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Humans of East Windsor, East Windsor, CT (2025)

06/16/2023

Denise (5/5)

“How did you meet your current husband?” Blind date. “Who set you up?” Jen Ragaglia. She lives 5 houses down. She’s the best. Great little neighborhood. I bought a house there. I had lived in a condo and decided to buy a house again. I bought this little ranch, because I was single, and I knew I would be single for the rest of my life. Ha! My daughter, when she came to see the house said, “Mom, are you having a mid-life crisis?” It had been owned by a woman in her 80’s and she had dementia so the house was not well kept. The colors were god-awful and the yard was a mess, and all overgrown, and the driveway was cracked. It was kind of a disaster. But I said “Dawn, it has good bones. You’ll see.” I’m lucky I have that kind of vision that I can say “I’m gonna knock down that wall, and this will go there, and if I clean up that then that will happen, and that fence is coming down!” I was busy for a long time, a very long time. I put in a sidewalk. It was one of those paver sidewalks. I put the stone dust down and I would just sit there and put the pavers down and Jen would come by and she’d say, “You want to go for a walk?” She’d say,“I know this guy- he’s one of my customers and you guys would really get along.” “He’s handy, you’re handy. It’ll be great. You guys should meet.” And she kept talking about it. Finally I said “Jen. Stop talking about it. Give me his number and I’ll call him.” “No, you can’t call him! I’ll tell him to call you!” And he called. Our first date was his company picnic: he knew the hosts and I didn’t even know my date at that point! Our next date was Mill on the River. That was 17 years ago.
Rotary Club has had wonderful, wonderful people as Citizens of the Year. I never saw myself as that caliber. Dave, my husband, wrote this lovely letter to the group. There were 5 of us I think at the time. He said I had done so much for the town and I would be a great Citizen of the Year. He gave them the letter and they said ok thank you and they didn’t say anything about it but I had asked him for a copy of whatever he was giving them. And when I read it I thought oh my god that’s wonderful that you would do that but we need to advertise it, put it out there for everybody. I didn’t get any (other) letters nominating people. (They said) You’re going to be the Citizen of the Year. They wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was a very special night with great people who were there to share memories of me, which was wonderful. It was such an honor.

06/15/2023

Denise Menard (4/5)

At the beginning I was kind of struggling with what would keep me busy and then I realized that there were so many things that I hadn’t done because I worked all the time. I thought I had a brown thumb because I couldn’t raise plants or garden or anything. Gardening is a wonderful thing now. I do gardening- flowers and vegetables. I just love it. If Dave doesn’t know where I am he just looks out into the yard. I’ve joined a book club. I’ve grown to appreciate reading again. I thought I was a very slow reader because I would read all day, a lot of what I did was reading. Whether it was my paralegal job or selectman- it was a lot of reading of contracts- when I came home I didn’t want to read a book. Now I’m reading 3 a month.
I joined the garden club. They have a speaker that comes every month. It’s a really great group. I’ve learned a lot there and they have a great Christmas party.
I started bowling. I’m a terrible bowler. A lady was asking me if I would be interested and I said well I can tell you when I worked at Advest we had a bowling league and I won a trophy. Everybody else got their trophy and they said we have one trophy left. If anybody can bowl as bad as this person and have a good time, she deserves a trophy! The only sports trophy I go in my whole life! I told her about my trophy- I said that’s what you’ve got! There’s no pressure. It’s just for fun so I thought I’d try it. It’s very good!
I continue to volunteer, and that’s how my life has been since high school. I’m very fortunate, the path of my life. The things I’ve done her in East Windsor have hopefully been good for the community, but I get out of it as much as anybody that I help. You get more than you give. I’ve been so blessed. I’ve had so many great experiences. It’s a great community to be a part of, and to be connected to.

