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SPECIAL NOTICE
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This notice is for one of our own Billy Palladino, Staples H.S. graduate, class of 1968. He was diagnosed with throat cancer in November of 2009 and has been hospitalized since Feb. 6, when complications from throat cancer surgery in November robbed him of his ability to speak. He had an operation where they removed his epiglottis, the flap that covers the trachea during swallowing so that food does not enter the lungs. He had a Tracheotomy and now is unable to speak. He is presently in Danbury Hospital and is receiving Chemotherapy and Radiation and hoping to go home soon.
With all this going on for Bill, another tragedy struck his family. His wife, Janice Ann McClenathan Palladino, age 45, passed away from a massive heart attack on February 11, 2010 at her home in Sandy Hook, CT. She was also a Staples High School Graduate, class of 1983. Not only did his wife meticulously prepare meals that were injected through the feeding tube Bill had implanted after his surgery and monitor his medications, her full-time job at a small manufacturing company in Oxford provided the health insurance that covered the bulk of his medical bills.
Now there is no income for family and they don't know how long the insurance from Janice's job will cover Billy's medical bills. They have 2 daughters, Michelle and Sarah Palladino who are both in college.
We want to let you know that a trust fund has been set up for Billy and his family at:
Newtown Savings Bank
30 Main Street
Danbury CT 06810
Phone: (203) 205-0080
For those of you that want to contact him or send get well cards to, his home contact information is:
Bill Palladino
7 Overlook Knoll
Sandy Hook CT 06482
(203) 426-8960
Here are some links for more information:
Article on Billy in the Danbury News Times, Feb. 21, 2010.
Obituary from the Westport News on Janice Ann McClenathan Palladino.
Please help out where you can. Collectively we can all make a difference for Billy and his family, no matter what the $ amount is. Words of support are also needed if you can't make a donation during these hard times.
Thank you, Shelby Goodlett Pike
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Camp Mahackeno Bulletin Board
To add an entry on this board, please log in or sign up.
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Hey Gang,
having fun with these memories ... just left a couple of entries withh my class of 81 and at Hillspoint boards. My memories of Mahakeno are fantastic - lot's of the same you all mention below - but also some great ones with the YMCA and AAU swim team "Water Rats" - we had practice in the river - fun as hell with the current - it was to get us prepared for long course 50 meter lap competition. I remember swimming with Colin McKenna, Sam Gault, Jason Green, Chris and Gregg Weissman, and many, many others ... including 3 guys from Weston - Tom Birmingham, Chris Harmony (sp?)and Chuck Holton. We had some fantastic teams finishing first in CT and New England with many great individual champs. Chris Weissman went on to be the best of the group finishing one year, I believe, as #1 in the US for 100 and/or 200 meter Breastroke and his older brother Greg finished very high in teh famous Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii. Great memories at Mahackeno and with swim team !!
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Todd Maddock
1981
view posts
Tuesday, 06/10/2008
10:06:40
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I think I first joined the Y in '48. I recall on Saturday mornings there were craft classes. Belts were made, but they were too complicated for me. So, I stuffed plaster of paris into molds of indian heads and animals. (wish I had kept them.)There also was a class in drawing cartoon characters, i.e. Popeye.
Spent a few summers at Mahackeno. Later in high school Dennis Dunleavy, Eddie Wyslick et.al. would go there to swim. My favorite swim hole.
Back to camp: I learned to swim there. I remember the bar at the shore that we held on to and learned to kick by keeping legs straight. Once we learned to swim we would team with a buddy for the swim sessions. When a whistle was blown, if you were not within "reach" of your buddy, it was out of the water.
Moby Dick, a large black float was anchored in the river. We would climb and jump off. One of the challenges was to try to run to the end of the long inflated tubular tube hanging down stream.
Across the tiny creek and up top on the other side there was archery.
We lived on Chicken Coop Lane (today, North Silent Grove). There was an old spur road that lead to the Merritt Parkway. On a couple of accasions my dad drove to camp via that spur in a 37 Packard. We would clump on to the parkway, clump up the curb and over the divider, and head for the camp. After crossing the bridge my dad would again cross the median divider, drive into the field adjoining the parkway and drop me off at the top of the trail that lead down into the camp. That trip was a great adventure. There was a little building on the between the trail and the river. Never could remember what it was used for.
For a number of years when I returned to Westport I would visit Mahackeno. The damp oder of the river and the vegetation always brought back good memories.
