neighboring towns, state and local officials, professionals in recovery treatment, clergy and those in recovery and with loved ones who have encountered the pain, heartache, hardships and struggles addiction brings formed the night’s crowd. Paul Reinhardt, who three years ago founded the New Canaan Parent Support Group, inspired by his son Evan’s passing in July 2015 from a drug overdose, has firsthand seen the significance of what offering one’s help to another can mean.  In the time since the support group’s inception, over 100 parents have attended at least one meeting, with many of those continuing to come back because it was “the only place for them to go,” Reinhardt said. And such support is what lies at the heart of the community pledge that was added to this year’s installment of the vigil’s ceremony. It reads as follows:

“I pledge that I will reach out to someone who is struggling.

Ari Rothman

New Canaan High School Class of 2019 Graduates

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When Ari Rothman sat at his own high school graduation, he was sure that the next four years of his life would serve as a springboard to a writing career. That his 18 years of life could seamlessly be fashioned into riveting tales which would move his readers toward a greater understanding of the human condition. Once he arrived at Lake Forest College in Illinois that fall, however, Rothman found that this particular human—he himself—was not yet conditioned to have truly learned anything. “I faced the realization that the greatest work of fiction I could ever produce was my own omniscience,” Rothman said to the 315-member New Canaan High School class of 2019, gathered at Dunning Field on Wednesday afternoon as its keynote speaker. “I learned all too quickly that a skillfully wielded shovel was the most useless of tools.

Anthony Bloss

‘The Kid in Me Hasn’t Died’: Bloss Gets the Call Up to Head Coach After 14 Years with NC Baseball

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A love of baseball has flowed through Anthony Bloss since he was five years old. That’s when Bloss made his way up a tunnel of the old Yankee Stadium and caught his first whiff of the freshly cut, bright green grass which surrounded the diamond. It made his young boy’s eyes sparkle, Bloss recalled on a recent morning. When Bloss arrived as a math teacher at New Canaan High School in 2005, one of the first things he did was seek out then-longtime head varsity baseball coach Mark Rearick to express his interest in helping the baseball program in whatever way he could. And over the better part of the next 14 years, Bloss did just that.

Barbara Crolla

‘I Love Being Able To Help People Feel Better’: Parents Inspire New Canaan Woman To Launch Skin Care Business

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Growing up in her family’s Main Street home, Calie Crolla often heard the phone ring at the crack of dawn or a pager go off right before bed. Both parents owned and operated their own businesses—her mom, Barbara, the Day Care Center of New Canaan and her dad, Rick, an optometrist at New Canaan Eye Associates on East Avenue since 1984. Another child may have been envious of the attention those jobs demanded. Yet for Crolla, it provided firsthand knowledge of the responsibility that small business ownership entails, instilling a work ethic that would lead the New Canaan resident to launch her own enterprise. On July 25, 2018, she opened Skin Care by Calie in Norwalk.