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SHERMAN – Residents will have a chance to decide whether they want a new senior center at a town meeting later this month.

“Some people still don’t think we need one and others have thought we’ve needed one for the last 20 years, so it just depends on who you ask," First Selectman Don Lowe said.

The existing Sherman Senior Center, located at 8 Route 37, has served as a gathering space for the town’s seniors for about three decades, Lowe said. It is open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays and serves residents age 55 and up.

He described the senior center as “a one-room building with a kitchen attached,” with about 1,200 square feet of usable space.

“The space, as small as it is, is currently and has been utilized very well by our senior center director and a lot goes on there,” Lowe said.

The Sherman Senior Center offers a walking group on the Veterans Field track, a bridge club, bingo, senior dines at American Pie, shopping trips to the Danbury Fair mall and spots in New Milford, chair yoga and pinochle, among other educational and recreational programs, activities and trips.

It also serves as a meeting space for many town organizations, including the Sherman Historical Society, the Democratic Town Committee and the Sherman Veterans Association.

The Board of Selectman is interested in developing a senior center that accommodates more seniors with a larger range of physical abilities, hobbies and programming interests, Lowe said.

“Our demographics lean heavily toward the senior population, and it looks like that’s the trend going forward,” he said. “Our current senior center serves a vitally important function to the seniors it serves, but we want to reach out to a wider range of seniors and offer them programs.”

The proposed new senior center would be 4,000 to 4,500 square feet, Lowe said, and would be built near Colonial Field near the town’s community gardens. The facility might also include some accommodations – such as office space – for the town Parks and Recreation Department, he said.

The total cost of building a new senior center is not yet known, Lowe said.

If a new senior center were built, the existing building would continue to serve as a meeting space for many organizations, he said. In addition to providing office space for the town’s Social Services Department, the space would likely become a home for the Sherman Veterans Association, Lowe said.

The Board of Selectmen is bringing the proposal to a referendum vote to find out “one way or another whether the town wants a new senior center or not,” he said.

“We’ve been after this for over two years,” Lowe said of the proposed new senior center. “And it’s been something I’ve had my eye on since I’ve become first selectman, but ultimately the voters of Sherman will determine in referendum whether this is going to happen or not.”

The town meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 15, at Mallory Town Hall.

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The public will vote on whether to approve a request to use $9,000 from the town’s capital fund for preliminary renderings and site drawings for a proposed new senior center.

If the public were to “yes,” the project would go out to bid and the town would start construction as soon as possible, Lowe said. The town would also look for a possible donor to help fund the project, he said.

“It would be as soon as possible after a successful referendum,” Lowe said. “If the referendum is not successful, then there’s nothing to build.”

For more information on the services offered through the senior center, visit www.townofshermanct.org/senior_center.

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SHERMAN — Sherman has long been a farming town, but some might not know that it was home to a number of influential artists, writers and other creatives in the mid-20th century.

In the Sherman Historical Society’s newest book, "Reflections," current and former residents share memories and stories about those who took up residence in town like a Broadway dancer, actress, model and health and beauty guru Marguerite Agniel — a picture of whom is featured on the book’s cover.

Longtime resident Frank Weddell, who grew up in Sherman in the 1950s and 1960s, wrote the chapter about the “colorful lady,” he met during his childhood.

Agniel had a home on Orange Pepper Road, as well as one overlooking Timber Lake, according to Weddell, who said she was “pretty much broke” when he met her while out on his bike one day.

Though his parents weren’t thrilled about him socializing with a woman known for incorporating nudism in her work, Weddell said he and Agniel became and remained friends “for the rest of the years (he) knew her.”

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“She was an interesting character — a lovely person as well. We had a lot of characters in Sherman early on,” said Sherman Historical Society volunteer and board member Ginny Zellner, who worked with curator Gloria Thorne to coordinate the effort to create "Reflections."

Thorne said the idea for the book came from stories they have heard over the years.

“People who lived in town their whole lives kept telling me about this colony of artists and writers,” she said.

Zellner — who had also heard stories about a group of talented people who came from New York in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s and were different from everyone else in town — said it “wasn’t just by chance that these artists, writers and dancers lived here.”

As Weddell noted in one of his chapters, many were attracted to Sherman because of low rent and proximity to New York City.

Team effort

In 2019, Thorne said she invited three residents to her house to discuss the idea of putting a book together on the talented individuals who called Sherman home.

“We didn’t know how to put a book together either, but I knew that we could do it — and that’s how it got started,” she said.

From there, the number of contributors grew — resulting in a committee of nine current and former Sherman residents.

