Faces of New Canaan

Faces of New Canaan: Amer Salloum

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In this installment of “Faces of New Canaan,” we interview a town resident known for nearly two decades to scores of locals through the New Canaan YMCA as well as his own business. Amer Salloum, a licensed massage therapist, lives on Millport Avenue with his wife and three kids, and has been a New Canaanite for some 11 years. Given that Salloum’s story of hard work, opportunity and optimism—from non-English-speaking and, for a time, homeless, to family, profession and community—captures perhaps what many of us associate with this nation at its best, we feel it’s fitting to headline our Independence Day newsletter with this profile. We met Salloum in a recent afternoon at Kaahve coffee chop on Main Street. What follows is a transcription of our exchange.

Business

‘An Aspirational Brand at Achievable Prices’: New Canaan’s Mellick Family Launches ‘Beachmate’

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In a way, New Canaan’s Beatrice and Jeff Mellick have their first-born to thank for the idea that—as of Wednesday afternoon—became a public-facing, live retail enterprise. Now a West School first-grader, Phoebe was four years old on the afternoon in August 2013 when, on the beach near the Mellick family’s longtime summer home in Charlestown, R.I., she asked her dad to make a “huge hole,” “big huge sandcastle” and a “moat that goes all the way down the water,” Jeff Mellick recalled. He dutifully said “Of course, sweetheart,” drove his pickup truck to a hardware store, bought a garden shovel, headed back to the beach, finished his project in 20 minutes and “actually got to sit down and relax for 30 minutes straight as my daughter, Phoebe, and my son, Emmett, played for 30 minutes straight—which had never really happened before.”

“And so after that, every day, three or four different dads would come up to me on the beach and ask to borrow my shovel,” Jeff Mellick said on a recent morning from an office in downtown New Canaan. “So the light bulb went off.”

It went off and this week—after two-and-half years and countless hours of hard work, creativity, anxiety, focus groups, searches, frustration and excitement—that light bulb yielded The Beachmate System. Hands-free, lightweight at less than eight pounds and with a stylish design that experts say lends itself to an expanded product line (more on that below), Beachmate includes a set of durable ABS plastic buckets and shovels as well as a cooler, all wrapped in a tote bag (insignia optional) with a shoulder strap.

Faces of New Canaan

Meet The Town’s Newest Police Officers: Kelly Coughlin and Will Sheehan

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New Canaan Police Officers Kelly Coughlin and Will Sheehan on Wednesday graduated from the Connecticut Police Academy in Meriden and on Friday kickstarted a three-month field training program. We caught up with the town’s newest police officers hours into their first day on the job to get their thoughts on New Canaan, policing and other matters of interest for local readers. Here’s our conversation. New Canaanite: Tell me a little bit about how you found New Canaan and came to be police officers in New Canaan. Officer Will Sheehan: It’s actually a funny story.

Around Town

Doing Their Part: New Canaan Volunteers Benefit Norwalk’s Carver Center

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Taking the phrase “love thy neighbor” to heart, several New Canaan residents have volunteered significant time, money and effort to help fund Norwalk’s Carver Center, one of the area’s most important community organizations. “We are now in all four middle schools in Norwalk,” New Canaan resident and ex officio Carver board member Janine Smith told NewCanaanite.com. “We have over 800 kids a day come in for SAT prep, college tours, robotics that GE sponsors, Neilsen, Xerox…they’re all supporting Carver Community Center. The reason is that kids needs a place to go after school where they can see college and envision it.” According to Smith, the driving force behind New Canaan’s charitable contributions to Carver is former St.

Faces of New Canaan

Faces of New Canaan: Elizabeth Oei

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Upon first look, Elizabeth Oei might seem to have her hands full. A longtime New Canaan resident, she serves as member of the New Canaan Volunteer Ambulance Corps (NCVAC) and the Pop-Up Park Committee in addition to a full-time nurse consultant job. She also may be most recognized around town for her two beloved dogs, Cosmo and Bean, gentle animals that she describes as her children. After speaking with Oei (full interview transcribed below), however, it became clear that her involvement is a pleasure and it is all these things that flesh out her full personality. We sat down with this very involved woman to discuss her time in New Canaan, her various roles and responsibilities, and of course her dogs.