Volume 19, Number 33
Serving Durham, Middlefield and Rockfall
www.TownTimes.com
SANTA CAME TO TOWN
Friday, December 19, 2014
School building report turned in to district By Mark Dionne Town Times
Santa Claus visited the 4-year-old class holiday party at The Durham Co-op Nursery School, making sure they are all on his nice list this year.
Cold War relics continue to fascinate By Charles Kreutzkamp Town Times
Though the Cold War era is over, relics from the past still slumber in the area around Durham and Middlefield. Durham itself itself is home to a major communication complex that was part of the military’s emergency communication network. This site featured two large microwave towers, 240 and 365 feet tall. The towers were serviced by a reinforced concrete building designed to withstand a nuclear attack on Hartford or Bridgeport. One can still see the remains of the Nike missile base lookout on Pinnacle Rock in Plainville, and in Cromwell many of the original buildings from this Nike missile base still stand, though they are substantially overgrown and some have been vandalized. The Nike missile bases housed Nike
Hercules missiles armed with nuclear warheads intended to be able to shoot entire squadrons of Russian bombers out of the sky before they could attack America’s shores. The secret of nuclear missiles “right in our back yards (was) one of the best kept secrets of the Cold War,” according to history buff John Ramsey. Ramsey said he has been fascinated by the Cold War era since growing up as part of the “duck and cover generation, meaning I was probably 7-years-old when the Cuban Missile Crisis took place.” Ramsey is the webmaster of See Relics / Page 9
This site on the Durham/Higganum line utilized two large microwave towers, one about 240-feet tall and the other about 365-feet tall. The towers were serviced by a surprisingly large concrete building which was semi-hardened against a distant nuclear detonation. | coldwar-ct.com
The long awaited school building report, which details recommendations for future use and potential closings of school buildings, has been presented to District 13’s Board of Education. The district commissioned the architecture and planning firm of Drummey Rosane Anderson Inc. to evaluate the usage of the six school buildings in the face of declining enrollment. The DRA report contains multiple plans and recommends four options, without giving them a ranking. At the Dec. 10 BOE meeting, Building Utilization Committee chair Bob Fulton emphasized that the report was “a working document” and “a framework,” not the final opinion of the board. One of the four recommended options, referred to as “Option B,” proposes to keep all six schools open with renovations to the buildings’ facilities. The other three recommended options all close one or more schools. The plan referred to as “Option C3” closes Korn and Lyman and converts Brewster and Memorial into “parallel K-5 elementary schools.” Strong School, under Option C3, converts to a traditional 6-8 grade middle school. This option involves building four additional classrooms and a gymnasium at Brewster. “Option C6” closes Lyman and converts Korn to a pre-K to Kindergarten school. Brewster and Memorial would house grades 1-5 and Strong 6-8. “Option C6.1” closes Memorial instead of Lyman, uses Brewster as a Pre-K-3 building, Korn as a 4-5 See Report / Page 8