“We began by making a list of possible people we could write about and from that list, they chose the ones they were most familiar with to write about,” Thorne said.

In addition to Agniel, other creatives featured in the book include Armenian-born painter Arshile Gorky, who had a strong influence on abstract expressionism in the 20th century and spent the last years of his life in Sherman.

There’s also a section about Peter Blume, a painter and sculptor whose works can be found at Sherman’s town hall and library, as well as museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Russian-born artist had a home on Church Road, across the street from writer and poet Malcolm Cowley.

“It’s kind of interesting that we started as a farming community and stayed a farming community, but this influx of the culture became a secondary thing in Sherman that just snowballed,” said Doris Tomaselli, who designed the cover of the book. “We seem to attract artistic and talented people here, and we’re very proud of that.”

In addition to stories and memories of the talented individuals who called Sherman home, "Reflections" features biographies of those who contributed to the book.

“As they wrote about people they knew way back when some of them were children, we asked if they would do short biographies about themselves,” Zellner said. “With that, the book became kind of a unique presentation of two sets — stories about the artists and stories about those writing about them. All in all, I think it turned out to be quite an interesting book.”

The book took about 2 1/2 years to complete, and the historical society received copies of it the first week of October.

"Reflections" is one of several books published by the Sherman Historical Society, and it probably won’t be the last.

“There were artists, writers and dancers here in Sherman — but a whole other part was the farming community — and many of the people who wrote for 'Reflections' want to do another book on those people that they knew,” Zellner said. “I don’t know what the next one will be, but I think there will be another book.”

"Reflections" is available for purchase at the Old Store Museum Gift Shop on Route 37.

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17

SHERMAN — From a young age, Miriam “Mimi” Nelson, said she was interested in art — but it wasn’t until she was 55 that she discovered she had a talent for sculpting.

“A friend gave me a piece of stone and told me all I needed was a hammer and a wedge,” said Nelson, now 99, about first sculpture, a man’s head created from agate. “That first night, I finished 90 percent of it. I could hardly wait to get home from work the next day to finish it.”

Nelson’s very first sculpture, “Adam,” will be featured along several of her small sculptures and paintings in a special art exhibit at the Sherman Library. The show “Free Spirit” will be on display at the library, 1 Sherman Ctr, and on the library’s website from March 31 through May 10. Nelson will be at the library for a special gathering on April 2.

“I thought it would be a group of artists but then I heard it was just me," said Nelson, a retired psychotherapist who will celebrate her 100th birthday in October. "It’s sort of exciting thinking somebody thought it was worthwhile.”

Growing up in “a musical family,” Nelson said she wanted to take art classes but was instead forced to take piano lessons for seven years. She later found a way to pursue her interest in art through small projects, such as a mosaic she created out of tiles at the house she built with her first husband, Irv Weinstock, in Croton, N.Y., in 1956.

“My mother was always doing something with art,” said Judith Weinstock, Nelson’s daughter.

Nelson has two children, Judith and a late son Richard, as well as two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

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Nelson said she wanted to learn about sculpting shortly after completing “Adam.” She signed up for a class in stone sculptures offered by the Museum School at the Museum of Art in Coral Gables, Fla., in January 1982.

Nelson said the one thing the class taught her was how to create abstract art, but she felt she learned better from doing her own artwork.

“I am largely self taught in everything I do,” Nelson said.

Nelson produced a variety of small and large sculptures crafted from stone, bronze, steel and aluminum over the years — some of which were exhibited in galleries in and around Miami, Fla. She also produced sculptures that were sold to homes on the Hudson River and at the Stone Quarry Hill Art Park in Cazenovia, N.Y. Nelson said her favorite sculpture, titled “The Wave,” was sold “in different places to different people.”

Nelson said she considers herself a sculptor, though she no longer sculpts. Weinstock said the upstairs studio of her mother’s house in Sherman was set up for Nelson to paint and make jewelry with beads.

In addition to painting landscapes, Nelson said she painted “people who appeal to me in the way of the face.”

“I’m interested in different things about people’s faces,” Nelson said. “Different faces appeal for different reasons.”

A collection of Nelson’s paintings hang throughout the walls of Nelson’s home in Sherman, while a variety of her sculptures sit around the home and in her backyard. “Adam,” the only non-abstract work to be featured in the library’s art show, sits on one of the bookshelves in Nelson’s room.

Along with her interest in art, Nelson said she’s always been interested in people and their motives, which led her to a career in psychotherapy. She practiced alongside her second husband, George Nelson, who specialized in hypnotherapy, in Miami, Fla., for about 20 years. She moved to Sherman in 1989 where she continued practicing psychotherapy for a short while.