06/14/2023

Denise Menard (3/5)

I was selectwoman for 8 years and it was probably the best job I ever had. Because I was helping my community. Recognizing things that could be done differently, better, and implementing that. Certainly, a very challenging job. Some was what I expected but so much of it dealt with personnel that I didn’t expect all of that. I remember the first time I bargained with a union- I had never dealt with a union before and that was a learning curve and I got kicked under the table by the attorney because I said something that was against the rules but I didn’t know the rules! So there was a lot of learning there. I think I’m a fair person. I tried to make things better for the employees as well as the town and I grew to respect unions. I see it as these are the rules that you live by, the unions live by, and the town lives by. It’s in black and white. There was certainly some personal growth there for me and hopefully I did good things for the town as well.
One of the best parts of being first selectman was meeting all of the people that I didn’t know. It just so enriched my life to have so many more people that I can appreciate, because there really are. We brought the Vietnam wall here to CT- the travelling wall. We modernized a lot of processes in the town from revamping contracts to how the tax collector could do some things differently because I had been out in the business world and knew how to do things differently than we’d been doing them. The people that I worked with were amazing, across the board.
And then I lost the election the second time, and a year later I was the Town Manager for East Longmeadow and retired from there. It was great being there. It wasn’t like EW because EW was in my heart- that’s my home. East Longmeadow was more a job. I was the first town manager so certainly there were some challenges because they just changed their charter and changed some things and I had to implement them. So that was great, that was fun. Again, it was broken and I could help fix it so that was great. Once I retired I started thinking, “Is this going to work? Am I going to be bored because I’ve been so busy my whole life?” And it’s great. Retiring is great.

06/13/2023

Denise Menard (2/5)

I worked nights- my husband worked days so I had to find something to works nights. I worked at Richard’s Drug for quite a few years. I worked at Southern Auto on Wednesdays. I became the person who made sandwiches ahead of time, and I worked the register. I worked daycare, for quite a few years, for South Windsor Child Development Center. I started as an aide and wound up being the 4 year old teacher. I worked the day camp in the summer and could bring my kids there. When my kids were little, we ended up having a police officer that was arrested and there was something with the Police Chief and I called the Police Commission person and I asked him “Who is going to be here to handle an emergency if the police chief isn’t around?” and he listened to me quietly and hung up the phone and I got a call a little while later and it was his wife Marilyn. She said, “So you just had a conversation with my husband and I’m thinking maybe you would be good to do something for the town.” Which I’ve now taken that thing: if you’re going to complain, I’ve got a spot for you!
She asked me to come to a Democratic Town Committee meeting, and I did, and someone approached me about being on the Elderly Commission. After that I was the first woman on the Sewer Commission, WPCA and I had a mission there to clean up some stuff that was going on. They told me here’s what you need to do, and I figured it out and we cleaned up some stuff that was going on that was not good. I became the chairman. The main interceptor from Broad Brook to WHP was built while I was the Chairman of the sewer commission. That was a major construction project. And you don’t realize that people on boards and commissions can sometimes have real responsibilities. I had to sign the work orders for the construction work being done. But I learned from that how a sewer is constructed. And the good things and the bad things that can happen- like if you dig too deep, and too close to wells, it can suck in the wells in your neighborhood
I’d get off of one (board), say “I’m done”, and then… And then Planning and Zoning. I have a map of the town in my head because I learned all kin ds of things on all the different streets and regions of the town: where you can do farming, or you can do business over here. And it was in the 80’s so it was the height of the condo building. It was really a busy, busy time. So I learned about all that. It was a great background because I started working at Cigna as a legal secretary in commercial real estate investment. And they were impressed with what I knew about real estate, because I didn’t have a real estate background. And I ended up, within the 15 years that I was there, the head paralegal, the senior paralegal of the whole department. Again, I gained more than I gave. And had wonderful bosses at Cigna- it was a great thing for me. I traveled because they would send me down to do the background stuff for the real estate closings- so California to Florida to Arizona to all over, so it was a very cool job. They started cutting a lot of people, so I went to the Health Care side. And then they started cutting the Health Care side and I thought, “I need to find something else.”
Because I had the real estate background, I would up getting a job at Friendly’s as their Lease Administrator, which was another really great job! I had no idea about the restaurant stuff but I took some of the skills that I had. It was in Wilbraham at the main office, great people that I worked with, they had me do some special projects for them. Friendly’s had stores all over. If there was a problem with the lease or building they would come to me. Then I told them one day that I was going to run for First Selectman. And they said “Oh, good luck with that. That’s great.” And I thought “You guys don’t understand. This is a full time job!’ But I can’t quit, because I don’t know if I’m going to get it. And I did. I ran because I thought I could help the community. Really. I think that’s all it was. I like a challenge. There were things that could be fixed. That’s kind of the thing I like to do. If it’s all fixed then I’m bored and I want to move on to something else. And the DTC had asked me to run. It was a good time to do it. Some had just assumed that I was going to. And to this day I tell people that was not my plan. But you can have a plan and it doesn’t ever go that way anyway.

