Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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New Canaan Police at 6:27 a.m. Tuesday received a report of a bag and laptop stolen from an unlocked car on Ponus Ridge. It’s under investigation. 

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Tickets are available ($20) for a farewell party for 44-year Department of Public Works standout Mose Saccary, who retired last week. It will be held 5 to 9 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 4 at Waveny House and tickets can be purchased from the DPW on the main floor at Town Hall. ***

Congratulations to former First Selectman Rob Mallozzi, who in 2024 marks 20 years with New Canaan Fire Co.

Around Town

New Canaan Library Appoints CEO, Director

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One of New Canaan’s most important community organizations on Thursday announced a new leadership team and structure. New Canaan Library officials said in a press release that Ellen Sullivan Crovatto, formerly vice president of external affairs and philanthropy, has been appointed CEO, and that Cheryl Capitani, formerly vice president of operations, is now library director. 

Rob Lowe, chair of the library’s Board of Trustees, said in the release, “Both Ellen and Cheryl were intimately involved in the conception, building, funding and launch of our proud new home; together they helped make this dream a reality.”

He referred to the library’s hugely popular and heavily used new building and reimagined campus at Main and Cherry Streets, open since last February, including the green, which launched earlier this year. Sullivan Crovatto, a town resident for 23 years, led the library’s $40 million-plus capital campaign for the project. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Columbia College and went on to work in corporate finance as a managing director for several international investment banking firms, specializing in private equity fundraising for emerging markets. 

Capitani started at the library as its first full-time teen services librarian in 2013. She has more than 20 years working in libraries and “decades of operational and library knowledge to the position” of director, the press release said.

Around Town

‘We Witnessed Remarkable Courage’: Town Marks 9/11 at Solemn Ceremony

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Standing atop the front steps of Town Hall on Wednesday morning, First Selectman Dionna Carlson noted that the weather—blue skies, gentle breeze—reminded her of a fateful day 23 years earlier. Addressing more than 100 town residents, employees and volunteers—including strong representation from New Canaan Police, New Canaan Fire and New Canaan Emergency Medical Services—Carlson described the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as “something those of us who lived through that day will never, ever forget.”

“We gather to honor and remember the 2,977 souls lost on September 11, 2001, a day that reshaped our world and forever marked our hearts,” Carlson said during the town’s annual ceremony marking 9/11. 

She continued: “We reflect on those tragic events that unfolded as American Airlines flight 11, United Airlines flight 175 struck the World Trade Center towers, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon and United Airlines Flight 93 went down in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, instead of its intended target, either the Capitol or the White House, due to the bravery of the patriots on board. In our town, we feel the weight of this day even more deeply as we remember the lives of our own residents who were taken from us that day: Joe Coppo, Eamon McEneaney and Bradley Fetchet. Their absence is a poignant reminder of the personal impact of that fateful day.

Around Town

‘It’s So Exciting’: NCHS Grad Claire Ayoub’s Film, ‘Empire Waist,’ To Debut at Playhouse

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Growing up here in town, Claire Ayoub—New Canaan High School graduate, actor and award-winning writer/director—used to spend her entire summer at The Playhouse. “That’s where I would go to see all the different movies,” Ayoub recalled one morning last week. “And half the time it was just, ‘I’m with my friends. This is fun.’ ”

Since launching from NCHS, Ayoub—daughter of local gynecologists—has gone on to run a production company and write an award-winning solo show, “The Gynokid,” among other accomplishments. 

And this month, Ayoub makes a triumphant return to The Playhouse. Her new film, “Empire Waist,” a teen body image dramedy, debuts at the newly renovated Elm Street theater with an early screening this week and then opens Sept.

Around Town

After Two Years of Work, NCM&HS To Reopen ‘Rogers Studio’

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The New Canaan Museum & Historical Society this week will reopen the 1878 Rogers Studio after more than two years of work. (It opens Saturday to the public.)
We put some questions to NCM&HS Executive Director Nancy Geary ahead of the Reimagined building’s unveiling. Here’s our exchange. ***
New Canaanite: Who was John Rogers? Nancy Geary: Known as the “People’s Sculptor,” John Rogers (1829-1904) was the most popular sculptor in United States history.  Between 1860 and 1893, Americans purchased approximately 80,000 of his putty-colored plaster “Rogers Groups” at an average price of $14.00.  These realistic works, which celebrated military, theater and domestic scenes, were fixtures in every Victorian parlor.  Why?  As David Wallace writes in his seminal biography, John Rogers, The People’s Sculptor, (Wesleyan University 1967) “No other American sculptor has ever been so completely at one with his contemporaries in taste, in spirit, and in human sympathies, and none has made his works so generally available to the general public.”
John Rogers was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1829, the son of John Rogers, a merchant in Boston, and Sarah Ellen Derby, whose grandfather Elias H. “King” Derby, had built a successful shipping empire.  By the time of John’s birth, however, the fortune in his mother’s family had dissipated.  His father had a series of disastrous forays into business.  During John’s childhood, the family moved from Massachusetts to Ohio to New Hampshire, before finally settling in Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1841.  In Roxbury, John attended English High School where he studied mathematics, mechanics and surveying.  He left school a year early and chose to become an engineer, later holding jobs as a dry goods clerk, a master mechanic and a city surveyor.  This practical education and work shaped his artistic vision as a Realist in portraying the American scene.