Wolcott Memories – My Personal Melting Pot

It was September of 1954. I had just turned 6 a few weeks before and I was beginning first grade. There were no public kindergartens in town and so this was my first experience with taking the yellow school bus (Bus 3). The school was less than a mile away, but I had never been in Alcott School before. I would soon learn that it had been named from a famous man who had been born in Wolcott, Amos Bronson Alcott, but it would be many decades later that I would discover that I was actually related to him. For now, it was just the local elementary school where I would be challenged to learn many new things. My world, which up until then had been confined to the small group of houses around us, was about to expand. In just a few years, I would buy my first bicycle and would be able to bike all around the northern part of town.

I was also meeting my fellow first-graders for the first time as well. Some of them were from families who had been residents of Wolcott for several generations. Others, including myself, were from families who had been in the US for a long time, but who had only recently moved to Wolcott. And others were from families who had been in this country for only a short time and whose parents or grandparents still spoke the language of their native country at home.

I don’t recall any of my classmates as being from rich families, or any whose parents had been to college or who were “professionals” like doctors or lawyers. Wolcott was a “bedroom community” where most of the men commuted to work at the various factories or businesses in Waterbury, Bristol, or other places around us. Most of the families had stay-at-home mothers as well. Wolcott had begun growing right after the war (World War II) was over and many of the fathers were veterans. I and my fellow students were some of the early baby boomers – a term used for those born in the period 1946-1964 and who had been conceived following the end of the war in 1945. But I don’t think that term had been invented yet either (see http://www.history.com/topics/baby-boomers for an interesting review of this term).

But all these facts were not ones that I knew of or cared about at the time. I only recall looking around at all the other members of my class and seeing a bunch of kids whom I didn’t yet know – all of us slightly apprehensive, and perhaps even a bit scared (although we wouldn’t admit it). Some of the kids knew a few of their classmates because they were from the same street or neighborhood, or because they were related (like the Clement twins, Louise and Marie, and their cousin, also named Louise). And while we were all wearing “new” clothes (the ones we had worn for playing outside the previous week were not suitable for school wear), it wasn’t the clothes that we paid attention to – it was all the faces of our classmates that interested us.

Over the next several weeks we would all get to know each other in a variety of ways. Sometimes it was because that person sat next to us. Sometimes it was because we were assigned to the same group – either because we were in the same reading/math level, or because we had to work on teams in an art project. And because we had daily recess time outside (where there were sandboxes, a paved area, and a field for running around), the interactions in the various games were great for learning about each other as well (although many of the games were gender-divided because the boys had interests in more physical play and the girls’ dresses were not suitable for some of those games).

It’s now been over six decades since that day in early September of 1954. Some of my friends from that day stayed with me in school for the next 12 years and we graduated together from Wolcott High School in 1966. Some of them moved away during that period and were no longer heard from again – but they were replaced by others as the town continued to grow and new families moved in. Some of them have passed away, but many of us still lead active lives. I left to attend college and did not live in Wolcott afterwards, but some of my classmates still live there. I was able to reconnect with some of them at our 40^th high school reunion and still others at our 50^th high school reunion last fall. And with all the changes in the intervening years, it is perhaps amazing that I am still in touch with some of my classmates via social media (Facebook).

With the perspective that comes with age and maturity (not the same thing), I look back and consider the melting pot that our small group of first-graders represented. That was not something that any of us cared about at the time, but we were all part of that vast experience that is not something that you can always find in other countries where things like class, income, or family background are sometimes used to separate people.

New England in the early 1600s was primary settled by people from England. And when the first settlers came to Wolcott in the 1730s, they were still primarily of English ancestry. That remained true for the next 100 or so years. Immigration from other countries increased significantly beginning in the mid-1800s, driven by things like the Irish potato famine in 1845-1849, German immigration in 1840-1890, famine in southern Italy in the early 1900s, etc.

Thus, by the mid-1900s, the primarily blue-collar workers from Waterbury and Bristol who contributed to the growth in Wolcott (see http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/04/wolcott-history-chronology-of-wolcott.html) were a mix of all these people groups. And my first-grade class had that same sort of mix:

·       Some, like myself, were from families who had been in American for over 300 years and who had primarily English roots.

·       Some, like Bobby Schrager, were from German families.

·       Some, like Jay Pikiell, were of Polish extraction (see http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/02/wolcott-history-polish-connection.html)

·       Some, like the Clement girls, were of French origin, but whose family had been in French-speaking Canada for several generations.

But none of that mattered to our small group of first-graders at Alcott School. We were just a bunch of six-year-olds, all slightly apprehensive, and ready to begin participation in the melting pot of our class.