06/12/2023

Please meet Denise Menard.

I grew up in Hartford, the Park Street area. It was a great place to grow up. I lived on Flatbush Avenue. By first grade, I was taking a city bus across the city by myself to go to the French Catholic School in Frog Hollow. Can you imagine? So certainly life has changed!
I went to Hartford High. My parents had two boys and two girls. (We were a) traditional French Canadian family. They saved the money for the boys to go to college and they told us “Get a good job and you’ll meet somebody and you’ll be married and have kids.” The boys to this day have never gone to college. But the two girls went to college! Since we knew I wasn’t going to go to college right out of school, the guidance counselor had found this program where I could go from department to department in an investment firm, Advest. It was in downtown Hartford and it was a brokerage house. I learned all about stocks, bonds, the back office stuff related to all of that. It was a very cool job. I did that for 3 years. I met my husband (on a) blind date. He had nobody on New Year’s Eve, and I didn’t either, so a friend said “Why don’t you go with Gary?” so I did, and we were married a year later. From there I lived in Germany for a year because he was in the service. That was cool. Now, I was young, and very, very homesick so I didn’t enjoy it as much as I could have. In looking back, there’s so much more that we could have done. But you have what you have at the times.
We came back and lived in Enfield and we wanted something a little more country to raise the family. There was nothing in particular about East Windsor that we said “oh we have to move there.” It was more a case of what’s affordable and East Windsor is an affordable community. Jason was two years old when we bought the house on Tromley Road and then Dawn was born here (in East Windsor). It was a good part of my life for sure, living there with the kids.
My son passed away from Covid last year. He has 8 children. It’s sad. In my Book Club we are reading Hamnet. In the book, Hamnet dies of a plague, and I said “This is a little too close to home for me.” This was in the 1500’s but even back then they isolated and you kind of relive pieces of what we went through. The little boy dies. He’s only 10 years old so it’s certainly not the same but it was a hard time to lose somebody, not just for me. We never got to say goodbye. The hospital was isolated. Oly his wife got to see him. And he was there for a month and we couldn’t go. So, hard time. Hard time. He was 46. It’s really young.
Dawn is 45 now. They were very, very close when they were kids. They helped each other out. We lived on Tromley Road and we had a big gigantic yard, no kids in the neighborhood. So they were really each other’s best friends. Dawn is now a traveling radiology tech. She can be anywhere. Right now she is in Idaho. She loves it there. She stays in one place for 13 weeks. They usually ask her to reup for another 13. She probably will. She was there before the holidays, then she took a month and a half off and then went back for another 13 weeks, and I think she’s going to extend again. She likes the west coast, so Oregon, Washington, Montana, Wyoming. I have a brother in South Dakota so she’s in Rapid City a lot too. She crosses the country like 3 or 4 times a year. She loves it. She has a sprinter van. She’s a skier, snowboarder, hiker, all of that. She loves to travel, which is great. It’s a good job for her, a really god job. She makes good money, and then she can take off time and do her sports stuff that she loves, and traveling is what she loves. She has friends across the US, it’s pretty cool. Cool person, she is.

02/15/2023

Coming Soon: a new Humans of East Windsor interview!

04/29/2022

(5/5) “I work for the town of East Windsor, Public Works, just over 5 years now. I just went over to facilities, where I take care of the buildings, more than the roads. But I still plow every winter. It’s really cool to take care of the town you live in. I have quite a bit of pride in what I do. When I first started in facilities it was the big renovation at Town Hall, so that was really cool to take part of. It’s really cool to see the progress and the change and the upgrading.”

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT EAST WINDSOR?

