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Dwight Lee Chapin will speak to us about his new book The President’s Man | The Memoirs of Nixon’s Trusted Aide (William Morrow). Dwight will share the background on the book and why he wrote it, provide an overview of his relationship with President Nixon, and describe first-hand accounts of the historic and fascinating events and happenings of the Nixon era of which he was an eyewitness.

Dwight was born in Wichita, Kansas on December 2, 1940. He was a field worker on Richard Nixon’s 1962 gubernatorial campaign while he was still in college. From 1967-68, he worked as the Personal Aide to former Vice President Richard Nixon during his presidential campaign. After Nixon’s election victory, he became Special Assistant to the President, serving as Appointments Secretary. He held that position from 1969 until he became Deputy Assistant to the President in 1971. Dwight was named one of the “Ten Outstanding Young Men” by the Jaycees in 1972 for his contribution to President Nixon’s visit to China. He remained in his role as Deputy Assistant until he left the White House Staff in March 1973. Revealing in-depth memoirs about his time with Nixon, The President’s Man is Dwight’s first book and was published in February 2022.

From Richard Nixon’s “You-won’t-have-Nixon-to-kick-around-anymore” 1962 gubernatorial campaign through his world-changing trips to China and the Soviet Union and epic downfall, Dwight was by his side. As his Personal Aide and then Deputy Assistant in the White House, Dwight was with him in his most private and most public moments. He traveled with him, assisted, advised, strategized, campaigned and learned from one of America’s most controversial presidents. As Bob Haldeman’s protege, Dwight worked with Henry Kissinger in opening China—then eventually went to prison in the aftermath of Watergate although he had no involvement in it.

In 1986, Dwight created his own consulting company, Chapin Enterprises. He also remained active in politics and worked on Ronald Reagan’s 1980 and 1984 presidential campaigns and George H. W. Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign. He later went on to work as a business consultant, mentor, and public speaker. Currently, retired, Dwight resides in Riverside, Connecticut with his wife Terry. They are blessed with five children between them and fifteen grandchildren.

Video Presentation

Arranged by Tom Igoe

Alexandra “Ali” Ramsteck, the Director of the Department of Human Services in Darien, will lead a discussion on the vital role that the Department plays in our community. In particular, the Department provides a wide variety of services, including supportive counseling, assessments for benefits and program eligibility, as well as case management for any Darien resident. In addition, the organization provides crisis intervention, assistance with mental health, substance abuse and domestic violence issues, and emergency financial assistance.

Ali has been a resident of Darien for 19 years along with her 3 daughters. She received her bachelor’s degree in Human Development and Sociology from Boston College. Upon graduation, she entered Columbia University and received a master’s degree in Clinical Social Work. Ali began her career at New York Presbyterian Hospital Cornell, Westchester Division where she worked for 8 years, initially on the Children’s Inpatient Psychiatric Unit and then as the Senior Social Worker on the Geriatric Inpatient Psychiatric Unit.

Ali has been working for the Darien Human Services Department since January 2012. She began as a part-time Case Manager and was later promoted to full time Assistant Director in April 2016. In April of 2017, Ali was promoted to Director of the Department which currently serves hundreds of clients.

In addition to serving as Director of Human Services, Ali has extensive community involvement, serving as a member of or working with a variety of other service organizations, including: At Home in Darien; the Human Services Planning Council; the Darien/New Canaan Unit of Salvation Army; the Darien Domestic Abuse Council; the State of Connecticut Municipal Veteran Service; the Abilis/Darien YMCA Project SEARCH Steering Committee; the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) Committee for Darien; and Darien’s Juvenile Review Board .

Ali also serves as Chair of the Darien Mental Health Task Force, which Darien recently created following the untimely deaths by suicide earlier this year. The purpose of the Task Force, comprised of mental health experts and key community leaders, has been to address the acute mental health issues in our Town, to communicate closely and coordinate all the services and supports currently being offered to the Darien community, and to develop suicide prevention and postvention plans.

Arranged by Frank DeLeo

Video of presentation

Dr. C. Griffith Mann will present a talk entitled “Unicorns and Heroes: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Tapestries at The Met Cloisters,” an in-depth look at the Unicorn Tapestries and the Heroes Tapestries. The Unicorn Tapestries are among the most beautiful and complex works of art from the late Middle Ages that survive. Luxuriously woven in fine wool and silk with silver and gilded threads, the tapestries vividly depict scenes associated with a hunt for the elusive, magical unicorn. The Heroes Tapestries, representing the Hebrew heroes (Joshua and David), the Christian hero (King Arthur), and the pagan heroes (Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar), are thought to have been made around 1400. Once part of a larger ensemble featuring Nine Heroes, these remarkable tapestries are among the earliest large-scale tapestries to survive from a moment when these ensembles were part of princely collections, and are currently being conserved at the Met.

By way of background, the Metropolitan Museum of Art possesses the finest, most comprehensive collection of Medieval and Byzantine art in the western hemisphere. It is held in two locations: the galleries of the Met’s main building on 5th Avenue and The Met Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park. This talk will explore the history of these two unique sets of tapestries on view at the Cloisters.

