Previously published on Windsor Locks/East Windsor Patch, March 17, 2017
I just happened to be reading a biography of Ella Grasso this week. In 1974 the voters of Connecticut elected Ella the first woman governor to secure the position in her own right. I’m especially interested in Ella because, a few years ago, I moved to her hometown — Windsor Locks.
I’ve been trying to figure out exactly where she lived for a while now. I had it narrowed down to one street of modest homes about a mile from me. Finally, Jon E Purmont’s biography of Ella pinpointed the exact address: 13 Olive Street, across the street from her parents’ house at 12 Olive Street. Both are small capes on tiny plots of land, like my own house. If I stand in my side yard and stretch both my arms out, I can touch my house and my neighbor's
Reading Ella's biography this week turned out to be appropriate not only because it is National Women's History Month. Coincidentally, Ella’s first term as governor put her in charge of the State’s response to the Blizzard of 1978, an epic storm that cast “nearly two feet of snow,” over three days, February 5 to February 7. Governor Dannel Malloy followed her example when he closed the roads Monday to Tuesday of this week in deference to Blizzard Stella.
I headed off to bed Monday night planning to read a little more about Ella. I could still see an almost full moon through my bedroom window, though the Old Man's Face appeared hazier and hazier as storm clouds rolled in. When I woke up in the middle of the night, the snow- glow through the window, so typical of a nighttime winter storm, drew me to take a peek outside. Flakes weren't falling. Not down, anyway. Sheets of whiteness fiercely flew horizontally, before my eyes.
Took a while for me to get back to sleep with that image frozen in my mind, accompanied by the howling of the night’s idiot wind. The next morning the blizzard continued in full force. I could barely see across the street. I heard a constant whistle which went on through early afternoon until about four, when visibility dropped to zero and I heard a loud, reverberating hum. But it wasn't the storm. My neighbor was plowing my driveway!
I couldn't see the dear man's face, scarved as he was, but I knew it was him — the best neighbor in the world who can stand in his side yard, reach out his arms, and touch both our houses.
His start at cleaning up my driveway gave me the incentive to put my book down, bundle up, and take on my snow-filled porch, fronts steps, back steps, and patio.
The next afternoon, still snow-weary, I picked up the Grasso biography where I had left off: the start of her second-term election year. I was reminded how nine months before the second election Ella prevailed in a Mother Nature vs. Mama Grasso blizzard showdown. The Governor took “full charge of the emergency operations." Even spent one night “catching a few hours of sleep on an office sofa” in the emergency headquarters. At the time it was a bold move for her to closed the roads for three days. There's no telling what added havoc the Blizzards of 1978, 2013 (another one Governor Malloy closed the roads for) and 2017 might have wrecked without these closures.
I've finally finished the Ella Grasso bio. Ready to start Edith Wharton's novel Summer.
Photo credits: Laura B. Hayden; Top snow image via Shutterstock
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