“I love the small-town feel. You hear all the stories about people that grew up with my dad, and you hear the stories of back then, about how much has changed and evolved, but so much has stayed the same. There’s still a lot of that history. It’s cool to see all of the old pictures- what it was, and it’s still kind of that way. There’s still a lot of good people in town that work together.”

HAVE YOU EVER LIVED ANYWHERE ELSE? “No.”

WOULD YOU EVER LIVE ANYWHERE ELSE? “No. I moved down the hallway in my house- that’s the furthest I’ve ever moved!

I love where I live. I wouldn’t change it for anything.”

04/28/2022

(4/5) “I run a doodlebug. They’re old trucks, cut up, and we pull with them. I run a 1938 Mack, called Polish Power. It has two transmissions and a welded together rear end and it pulls a sled with weights on it. You go out there and you pull it and you try not to but you usually break something, and then put it back together for next time. Competitions are at a handful of fairs around this area: Four Town Fair, Wapping, Hebron…there’s different classes and different size machines. It’s the kind of thing where you all work together. Your competition is there helping you hook up and adjust things, and rooting you on. You go out there to win but you go there to help everybody. I’m working on building another one now, along with my house projects.”

04/27/2022

(3/5) “My wife, Mariah, is from town. We got married in our backyard, almost two years ago. My best man lives down the street, I’ve know him since birth. (Blaine's dad married Leo and Mariah) So we got married there and then we bought the house from mom, so it’s ours now.

DID YOU KNOW YOUR WIFE GROWING UP?
(smiles) “Everybody knows everybody in East Windsor.”

“We have dogs. A yellow lab (Paisley) and a German short-haired pointer (Mack). The pointer has a lot of energy. They’re awesome. We got them a year ago, so they’re still puppies. That’s how we spend most of our time, chasing them around. Camping, fishing, a little bit of hunting, kayaking. Whatever, to stay outside.”

TELL ME ABOUT A MEMORABLE EXPERIENCE OR A PROUD MOMENT.

“I think the best one was getting married. There’s been generations there. We got married, then we bought the house, and the land, and one day I hope to pass it down.”

IF YOU HAD THE PERFECT DAY, WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE?

“Just spending time outside at home, with my wife and dogs, and relaxing and taking it all in. Just knowing the house was my grandparents then my parents, then mine. I’m proud of what I have and what I’ve worked for. And what I’m still working on: how far it’s come, and how far I want to go with it. It’s a constant project but every once in a while it’s nice to sit back and look at it. Seeing the stuff I did to it growing up, and adding stuff, and changing it. The original part of the house is 1880. It has the history, but it’s ours. This is what we did.”

04/26/2022

(2/5) “I’m on the Fire Department in Broad Brook. I’ve been there since I was 14. I’ve been a lieutenant the past 4 years now. That takes a lot of time. It’s a lot of fun. That’s probably the best thing I’ve ever done/gotten involved in. It’s a family down there. There’s a lot of new people, but it’s a lot of generations and generations…even surrounding towns: SW or Ellington – people there knew my dad or the older people there worked with my dad when they were young, and now their kids are working together. My dad was a fireman for a while in Broad Brook. He was close with our Chief, and now the chief’s son is a year younger than me and now we’re working together. I’m the lieutenant that does a lot of the trainings. I work down there part-time, a couple nights a week, usually. It’s great- all the calls, you work together, doing fundraisers, everyone chips in. Everyone does their part. It’s cool to get involved in.”

DO YOU HAVE ANY MEMORABLE FIRE/RESCUE STORIES?

“They’re all memorable. I got an award for pulling a lady out of the Carousel apartments. It was a couple of years ago. They had a thing at Town Hall for it. But I felt like I was just doing my job. I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary.”

YOU SAVED A LIFE.

“Yeah, that’s what they tell me. We got her out of there, the ambulance took her. I heard she pulled through, which is cool to hear because during a lot of calls you do whatever you can and you pass them off and they go to the hospital and you don’t hear anything, you don’t know. You hope for the best but you don’t know the outcome all the time.“

IS IT HARD?

“It is but it isn’t. Someone calls you because they’re having the worst day of their life. Being able to show up and do something to help, no matter how big or small it is, just makes you feel good. It makes you feel like you made a difference, hopefully.”

