Author: Webmaster (Page 31 of 97)

Raidt, Bob

October 20, 2022 / Webmaster

Bob was born and raised in Darien on Blueberry Lane and has spent most of his life living here.

After attending Ox Ridge, Middlesex and DHS (class of ’77) and spent his summers at Woodway Country Club. He went on to graduate from University of Richmond with a BS in Marketing followed by an MBA from Fordham.

He followed his father into the advertising business on Madison Avenue and worked at several large advertising agencies as a media planner and buyer for large consumer goods advertisers. He then joined The New York Times in advertising sales for a long career in sales management where he met his wife Karen, who he married and had one son who lives in Charleston, S.C where they visit frequently.

After he left the Times, Bob worked for several online companies in Business Development and later worked at several well known B2B media companies including Crain Communications, Thompson Media. For the past 10 years, he has worked for smaller media properties in the Private Equity field. He still continues to work from home on a full-time basis but without the commute!

He moved back to Darien after several years of living in NYC and settled down on Lynn Court for the next 30 years until recently moving to Middlesex Commons on Hale Lane. He lives an active lifestyle and enjoys tennis, paddle, golf, hiking, paddleboarding and travelling. As a music lover and drummer, he’s hoping to find other musicians to jam with in the DMA.

Helms, Ted

October 19, 2022 / Webmaster

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.

Temple, John

October 18, 2022 / Webmaster

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.

Sforza, Ed

October 16, 2022 / Webmaster

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.

He went on to attend Villanova University on a full athletic scholarship and was awarded three varsity letters in football while being selected game captain numerous times. After graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business, Ed pursued a career in Sales with the Campbell Soup Company (Sales Rep.), Xerox Corporation (Sales Manager), and Graphic Management Partners (Vice President).

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.

Silver, Barry

October 12, 2022 / Webmaster

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.

Del Col, John

October 11, 2022 / Webmaster

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.

Bell, Tom

October 5, 2022 / Webmaster

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.

Oyster Boat outing on Norm Bloom’s fleet. Oct 13, 2022

October 4, 2022 / Webmaster

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

Book Club: Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Dec 14, 2022 @ 2:00

October 4, 2022 / Webmaster

THE SHADOW OF THE WIND

From the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series , Vol. 1

BY CARLOS RUIZ ZAFÓN & TRANSLATED BY LUCIA GRAVES ‧ RELEASE DATE: APRIL 12, 2004

The 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.

Chiarello, Donald

September 29, 2022 / Webmaster

Donald E. Chiarello D.D.S.

Born 1932. Attended Brooklyn Technical High School, Queens College and New York University College of Dentistry. Served in U.S.Navy as a Lt. in DentalCorps.

Resided in Cold Spring Harbor from 1969 until 2022. I now reside in Stamford CT. Private Practice 1960-1990. Asst and Clinical Coordinator Post Graduate Program Nassau University Medical Center 1990-2010. Asst Clinical Professor Stony Brook School of Dentistry 2010-2018.

Member of Whaler’s Cove Y.C. and Past Commodore ..Spent cruising under sail and later
under power with my wife and three daughters from 1974 until 2005.

When McKinsey Comes to Town by Walk Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe, January 11, 2023

September 18, 2022 / Webmaster

McKinsey & Company is the most prestigious consulting company in the world, earning billions of dollars in fees from major corporations and governments who turn to it to maximize their profits and enhance efficiency. McKinsey’s vaunted statement of values asserts that its role is to make the world a better place, and its reputation for excellence and discretion attracts top talent from universities around the world. But what does it actually do?

In When McKinsey Comes to Town, two prizewinning investigative journalists have written a portrait of the company sharply at odds with its public image. Often McKinsey’s advice boils down to major cost-cutting, including layoffs and maintenance reductions, to drive up short-term profits, thereby boosting a company’s stock price and the wealth of its executives who hire it, at the expense of workers and safety measures. McKinsey collects millions of dollars advising government agencies that also regulate McKinsey’s corporate clients. And the firm frequently advises competitors in the same industries, but denies that this presents any conflict of interest.

In one telling example, McKinsey advised a Chinese engineering company allied with the communist government which constructed artificial islands, now used as staging grounds for the Chinese Navy—while at the same time taking tens of millions of dollars from the Pentagon, whose chief aim is to counter Chinese aggression.

Shielded by NDAs, McKinsey has escaped public scrutiny despite its role in advising tobacco and vaping companies, purveyors of opioids, repressive governments, and oil companies. McKinsey helped insurance companies’ boost their profits by making it incredibly difficult for accident victims to get payments; worked its U.S. government contacts to let Wall Street firms evade scrutiny; enabled corruption in developing countries such as South Africa; undermined health-care programs in states across the country. And much more.

Bogdanich and Forsythe have penetrated the veil of secrecy surrounding McKinsey by conducting hundreds of interviews, obtaining tens of thousands of revelatory documents, and following rule #1 of investigative reporting: Follow the money.
When McKinsey Comes to Town is a landmark work of investigative reporting that amounts to a devastating portrait of a firm whose work has often made the world more unequal, more corrupt, and more dangerous.

Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, December 2022

September 17, 2022 / Webmaster

The New York Times bestseller“The Shadow of the Wind is ultimately a love letter to literature, intended for readers as passionate about storytelling as its young hero.” —Entertainment Weekly (Editor’s Choice)“One gorgeous read.” —Stephen King

Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets—an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.