The Suffield Observer (https://thesuffieldobserver.com/author/lester-smith/page/10/)
It’s been the custom for a number of years for The Suffield Observer to print individual photos of star athletes at Suffield High School with their parents (and sometimes coaches) when the happy winners are signing to accept their scholarships and promising to play in the sports where they have excelled.
In spite of a dubious forecast, May 15 opened with lovely weather and just got better all day. It was a perfect day for an enjoyable parade of events that hinted at an incipient emergence from the long pandemic shut-down.
Over 40 interested folks gathered at Sunrise Park on Saturday morning, May 8, to celebrate the opening of a new nature-theme playground next to the parking area by White’s Pond and the Rotary Pavilion – the heart of the big mountainside park.
Readers have asked when the present status of the Route 190 bridge to Enfield will end. Even with the somewhat reduced traffic flow during the pandemic, many drivers find the constricted two-lane configuration a bit daunting.
The DOT’s project to renovate the traffic control apparatus at Suffield’s complicated intersection in the town center seems to advance in spurts. Back during a bit of last September and most of October, an “in-ground” crew from a western Connecticut contractor called NY-Conn dug in and installed circuit boxes, underground wiring, and short posts for new pedestrian switches at Mountain Road, as well as the foundations for two new steel poles.
The last days of March and the first half of April have been moving days for Town departments.
Landry-Sic VFW Post 9544 on Sheldon Street, closed for a long period because of the COVID-19 pandemic, reopened in March, and on March 20 a special ceremony was held. A dozen and a half hard-working volunteers had labored hard for several months, not only to clean up the dust and debris that accumulates in a closed building, but to make some long-needed repairs and freshening.
In response to the mass shooting in Atlanta March 16 that killed eight spa workers, the Greater Suffield Interfaith Council, together with ABAR Suffield, quickly organized a candlelight vigil at the bandstand on Suffield Green. Over half a hundred attended the event, sharing the growing grief over such happenings, especially when the motivations are associated with racial bias.
Residents may recall that a few years ago a FOR SALE sign was set on the front lawn of Webster Bank, next door to the Kent Memorial Library. Webster had been renting out space that the bank didn’t need, as branch banks don’t need the space for other functions that the former Suffield Savings Bank had enjoyed.
When this reporter stopped by Goodyear Farms to see what was going on at that cluster of greenhouses at 676 Mountain Road, he met Allen Clark, who explained that this location is actually part of a local agricultural conglomerate called Clark Farms, Inc. In addition to the greenhouses in Suffield, the family enterprise owns and farms considerable acreage in four towns and two states and operates a popular eatery and farm stand in Granby.