Dr. Mann was appointed The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Michel David-Weill Curator in Charge of the Department of Medieval Art and the Met Cloisters in September 2013. In this role, he is responsible for the medieval collections and curatorial staff in the Met’s main building, and for directing the staff and operations of the Met Cloisters, the branch of the Metropolitan Museum dedicated to the art and architecture of medieval Europe. Dr. Mann received his B.A. in art history and history from Williams College, and his Ph.D. in medieval art from The Johns Hopkins University. A specialist in the arts of late medieval Italy, he has published on civic patronage, painting, and devotion in Tuscany. As a curator, Dr. Mann has worked on exhibitions on the medieval cult of relics, the art and archaeology of medieval Novgorod, and French manuscript illumination of the 13th century.

Arranged by Tom Igoe

Video Presentation

Dr. Frank Bartolomeo, Senior Clinical Advisor, Adolescent Services, at Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, will speak to us on the mental health crisis facing adolescents in America today. As we have seen in recent years, there has been a serious increase in depression and anxiety among adolescents and young adults, viewed from virtually all measures. A high percentage of college students are burdened with anxieties that interfere with their daily functioning. The number of visits by children and young adults to emergency rooms for suicidal ideation has increased significantly. And rates of depression have gone up dramatically.

For Dr. Bartolomeo, time is of the essence: “I am driven by the knowledge that if we can intervene in a teen crisis today to help build resilience, we may prevent longer term suffering.” Increasing resilience to Dr. Bartolomeo means having the capacity to bounce back from adversity through the support of meaningful relationships with friends, family or community. It has been a guiding principle for Dr. Bartolomeo over the course of his 30-year career working with 13- to 18-year-olds, as well as emerging adults ages 18 to 29. “And hand-in-hand with restoring that sense of connectedness,” he says, “is helping adolescents develop skills to cope with life on life’s terms.”

“Adolescence is a time of great vulnerability,” Dr. Bartolomeo says, “but also presents an opportunity to reduce the likelihood of teenage conditions continuing into adulthood.” In addition to his work with adolescents at Silver Hill, he provides group therapy at Steward House, the program for executives and high-profile individuals.

Frank comes from a large Italian-Irish family and grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Massachusetts. He is a first-generation college graduate. He received his B.A. in History from University of Massachusetts Amherst and studied abroad at the University of London. Unable to find a job teaching history, he found himself working at a residential program for profoundly disturbed children. Subsequently, he earned his Masters of Social Work degree from Boston University and his Ph.D. in Social Work from Simmons University in Boston. His doctoral research focused on the use of group therapy with resistant teenagers.

Throughout his career, Frank has been passionate about the healing power of groups. For the first 15 years of his career, Frank worked primarily in the public sector, first with adjudicated gang members for Boston’s inner-city. In 2005, he was introduced to the world of private behavioral healthcare and became the Clinical Director, then Executive Director of a private therapeutic boarding school in the Berkshires for troubled adolescents from affluent families. Dr. Bartolomeo was struck by the similarities in behaviors between adolescents across the socio-economic spectrum. Counter-intuitively, affluence has been found to be a risk factor for adolescent depression, anxiety, and substance abuse.

A frequent speaker at the local and national level, Frank volunteers as a consulting editor for the Journal of the American Society of Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama. His most recent scholarly publication (2022) was a co-authored book chapter: Bartolomeo, F., Stafford, A., & Gerber, A. (2022). Emerging Adulthood: A review of developmental perspectives. In Z. Kahn & J. Martinez (Eds.), Emerging adults in therapy. (pp. 3 -19). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Arranged by Tom Igoe

Video Presentation

DMA member Jim Cameron, long-time commuter advocate and newspaper commentator, will speak to us on Connecticut’s transportation future: Will riders ever return to commuter rail? Who will pay to keep the trains running when Federal money is gone? Where will money be found to repair our highways? How will new residential/workplace trends affect Connecticut’s economy? Jim will explore the options in an engaging, thought-provoking workshop with plenty of time to hear your ideas and answer your questions.

Born and raised in Toronto, Jim attended Lehigh University and then worked in broadcasting and journalism in Hartford, Boston and New York City. He is the recipient of a George Foster Peabody Award for his work at NBC News. In 1993 Jim joined the Connecticut Commuter Rail Council where he served 11 years as Vice Chairman and four years as Chairman. He later founded The Commuter Action Group to push for reforms on behalf of Metro-North riders.

Since 2003 Jim has authored a weekly newspaper column and blog, “Talking Transportation,” which appears Mondays in four online news websites across Connecticut including CT Mirror and CT Examiner. He is also author of the tell-all book: “Off the Record: Confessions of a Media Consultant.”

Jim has lived in Darien for 30 years where he serves as Program Director of the town’s government TV station, Darien TV79. He also serves on the Merritt Parkway Conservancy and Darien’s “Representative Town Meeting” but says he has no aspirations for higher office. “The only thing I’m running for is the train,” he says.