04/25/2022

Please meet Leo Szymanski:

(1/5) “My grandparents on my dad’s side owned the East Windsor General Store. I didn’t know them but that’s where my dad grew up. My grandparents on my mom’s side, they were from Vernon, would bring her in there when they were young. That’s where they would do their shopping. So It’s technically where my mom and dad first met and then they both worked at JC Penney in Manchester later and that’s where they kind of reconnected.

My grandparents always lived here. I love seeing pictures of my grandfather out front with the butcher apron. There’s a picture in Town Hall of in front of the store- that’s my grandfather. I wish I had met my grandparents because I hear stories about them, and it’s awesome to hear. And even stories about my dad. He passed away in 2013. I still have all the good memories- that’s the important stuff. And I still hear all the good stuff. Even though the stories you hear 100 times, you still like to hear them!

I have one brother. I’m older. His name is Ed. I call him Fred. He’s a mechanical engineer. He lives near Windsorville Pond. I grew up doing sports and fishing on the pond.

My mom lives across from the store, she just moved back to the house my parents started off in 30 years ago. So the whole little family lives right there still, which is cool.

When we were young my mom worked at the high school so she had her summers off. We had a seasonal campsite so we’d just spend our summers at camp and go fishing, and for February vacation we’d go see our grandparents in Florida and go to the different parks. So it was really cool having her around a lot for that.

We would grow pumpkins in our back field and sell them in our front yard. And that’s how I bought my first truck- with money from selling pumpkins out front. We always had a giant garden and I just remember…I learned a lot of character out in those fields! Hoeing all summer, picking them, taking care of them, covering them for the frost, all that fun stuff. I still grow sunflowers in the side field, and have a little garden, but not like we used to.

Growing up I did baseball and basketball in town. I did preschool through 8th grade here and then I went to Cheney Tech. I did carpentry. That’s how I got my first job.”

04/01/2022

Marisa Prior
(5/5) "Before working at Park Hill, I worked in the school system as a secretary and a paraprofessional, I also worked at the senior center for a few years. I love my job (at Park Hill). It’ll be 9 years this year. The part I like most about working at Park Hill is the residents. That’s who you’re there for. They all have interesting lives, stories, and experiences. And just to be able to help them, whether they need food, or they need clothing, or they need help with their phones. A few months after I started, I had one guy walk in and say “It’s starting to get really cold. Do you have any availability? Because I’m living in my car.” And that hit hard that someone in this amazing little town that I live in, is living in their car. And that’s why I like it: because I’m helping people.
My hobbies are reading, shopping – too much shopping – and crafting. I really enjoy doing crafts with my kids and grandkids. I especially like the Grab & Go crafts the Warehouse Point Library offers. It’s nice to pick up the kits and do the crafts at home. I did start and arts and crafts group for children when Lexi was about 3, at Rockville General Hospital’s Family Resource Center. I used to go there with her, and there was nothing to do. I became friends with the director and I asked her, “Can we do crafts?” and she said “Yes, but there is no money”. “Ok, no problem. We’ll get things donated.” And we did! We painted, we drew. We actually redid their little playroom, my cousin and I and a girl who used to help me with the craft group. We came in and we put Barney on the wall and just made it a fun place for kids to go to, with story time and all that stuff."
Some things people don’t know about me:
-I always wanted to be a teacher. Math is my favorite subject. Up until high school, I was going to be a teacher.
-I went to hairdressing school.
-I graduated high school in three years. I’m pretty proud of that. I did four years of school in 3.
-My children are first generation American born, from my family.
-English was my second language.

