Rich Santer was born and grew up in St. Albans, England. He worked at Deloitte in London and Ernst & Young in Bermuda before moving to Stamford, CT in 1996. Rich continued in Financial Services with General Reinsurance Corp in Stamford before retiring in 2016.
Bob was born and raised in Darien on Blueberry Lane and has spent most of his life living here.
I grew up in Scottsdale Arizona, a small western town at the time. Boy Scouts and tennis were my favorite activities. I attended Arizona State University, but after my sophomore year, on a lark, I traveled to Venezuela to teach tennis. What I expected would be a 6-month adventure turned into a 3 ½ year life changing event; At the age of 21 I was the head tennis pro of the Caracas Country Club.
I left Venezuela to complete my undergraduate studies at Columbia College in New York. Upon graduating with a degree in Philosophy, my most marketable quality was being a gringo who spoke Spanish, with a demonstrated record of assimilation in the Latino world. That became my entre into the Latin American group of Manufacturers Hanover Trust where I spent 9 years, including postings in Peru and Venezuela.
In 1991 I left the bank and joined the New York office of Petroleos de Venezuela, as their financial representative. With the election of Hugo Chavez in 1999 my career at PDVSA came to an end. As that chapter was ending, the Brazilian oil company Petrobras was looking for someone of my background. I spent the next 18 years with Petrobras in their NY office, including eight years as the global head of investor relations. I left Petrobras in 2017 and ended my professional career in 2020 as the Executive Director of the Brazilian American Chamber of Commerce in New York.
In short, I spent 40 years associated with finance in Latin America, largely national oil companies, all because of an impulsive decision in 1975 to teach tennis in Venezuela. Since retiring I have dedicated most of my time to enjoying a life with few commitments and no commute. I golf frequently in the summer, and ski in the winter. I spend considerable time maintaining a family house in Thetford Vermont, where my Russian great grandparents settled after fleeing the Bolsheviks across Siberia in 1919.
I have been a Darien resident since 1991. Next to supporting my wife Susan in her many community activities, I consider my most meaningful contribution to be the first scoutmaster of Darien Boy Scout Troop 35, succeeded by my good friend and fellow DMA member, Pat Gentile. I have three children, the two oldest live in Denver and enjoy the outdoor life of the Rockies. Little chance of them returning to the tame Northeast. I have a 21-year-old daughter who will be graduating from Barnard College in December and will begin career in finance in New York in January.
John and his wife, Lilia, are snowbirds, living in Miami Beach in the winter and on Holly Pond, Stamford, in the summer. They have four children living in Barcelona, Brooklyn, Los Angeles and Stamford respectively, and four grandchildren with a fifth on the way.
John was born just outside Stratford-Upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. He graduated from Trinity Hall College, Cambridge University, with an MA in Natural Sciences, and joined Consolidated Gold Fields plc in the City of London as a management trainee. In 1978, he was seconded as a financial analyst to CGF’s steel distribution subsidiary, Azcon, which was headquartered in New York. After 18 months, he transferred to the US permanently, obtained a green card and joined The BOC Group in Montvale, NJ as Planning Manager. He moved to Wilton in 1987 after being recruited by a GE Capital-backed private equity group and later to Darien. His final career move came in 1995 when he joined and subsequently ran a boutique investment bank, Cambridge International Partners, in New York City advising on the purchase and sale of asset managers and Registered Investment Advisors. He retired in 2019, happy to give up the commute.
John is an enthusiastic, if amateur, golfer and sailor. He is also Vice Chairman of The Facial Pain Association whose mission is to provide support, education and advocacy for those with neuropathic facial pain.
Ed Sforza was born in the Bronx, NY and grew up in Hartsdale, NY. He graduated from Iona Prep in New Rochelle, NY and participated in three varsity sports; football, basketball, and baseball. He was captain of the football team and a member of the CHSFL and state championship football teams. Ed is also a proud member of Iona Prep’s Hall of Fame.Ed has been married to his wife Nancy for 42 years and they have three children; Ted, Caroline, and Megan. They are also blessed with three grandchildren; Chloe, Thomas, and Tess. Ed and Nancy have Lived in Darien for 40 years where they have made many priceless friendships.
Ed, whose wife suffers from Mixed Dementia, and his family, are dedicated to the Fight to End Alzheimer’s. In the last two years they’ve collectively raised over $35,000 for the Alzheimer’s Association whose mission is to provide resources and education to families impacted by the disease, as well as, raising critical funds for research which will (hopefully) lead to a cure.
Barry Silver was born and raised in the Philadelphia suburbs and doesn’t fully understand why you don’t love Philly too. Following Cheltenham High School he attended the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, graduating in 1982, and began a career in the fixed income markets side of Wall Street. After stops at Merrill Lynch and two other firms, for the last 28 years before retirement Barry was a Managing Director at MUFG Bank, Ltd., based in New York and leading the corporate client team for the interest rate derivatives business.