Arranged by Tom Igoe

Video Presentation

DMA member Ted Helms will speak with our group about the startling demise of Venezuela in his presentation entitled “Venezuela – A Failed State: Story of the Road to Destruction.” As Ted observes, it is not widely understood or appreciated just how rich and developed Venezuela was, including the wealth of its resource base, and the abject condition in which it currently finds itself. Large numbers of people, representing 25% of its population, have fled the country in desperation, with entire families walking as far as Chile or the United States, literally to escape starvation. Today, Venezuela is arguably a failed state with no foreseeable possibility of returning to its prosperous and democratic past. Based on his first-hand experience, Ted will highlight the root causes of Venezuela’s road to ruin, and why, under any plausible scenario, its future remains bleak.

Ted Helms lived in Caracas for three years in the late 1970s, as a tennis teacher to the oligarchy, witnessing the boom years that followed OPEC’s fourfold oil price increase. He returned to Caracas in the 1980s as the country manager for Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company during a period of economic volatility. In the 1990s Ted was the New York-based financial representative for Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., the national oil company (PDVSA), when Venezuela nearly doubled its oil production and became the United States’ leading oil supplier.

In the course of his work in the country, Ted experienced, first-hand, Venezuelan society, politics, and economy under six presidential administrations. His direct involvement with Venezuela ended shortly after the election of Hugo Chavez in 1999, so he lightheartedly refers to himself as the ‘first exile” of Hugo Chavez.

Arranged by Tom Lom

Video Presentation 

Mark Contreras, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Connecticut Public and a member of the board of Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), will speak to us on the role of public television in the State of Connecticut.

Mark has led several media businesses through digital transformation. Prior to his role as dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University, Contreras served as CEO of Calkins Media, a privately-held local television, digital and local newspaper publishing company. Calkins developed innovative strategies to maximize audience reach, engagement and revenue by embracing streaming media platforms such as Roku, Amazon Fire and Apple TV. He previously led local newspaper publishing and digital businesses for three public companies including Capital Cities/ABC, Pulitzer, Inc. and The E.W. Scripps Co.

In addition, he served as chairman of the News Media Association and the American Press Institute. He is a fellow of the Millennium Class of Henry Crown Fellows of the Aspen Institute. He serves on the board of directors of Highlights for Children in Columbus, Ohio and Woodward Communications, Inc in Dubuque, Iowa.

The son of an Irish-American school teacher and a Mexican immigrant, Mark grew up in the Midwest—first in Minneapolis and later Chicago. He has an A.B. in History from the University of Chicago and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Mark and his wife, Marybeth Sughrue, have one adult son, Michael.

Video Presentation  

Arranged by Tom Igoe and Charles Salmans

David Genovese, who leads Baywater Properties, a privately held commercial real estate company serving Fairfield and Westchester Counties, will provide us with an update on the progress of the Corbin District Project, a major undertaking involving the development of a series of new buildings, shops, residential facilities and public community spaces in the heart of Darien that will forever transform and enliven the character of our Town.

David founded Baywater Properties in 2001, following a 12-year career in real estate investment banking in New York and London. Prior to founding Baywater, David served as co-head of Real Estate Investment Banking for Credit Suisse First Boston. Previously, David served as a managing director in Bankers Trust Company’s Real Estate Investment Banking Group.

Through the course of his career in investment banking, David was responsible for a variety of transactions valued in excess of $15.0 billion, including mergers and acquisitions, equity offerings, bond offerings, securitized financings, bank loans, and principal investments.

David is an honors graduate of Colby College and The London School of Economics and Political Science. David also received an MBA from The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania. David is currently a member of the board of directors of The Human Services Council of Norwalk, the Darien Athletic Foundation and The Real Estate Finance Association of Connecticut. David has served as a member of the board of overseers of Colby College, and as a board member of the Darien Technology and Community Foundation, the Darien YMCA, the Darien Historical Society, and Darien Revitalization, Inc. In 2007, David was named as one of the “40 under 40” business leaders in Fairfield County, Connecticut.

Video Presentation 

Arranged by Tom Igoe

DMA member and past president Sunil Saksena will speak to our group on the presidential election of 1876. That election was marred by claims of fraud, voter intimidation, arbitrarily changed vote counts and multiple sets of “certified” electoral college votes. It was followed by 4 months of chaotic negotiations and backroom compromises involving Congressional committees, Supreme Court Justices and campaign representatives. Finally, just 2 days before Inauguration Day, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner by 1 electoral vote over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, who won the popular vote by a huge margin.

Sunil was born in Lucknow, India in 1944. He graduated high school from La Martiniere College, Lucknow and received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee.

He worked at Union Carbide India before proceeding to University of California at Berkeley for graduate work. He received both a masters degree in engineering as well as an MBA from Berkeley. He worked as a Mechanical Engineer at American Can Company in San Francisco where his claim to fame is that he designed the machine that puts the can cover on the beer can making it safe for you beer drinkers to imbibe. For the majority of his career, Sunil was in finance: first, as an international banker with Bankers Trust Company serving in Mumbai, Singapore and New York and then, as an investment advisor with Fidelity Investments from which he retired in 2004.

He and his wife Deepika have lived in Darien since 1985. They have two sons, one a doctor and the other a lawyer.

Arranged by Tom Igoe

Video Presentation