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Eric Veden unveils newest local video

Eric Veden’s latest video about Falls Village starts with an interview with First Selectman Dave Barger, who talks about growing up in Esopus, New York, which was “not unlike Falls Village.”

Barger comes from a long line of police officers, so when he was out of college, he was busy applying to various law enforcement agencies in New York.

He also applied to the Connecticut State Police, and they called first.

In an eventful few days in 1977, Barger graduated from the state police academy, got married, had a one-day honeymoon and reported to Troop B in North Canaan to begin his career.

His sergeant was Peter G. Lawson, who also served as First Selectman and on various town boards. (He died in 2012.)

“He took me under his wing.”

Lawson was ready to retire, and told Barger he thought it would be a good thing if Falls Village had another trooper living in town.

It just so happened that Faye Lawson was starting her career in real estate.

So with one thing and another, the Bargers got a plot on Amy Road.

“And you’re sitting in it,” Barger says to Veden.

Ronna Welsh, a chef who splits her time between Falls Village and Brooklyn, takes a group through a cooking class at the Congregational Church.

She tells the group that rather than starting with a theme or a specific menu, they are going to try a different approach.

“What do I do with what I have?”

Toni Siegel recalls her 19 years at CBS News in New York, where she worked with Walter Cronkite.

She was ready to switch to a teaching career when the phone rang with the news that Bill Play, the CBS News chief, was responding to legal and social pressure to provide more opportunities for women in the new business.

“So I became the first woman in the Director’s Guild.”

Shamu Sadeh and Janna Siller of Adamah Farm (which supplied many of the ingredients used by Welsh in the cooking class) take a group through the composting process, starting with food waste.

And Episode 31 concludes with Frank Hadsell, who figures he has spent 67 of his 70 years in Falls Village.

He recalls playing sports at every chance with the older children, who looked out for him.

“We policed ourselves.”

In those days the Lee H. Kellogg School did not have a gym.

So in basketball season, the boys practiced outside in the parking lot, in winter, with hats and gloves.

“We played all our games on the road.”

The video is available for borrowing or for sale at the David M. Hunt Library. Veden also has a YouTube channel called “Eric Veden.”

Patrick L. Sullivan
Senior Reporter
Patrick Sullivan has been a reporter for The Lakeville Journal since 2004, covering everything from town meetings to local characters and the outdoors. He grew up in Northern Virginia but spent summers on Mount Riga in Salisbury, giving him a lifelong connection to the Northwest Corner. A graduate of Denison University, Patrick is also the author of Tangled Lines, the newspapers’ popular fly-fishing column—making The Lakeville Journal, as far as anyone knows, the only newspaper in Connecticut with a regular fly-fishing columnist. He once received a fan letter from England, which he considers sufficient evidence that his work has achieved international acclaim.
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