Barry married Akiko, a classical violinist, in late 1986 and they spent the following three magical years living in Tokyo, Japan. Moving to Darien in January 1990, they raised a son now based in New Haven and a daughter who currently lives in Nashville. Both are the most rabid Philadelphia Eagles fans in their respective zip codes. Akiko teaches violin and performs regularly in Darien, founded and directs the youth music program Chamber Music Institute, and was for many years a member of the Norwalk Symphony Orchestra, where Barry served as a Board Member. Barry also spent years as a volunteer swim referee and meet director for the New Canaan YMCA and at the state level for Connecticut Swimming, Inc. where he served as a Board Member, committee chair and Vice Chairman. He has also volunteered in the Darien Little League and Cub Scouts. In the distant past Barry wandered through Darien town politics, including serving on the RTM for six years.
Barry spends as much as possible of his time immersed in music and books, and enjoys lots of skiing, some biking, and limitless eating and drinking.
John Del Col was born in 1961 in Vineland, New Jersey, and grew up in Haworth, New Jersey. In 1984 he graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth College with a A.B. degree in history. While at Dartmouth, he was a member of the Alpine Ski Team and the Casque and Gauntlet senior society. After graduation, he worked several years marketing telex services for RCA Communications in New York, N.Y., where he met his future wife (Kathleen). Recognizing the imminent demise of the telex machine, John returned to school, graduating from Harvard Law School cum laude in 1989. He worked in private law practice in New York City at Sullivan & Cromwell and LeBoeuf, Lamb, Leiby & MacRae, as Assistant General Counsel at MeesPierson (a Dutch merchant bank) and as General Counsel at Chartwell Re Corporation and Trenwick Group Inc. John’s spent the last 19 years of his career working as General Counsel at Endurance Specialty Holdings Ltd., an international insurance company headquartered in Bermuda. He retired in 2022.
John and Kathleen were married in 1989, have been Darien residents since 1996 and have four adult children. They belong to Woodway Country Club and the Killington Ski Club. For hobbies, John enjoys skiing, water skiing, running, cycling and golf.
Sponsored by Charles Hurty
I was born and raised in Flushing, NY (where Tom Seaver lived around the corner!). And yes, I am still a NY
Mets fan. I went to Fordham Prep for high school and liked the campus, staying on to attend the College of
Business Administration School at Fordham – now called the Gabelli School of Business – receiving my BSBA.
During my college days I worked part-time for IBM installing typewriters, which led to a full-time position after
graduating Fordham.
I spent 16 years at IBM – 8 years in sales and 8 years in several different positions inside headquarters,
including management and executive assistant roles. After IBM, I assumed various sales and marketing roles
for smaller hardware companies across the US, until I retired in the summer of 2022.
As a Darien resident for almost 30 years, volunteering has been important to me. I was one of the founding
members of the Darien Professionals Networking Group, helping people understand the new processes of
networking with others to find their next assignments. I also served as Chair of the St. Thomas More Parish
Council.
Additionally for 12 years, I was the State of CT Harbor Master for Darien. Having recently retired from this
role, I am currently the Commodore of the Darien Boat Club. I have two grown daughters and enjoy boating
with my wife.
Social Activities: Anchors Aweigh! Sign up at this Wednesday’s DMA meeting for Oyster Boat outing on October 13. Jan Selkowitz announces that Bryan Hooper has successfully arranged another of the popular Oyster Boat trips for Thursday October 13. Thanks Bryan! Before the vessel leaves a docent will give an interesting talk about the Long Island Sound waters. The boat can take 12 DMA Members. Sign up at this week’s (Sept 21) Wednesday meeting. For questions, contact Bryan Hooper: jbryanh@optonline.net
THE SHADOW OF THE WINDThe histories of a mysterious book and its enigmatic author are painstakingly disentangled in this yeasty Dickensian romance: a first novel by a Spanish novelist now living in the US.
We meet its engaging narrator Daniel Sempere in 1945, when he’s an 11-year-old boy brought by his father, a Barcelona rare-book dealer, to a secret library known as the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Enthralled, Daniel “chooses” an obscure novel, The Shadow of the Wind, a complex quest tale whose author, Julian Carax, reputedly fled Spain at the outbreak of its Civil War, and later died in Paris. Carax and his book obsess Daniel for a decade, as he grows to manhood, falls in and out of fascination, if not love with three beguiling women, and comes ever closer to understanding who Carax was and how he was connected to the family of tyrannical Don Ricardo Aldaya—and why a sinister, “faceless” stranger who identifies himself as Carax’s fictional creation (“demonic”) “Lain Coubert” has seemingly “got out of the pages of a book so that he could burn it.” Daniel’s investigations are aided, and sometimes impeded, by a lively gallery of vividly evoked supporting characters. Prominent among them are secretive translator Nuria Monfort (who knows more about Carax’s Paris years than she initially reveals); Aldaya family maid Jacinta Coronada, consigned to a lunatic asylum to conceal what she knows; Daniel’s ebullient Sancho Panza Fermin Romero de Torres, a wily vagrant working as “bibliographic detective” in the Semperes’ bookstore; and vengeful police inspector Fumero, a Javert-like stalker whose refusal to believe Carax is dead precipitates the climax—at which Daniel realizes he’s much more than just a reader of Carax’s intricate, sorrowful story.
The Shadow of the Wind will keep you up nights—and it’ll be time well spent. Absolutely marvelous.
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