Simply Ledyard CT

Ledyard Photo Friday - Library at Ledyard High School

As newly appointed liaison to the Board of Education from the Ledyard Town Council, I will be attending meetings on a regular basis. I spent some time at this week’s meeting looking around for photo opportunities. I found this comfy corner.

The first day of school in Ledyard!

Throw away your school calendar! Here’s hoping for no more hurricanes and no blizzards!
Best wishes for a successful year to all of Ledyard’s students and faculty.

Ledyard Schools Open August 31st

Just a reminder and a message from your teacher....

Ledyard Photo Friday - Gales Ferry and JWL School

What exactly does this mean? Should I attend?  Do I need tickets?  I'm excited.  Only one more week!

Ledyard Photo Friday – Ledyard Center School

Ledyard Center School is one of 4 elementary schools in Ledyard, and the oldest school building in town, having opened its doors to students in 1950. I imagine many of my readers have some fond memories of the place!

Ledyard Photo Friday

Jaret Kulmann, Vice Principal at Gales Ferry/Juliet Long Schools died Saturday, June 5th. The community mourns the passing of a hero.

The Art of Packing a Lunch

Ledyard High School has a hot lunch program but is it as good as mom's?

When I attended in Pittsburgh way back in the 1960’s, I carried a brown bag for lunch. I didn’t walk up hill both ways to school but I did walk down a steep one to catch a street car.  Since most of us used public transportation to get to school, we rarely had a day off due to weather. I remember there was an informal rule that if your bus or street car didn’t arrive after waiting an hour, you got the day off.  That almost never happened.  I guess public transportation was pretty reliable back then.

My mom, like many in that decade, was a stay at home mom. One of her most important jobs (at least to me) was packing lunches and she was particularly good at it.  Being Italian, my brown bag offered some hidden treasures that other brown bags didn’t include, like home made biscotti, rolled cream cheese finger sandwiches, and stuffed artichokes. Leftover cold pizza made with rolled out dough from scratch was a weekly favorite and I’d often sneak a bite for breakfast. We didn't have all the pre-packaged snacks you can buy today so it wasn't unusual to find a piece of fudge or some pizzelles wrapped in aluminum foil.

You could only buy white milk at Sacred Heart High School. Soda, or “pop” as it is known in Pittsburgh, wasn’t available for sale. For a few weeks one year, a bunch of us packed frozen pop in our brown bags. We discovered that by lunch time, the pop would thaw and our drink would be at the perfect temperature. Unfortunately one day during lunch, my can exploded from the pressure and the spray targeted a nearby nun.  An intercom announcement declared the end of the frozen pop experiment forever. Bummer.

My son Jeff was also a brown bagger. Ledyard High School didn’t resume their hot lunch program until several years after he graduated. I tried to be as creative as my mom but I’m not sure I ever reached her level of perfection. In fact, I’m sure I didn’t.

I haven’t thought about brown bag lunches or soaking a nun with pop for years.  What made me think of it today was seeing  the March menu posted on the Ledyard High School website. Besides the typical choices of salads, grinders, pizzas and hamburgers, there are daily specials like Chicken Fajita’s, General Tso’s Chicken, and Pasta Primavera.  The $2.75 menu seems pretty reasonable and I'm sure far better than the typical brown bag ham and cheese or peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I was pretty happy to see the return of a hot lunch program to Ledyard High School while I was on the Board of Education.

We had a hot lunch program at Sacred Heart High School. I vaguely remember macaroni and cheese and meat loaf on the menu. I never even considered buying lunch as an option. No one could pack a lunch better than my mom.

Eva Antoinette Mannella died in 1969, a year after I graduated from high school. I still love stuffed artichokes and cold pizza for lunch.

Ledyard Middle School

It is rare to be able to take a photo of Ledyard Middle School without a car or person in the photo.  I just listed a home on Stoddard’s Wharf Road giving me an excellent vantage point for photos of the school.  While putting up the for sale sign today I noticed that I had a clear shot!  I’m not sure if it will ever happen again.

Ledyard Parks and Recreation and Board of Education

The Ledyard Parks and Recreation Commission and the Ledyard Board of Education worked in cooperation to build their office space in 1991 at 4 Blonder’s Boulevard off Colonel Ledyard Highway in Ledyard.

 

 

 

 

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Gales Ferry Elementary School - Route 12

Gales Ferry Elementary School is Ledyard’s newest school building, housing approximately 300 students, kindergarten through second grade.  Designed by Kaestle Boos Associates, Inc, this school project was a winner in the 2002 NSSEA Architectural Awards Contest.