As anniversaries go, five years may not seem all that significant.
After all, in this issue we have a story about A Better Chance of Darien celebrating twenty-five years of bringing academically talented minority girls to live and study in that town. And we have a Snapshot about Silver Hill Hospital’s seventy-five years as one of this country’s preeminent not-for-profit psychiatric facilities. Even at our own company, Greenwich Magazine is engaged in a yearlong sixtieth anniversary celebration.
But at New Canaan • Darien Magazine, we’re excited about the fact that with this issue we’ve been around for five years and we’re starting on year number six. What impresses me most is how quickly the time has gone by.
It was September 2001 — just days after September 11 — when we opened an office on Grove Street in New Canaan and began planning our first magazine. Like everyone, we were still reeling from the recent terrorist attacks. What better way to deal with shock than to plunge into our own big task at hand?
There really was no time to waste. The first issue was set for March 2002. That gave us a mere five months to get to know the communities we would be writing about, assess topics that would attract the attention of potential readers and create a publication that reflected those interests. Thinking back now, the “to do” list was daunting — and included everything from designing a new logo to choosing a postage meter (a task, by the way, that eventually led to a feature on Darien’s Michael Critelli, CEO of Pitney Bowes, the leader in the postage meter industry!).
To get us started, we held a series of informal roundtables and invited people who were involved in the community to come in and discuss their impressions of the towns. People like Ginny Rider and Jenny Field of the New Canaan Women’s Club, Susan Eng from the New Canaan YMCA, prominent volunteers like Kay Barker and Charlotte Suhler from Darien, Anne Rowland from the Darien Chamber of Commerce and many, many more. I also spent hours visiting town leaders like former First Selectmen Dick Bond of New Canaan and Bob Harrell of Darien, and even more time studying maps and driving up one street and down another.
It paid off. Looking through my notes from those encounters, it’s amazing how many story ideas actually were born in those meetings. For example, Ginny suggested that we write about the rescue and restoration of the WPA murals in all of our towns, and Jenny thought a story of modern-day grandparenting would be of interest to people she knew. Anne alerted us to all the changes that were in the wind for Darien’s downtown, while Gigi Priebe, one of the founders of the Stepping Stones Museum for Children, felt strongly that readers wanted to see articles on serious topics. Over the years we have heeded Gigi’s very good advice, starting with “teens and stress” in our debut magazine.
But it was my friend Carole Claps, an active member of the Darien Arts Council and longtime town resident, who suggested a story highlighting both rivalries and similarities between New Canaan and Darien. And, she said, make sure the cover has an image that shows both towns. How about using high school cheerleaders?
That’s how the cover of our first issue came to feature New Canaan High School cheerleader Elise Urbahn linking arms with Jessica Fields from Darien High. For this anniversary issue, we tracked down those two young women. Both are now college seniors — Elise attends Wake Forest and Jessica is at the University of Southern California. It was fun to see them again. Looking at how they had matured over five years was a clear visual reminder that time really has gone by!
Of course, as time passes, things change. One need only look at the staff photo in our December issue to see the new faces. However, in a business where change often comes at a frenetic pace, our core staff has been remarkably stable. Cate Branca and I are still managing the editorial department, Mike Klotz is only our second full-time art director and Margaret Hart is our original weddings editor. As for writers, in our first two issues we had bylines from Timothy Dumas, Beth Longware Duff, Leslie Chess Feller, Sherri Daley and Bill Slocum — names that still appear with regularity. Among our photographers, Bob Capazzo has gone from being freelance to on staff. Our editorial advisory board has (by design) maintained a good mix of longevity and new blood, with special thanks going to Rita Kirby, Amy Wilkinson and State Rep. John Ryan, who have been around from the beginning.
During the past five years, we’ve expanded our annual publishing schedule to a full twelve issues, extended our coverage in Rowayton and inaugurated our Best of the Gold Coast as a highlight for August. Starting in September 2004, the entire magazine, including People & Places and Weddings, went color, and in March 2006 we moved our offices to Westport as Moffly Publications took over an entire office building.
Yet the best thing that has occurred over these past sixty months is that we’ve interacted with so many of you. Whether you’ve been part of our social pages, the subject of a feature or a person we’ve met at one of the scores of events we’ve attended and/or sponsored, it’s been fun getting to know you.
Now it’s on to the next five years. As anyone familiar with publishing realizes, the focus is always on what’s coming up. Already our editorial calendar of stories for 2007 is nearly full, and soon we’ll be looking for gardens to photograph for an article to run in summer 2008.
It’s a privilege to work in these wonderful communities. Stay in touch!