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Friday, November 1, 2013
Bustling Best Market plans to reinvigorate Northwood
By ERICA SCHMITT STAFF WRITER
NEWINGTON — It’s been a long time since Northwood Plaza has been as bustling as it was this week, when the Long Islandbased grocery chain Best Market opened the doors of its very first Connecticut location. The company purchased the entire downtown plaza, which has been mostly vacant since Waldbaum’s Food Mart closed Volume 53, No. 43
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its doors a few years back. It will likely see more new life soon since the company plans on leasing the remaining 40,000 or so of retail space to other merchants. Right now there are a post office, a package store and a pizza parlor there. “We hope to have the whole plaza filled with different stores in the near future,” said Sal Macca, store manager. “A couple different vendors have already shown interest,” he added. Best Market hired almost 160 people to work at its newest store — 85 percent of whom are Newington residents. See BEST MARKET, Page 8
Erica Schmitt | Staff
Author Aaron Elson shared audio clips of his 600-plus hours of oral history interviews with World War II veterans with the Newington Kiwanis Monday night at Paradise Pizza, where they host their monthly speaker meetings.
Author delights Kiwanis crowd with WWII tales By ERICA SCHMITT STAFF WRITER
NEW BRITAIN — A handful of World War II survivors and their relatives were brought to tears Monday night hearing wartime memories at Paradise Pizza. Members of the Newington Kiwanis Club host a local personality at the restaurant monthly and this week heard from author Aaron Elson, a copy editor at the New Britain INSIDE:
Newington’s Linda Cunha a Grand Marshal in state Veterans Day parade Sunday, Page 5 Herald and a World War II enthusiast. Elson has spent over 20 years recording 600 hours of veterans’ firsthand accounts of experiences overseas — an endeavor sparked by his pursuit to understand his father a little better. The two were never very close when he was a child. Elson
recalls with laughter being five or six years old and waking his father up from a deep sleep, only to be thrown across the room. “I learned from interviewing veterans that you don’t disturb a combat veteran when he’s asleep,” he says. See AUTHOR, Page 7
Downtown businesses give kids a head start on their rick-or-treating, Page 4 Election campaign goes down to the wire, Page 2
Hearing, Balance Center staff
Hearing, Balance, Speech Center opens, Page 6
Noella Tuzolona