“I enjoyed meeting people and knowing I can help them,” Nelson said of her work as a psychotherapist, adding, “I had a couple people I knew I’d never be able to help and that was probably the most frustrating part.”

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SHERMAN — Voters have overwhelmingly rejected a nonprofit's proposal to create Sherman’s first senior housing development.

The vote tally for Saturday's referendum was 554 “no” votes and 186 “yes” votes.

“I wasn’t surprised by the outcome, based on what I was hearing around town,” Sherman First Selectman Don Lowe said. “It’s kind of what I expected frankly.”

The referendum, held at the Sherman Emergency Services Facility from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., asked residents whether the town should lease about 50 percent of an about 15-acre property behind the American Pie Company so that housing for people ages 55 and older could be developed. The Independence Village of Sherman, a nonprofit organization comprised of local committee members, sponsored the proposal.

The town proposed leasing the land at 29 Route 37 Center to a private developer for $1 a year, plus assessed taxes. The senior housing development would include a combination of 52 studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments available to rent. The housing would be open to all who were eligible, not only Sherman seniors.

Several Sherman residents have voiced concerns about the project after the town proposed it last spring. Their concerns focused on the development’s impact on the town’s rural character, as well as the town’s responsibility in the event of the project’s failure.

Now that the referendum is over, Lowe said, “There really are no plans right now to go forward. I think that the idea of putting housing on that town land that was proposed – the 15.5 acres – I don’t think that will ever happen in Sherman really, at least not for many, many years.”

If anything, Lowe said, the referendum was about developing land on the property behind the American Pie Company.

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“I don’t think there will be any proposals on that piece of land for a long time,” he said. “There’s nothing in the plans right now for senior housing in Sherman. I think if it does come about, it’s going to be on property by a private entity — I don’t think it will ever happen on town property.”

Ted Hollander of the Independence Village of Sherman said he was very disappointed by the referendum’s outcome.

He said one of the main reasons voters rejected the proposal was “the voters didn’t like the idea of giving the developer a break on the cost of the lease, even though the break would be compensated in the future with real estate taxes paid to the town.”

Another reason voters might have voted “no,” Hollander said, was there were too many unknown factors regarding the specifics of any multi-family dwellings that would be at the housing development.

“We purposely tried to avoid discussion of specifics,” he said. “We just tried to talk about concepts. We preferred to leave the specifics to the legislative body of the town… This was spelled out in the referendum what we expected to happen downstream if the referendum was approved and apparently the voters were not willing to trust what the legislative body might do in the future.”

Hollander said there were also residents who felt there wasn’t a need for senior housing in town, or who were concerned about the possibility of outsiders moving into Sherman through this new housing.

“We had tried — apparently unsuccessfully — to overcome that fear," he said of the concern that new residents would move to town.

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10

NEW MILFORD — Through her 25 years of experience in human resources, Dawn Tuthill said she knows how important it is to “bring to light how people can get help.”

“When you’re in human resources, you happen to deal with people on a very personal level, so you get to hear more of their personal life and story,” said Tuthill “Everybody has different issues that arise in their lives… It’s something I’ve been doing for so long, so when someone comes to me with some kind of problem, I work to help them resolve it.”

That experience inspired her to open Breathe Peace Wellness, a group of licensed and credited health and wellness practitioners that operate out of Suite 3 at 30 Bridge St. The center opened in December and is available by appointment.

Tuthill said she intended to create “a holistic health resource center” where people can access a number of wellness services and “work with people that can address different physical, mental and emotional components of health and healing.”

“I’ve had a focus on health and healing myself for a while,” said Tuthill, a Sherman resident who has worked in human resources in the Connecticut-New York area. She was named vice president of human resources for Lex Products Corp. in 2014, according to the company.

“I do a lot with employee health, wellness and safety as part of my job — educating people on stress reduction and navigating health challenges — so this opportunity came up for me to pull together a number of people who can offer different services and people who are focused on health and healing.”

In addition to health and career coaching, Breathe Peace Wellness offers massage therapy, energy healing, spiritual wellness and workplace wellness programs. Tuthill said the team includes three massage therapists, a hypnotherapist, two therapists, and an individual who focuses on energy healing, Reiki, journaling therapy and other healing techniques.

She said she'd like to add services and health coaches, as well as partner with someone “who has an accreditation in nutrition.”

“Sometimes people are not aware that there are individuals out there that can work with you, that can support health and healing," Tuthill said. "It’s important for people to realize there’s support out there.”