The remains of the Wiffle ball field.
(Helen Neafsey/ Greenwich Time photo)
Only memories linger at little field of dreamsBy Martin B. Cassidy
Staff Writer
07/21/2008 01:00:00 AMA passing breeze gently shook an American flag on a patch of town-owned dirt on Riverside Lane, where an odd assortment of scented candles, yard tools and wiffle ball bats remained to be picked up.
Enroute to a Wiffle ball tournament, Justin Provenzano, 17, made a quick stop to see the remains of the dismantled Wiffle ball field he helped create with other teens.
"I'm angry," Provenzano said. "We've kept playing Wiffle ball other places but it's not the same."
After a two week battle between a neighborhood group of teens and neighboring homeowners over the existence of a Wiffle ball field kids built on town land, town workers carted the field away on Friday morning.
The town has offered the youths an alternative of using a field at the International School of Dundee for the remainder of the summer for Wiffle ball.
The field included a plywood replica of Fenway Park's Green Monster, bleachers, a foul pole, and a back stop which had replaced a dense overgrowth in the town owned lot....
Update:
Public works employees post "no trespassing" signs on the now-famous town-owned lot on Riverside Lane.
First thing Monday morning, public works employees were told to make and post "no trespassing" signs on the now-famous town-owned lot on Riverside Lane.
Some of the same public works employees were part of a demolition crew sent to the lot on Friday to knock down an outfield fence, including a 12-foot-high replica of Fenway Park's Green Monster that the teens built on the property without town approval.
"The field is not the same as we left it on Friday," Larry Daur, a town highway foreman, said, pointing to bases that the teens reinstalled over the weekend...
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NORWALK - Gov. M. Jodi Rell is not anxious to reintroduce tolls to the state's highways. Rell, during a visit to Norwalk on Friday, said lawmakers did the right thing in the 1980s when they removed toll booths from roadways after a deadly accident between a truck and three cars on Interstate 95 in Stratford that killed seven.
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Wiffle ball field represented much positiveTo the editor:
Wow, they closed the Wiffle ball field! As a long- time phys-ed teacher, I was buoyed by the story that has been unfolding in town the past few weeks. How often have we heard from our communities (and how often have I said), "kids need to get up, get going"? In my youth, it was the "Tube"; now it's computers and video games.
These kids banded together to bring back a bit of Americana. I spent many a day (way back when) playing backyard softball and Wiffle ball on makeshift fields at or near my home. The kids took an overgrown plot, cleared it and created something of which we can be proud.
It's more than the field. They took nothing and made it something. They worked toward a common goal. They selflessly made something for everyone to use. Something on town-owned land, something they could use for fun, and for something constructive they could do with their free time.
We want today's kids to get up and do, to be more active, to learn to work together.
Unfortunately, the town has a message for them: The field is closed.
I'd like to know how the field being on this land increases chances of flooding. As far as liability, I would think the town has insurance on parks and a variety of other town properties. Since it is owned by the town, I would think the town can, to some extent, decide what can or cannot be done with it.
But alas.
Boys and girls: Take heart and be proud of a job well done.
One final note to our beloved town that couldn't find a way to make this happen:
Somewhere in this favored
land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere,
and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing,
and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in our town -
mighty Greenwich has struck out.
Packy Hanrahan
Greenwich
The writer is a physical education teacher at Eagle Hill School.
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UPDATE - Pool contractor charged in child's drowning
By Martin B. Cassidy
Staff Writer
Police charged a Stamford pool contractor with manslaughter Monday in the drowning death of Zachary Archer Cohn, alleging the builder failed to install mandatory safeguards which could have prevented the six-year-old boy from becoming trapped in the drain of his backyard pool last summer.
David Lionetti, 53, president of Shoreline Pools of Stamford, was arrested Monday morning and charged with one count of manslaughter in the second degree in the death of Zachary Archer Cohn, who drowned in his family pool last July 26, according to police.
Zachary drowned at his home at 176 Taconic Road when his arm became trapped in an intake valve in his family's in-ground pool, police have said.
The arrest warrant was not available yesterday.
State Attorney David Cohen, the prosecutor in the case, said that Lionetti's company failed to install a legally required suction vacuum release system on the Cohn family's pool, which would have shut down the pool's suction when Cohn's arm got stuck in a drain.
The pool also lacked a properly designed drain system with two main drains, which would have reduced the suction power of the drain Cohn was trapped in.
"There are basically two things they neglected to do," Cohen said. "There were supposed to be two drains a certain distance apart and a vacuum release system, which would have cut off the pressure and prevented just this from happening."
Lionetti's attorney, Bridgeport-based Richard Meehan, could not immediately bereached...
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