03/31/2022

Marisa Prior
(4/5) "The thing I love most about EW is the “small town feeling”. I absolutely love that the community always comes together when it needs to. My favorite thing that we do in this town is Scouting for food. The entire town gets involved. The scouts drop off bags to every house in the town. It’s great when you drop off an empty bag at a house and go back a week later to pick it up full of groceries and deliver it to the pantry, and you’ve got a ton of people there, just sorting it. It’s amazing to see the scouts, parents, volunteers working to fill the pantry. Townspeople from all levels come together for a central goal. That warms my heart. It just doesn’t get any better than that. Only a special little town like EW could do this.
I’ve been with scouts for a very long time. I’ve been a scout mom. Little Greg was in scouts for a bit, and Lexi started when she was in first grade, all through high school. I was able to take a break for a little bit, and now Makaylas in scouts. And we still are scouting for food. Its’ just amazing. People are still giving.
I became a PTO member when my oldest started kindergarten in 1995. A couple of years later I became Co-President. While I was there I started the Holiday Store. That’s so near and dear to me. Someone else started the ball rolling and then they moved so it dropped in my lap, but it’s been going for all of these years. We started it so the kids could shop for their parents, without their parents there, or for other family members. That was the whole idea. And it wasn’t a fundraiser. We used a company, but we just sold at cost, so we didn’t make any money off of it. We were there just for the kids, and back then we did both schools- Broad Brook and the Middle School. The older kids, they would come in and shop for their friends: their bf/gf, their bff…I don’t know when it stopped at the MS, because we were still doing it when Lexi started HS and I stopped with PTO and started with Booster Club. And then when I got back into PTO, I was thrilled that they were still doing the Holiday Store. It changed, but the concept was still there of the kids shopping. And it’s so funny what they pick. I know that past few years we had the section where if they didn’t have money, they could come pick from there. There was one little girl that I’ll never forget. I said “Who would you like to get something for?” “My stepmom that lives with me and my dad” and we wrapped it up and she was leaving and she just gave me a hug and said “thank you so much. This is going to make her so happy!” It’s like: This is why. This is why you do anything. I think my proudest moment in PTO that I started something and 25 years later it’s still going.
And then I moved on to the Booster Club and helped out with basketball and soccer. I became involved with Community day a couple of years before it came to an end. I had a friend on the committee and decided to help. I remember just going, and I want to say the parade went down route 5 because we went to go watch my older cousins and nephews in the parade – they were a couple of years older than my own kids- and they shut down route 5, and it went from somewhere to the HS. And another time I remember marching down Tromley Road to the HS, because they moved it to the HS. Years ago my husband and my father started a greenhouse business, just selling flowers and seasonal vegetables, and we got a booth at community day, selling flowers. When my kids were at BBS, it went from the BBS to the MS, and the entire town was at this parade. There was no one on the side watching it, because everyone was in it! You had Little League and you had soccer and you had Scouts. We actually had the BB teachers march. I remember when Greg was in 1st grade he had to pick: do you want to march with scouts, do you want to march with Little League, or do you want to march with your class? Then they wanted the PTO to march and I said NO- there’s no one to watch this parade! We can’t add more people to it! And I said on the condition that we can throw candy- then we will march. And we started marching in the community day parade then. And then there was the Robert Ford Race before the Community Day parade. They raced, and then the parade went, and it ended all at the MS.
Originally, you had bands, you had cheerleaders put on a show, you had dance schools in the surrounding towns put on shows, in the auditorium you had magicians…the elderly commission one year paid to have a caricature man sit there all day and it was free. I still have those pictures of my children and they’re framed and hanging up in my hallway. They had free raffles. The lions club, the rotary club, everyone was involved in this. And it was great. You had people selling their goods, the vendors, and in the cafeteria it was the Booster club selling whatever, then another organization selling popcorn, or they had the icey machine, or the snow cones, cotton candy. You had the lions club, the leo club from the high school. The PTO would do something, the boosters would do something, the DTC would grill hamburgers, hot dogs. That’s another event the entire town showed up for. And then it just got smaller and smaller. We should bring it back.
I was also on the committee that “founded” the Family Resource Center (FRC) in 1994. Once the program was up and running I sat on the Board for 4 years. I’ve always felt that it is important to give back and help your community. I feel my children have also done the same. My son, Jake was part of the original group that started the BMX Skate Park and while in middle school Lexi helped to have sports offered to all the grades, not just the 7th & 8th grades. These are good examples of how the town listens to the needs of its people, no matter where the voice is coming from. I’ve tried to raise my family to advocate for themselves and the people around them."

Humans of East Windsor

06/16/2023

06/15/2023

06/14/2023

06/13/2023

06/12/2023

02/15/2023

04/29/2022

04/28/2022

04/27/2022

04/26/2022

04/25/2022

04/01/2022

03/31/2022

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