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Vincent Puleo
1959
view posts
Saturday, 03/01/2008
01:50:16
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In 1953 Camp Mahackeno was a YMCA day camp for boys. Ray()?, an employee for the YMCA and a youth leader for the Westport Methodist Church, to which we both belonged, invited me to be a CIT at the camp. The preseason clean-up seemed like hard labor. Winter debris needed to be cleared and hauled away, old fiberglass rowboats repaired and refinished, and buildings and equipment cleaned and set up. It was not girly work!
I am not sure why girls were counselors. Perhaps we were mother figures for the younger boys. It was prophetic. I later raised four sons.
Popular camp activities were swimming, boating (in circles)and braiding miles of lanyards. Mr. Potywells, the Staples HS biology teacher was in charge of nature lore. I can recall only a few names of the other student CITs: Anne and Mercy Gamache and Sam Finley.
The camp would assemble for special guests. Bud Sagendorf, the Popeye cartoonist, was one. I was chosen to pose for one of his sketches. I turned out to be an exact image of Olive Oil!
I moved from Westport the end of my junior year (class of '55). Though I lived there only a little while, Westport is big in my memory.
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Elizabeth Angell
1955
view posts
Tuesday, 02/26/2008
05:29:01
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Attended circa 62-65. Truly enjoyed swimming and becoming a Flying Fish (big achievement then!); learned to canoe and still kayak today. Like many memories, I went back some 30+ yrs later, detoured while entering the Merrit Parkway, and could not believe how small the whole thing was...then is seemed vast.
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Ezra Bowen
1972
view posts
Tuesday, 01/01/2008
11:00:33
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I didn't get to go to Camp Mahackeno until I was in sixth or seventh grade. That's when I caught my one and only fish in all my attempts at fishing. I went back as a CIT when I was fifteen and got the best tan of my life. Who knew about skin cancer back then?
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Deborah Bensen Shields
1981
view posts
Monday, 10/22/2007
12:24:58
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Inklings of Mahackeno are coming back to me. Cubbies to put your towel in when you went swimming. A float to swim to...in the river? But my greatest memories of the summers were at Camp Wonalancet in near Conway, NH. That would have been '64 to '69. Thanks Dad!
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Jeff Greenspon
1974
view posts
Tuesday, 10/02/2007
15:16:29
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I don't remember exactly when I went to Mahackeno, but I went for a couple of year of day camp when I was 6 or 7. I have two terrifying memories of camp life. My first memory was of two older (they were probably only a year or two older, but that is a lifetime when you are only 6) boys that were always picking on me. They always threatened to beat me up, and I never knew WHY. I was big for my age, but there were two of them, and I knew I didn't stand a chance. Well, the 'Big Day' arrived and they made it clear that they were going to beat me senseless. After the beating, my mother got a call from the camp nurse. The nurse informed my mom that I had been in a fight with two older campers. My mom asked her how badly I was hurt and the nurse said, 'Oh Hank? He's fine, but the other two had to go to the doctors to get stitched up!' I realized that even bullies can get beat up, too! My true wimpiness becomes apparent in my second 'terrifying' memory. Each day, one of our activities was a 'group row', where a group of 3 or 4 young campers plus one counselor would take a rowboat out onto the lake. The counselor did most of the rowing, but he would occasionally turn the oars over to a camper and let him row wherever he wanted to go on the lake. Well, if you've ever gone rowing on this lake, and looked over the side of the boat, you could see the plants on the bottom growing up towards the surface of the water. They had a muddy green or brown color and looked (to me, anyway) like decaying arms and legs reaching up to the rowboat!!!!! I was shaking with fear every time we went out in the boat!!! I don't think I ever cried, but it was certainly close a few times! I made my feelings very clear to the staff, but they made me go every day anyway. My only way out came when the counselor gave the oars over to me. I would paddle back to shore so fast, you could probably water-ski behind that old boat!!!! By the end of the summer, all the counselors learned to NOT give the oars to me until that day's rowing was over.
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Henry McDonald
1980
view posts
Wednesday, 08/23/2000
02:59:11
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I have mixed memories of Camp Mahackeno . I was a K-12 Westporter, and always lived at 24 Red Coat Road. It was 7/10ths of a mile down to Wilton Road, hard left undert the Merritt, carefully across the East Bound entrance/exit, and down a little dirt road to Camp. I was allowed to ride my bike every day, which speaks volumes about then and now. I loved the whale, some wacky huge inner tube they parked in the Saugatuck. Fresh ice-cold water gradually became more bearable as the summer wore on. I also recall ice-skating at adjacent (actually just part of the river) Lee's Pond, bringing bed sheets for hilarious attempts at ice-sailing on windy weekends during the school year. So that part of town, including the Merritt bridge over the river, were part of my stomping grounds. Does anyone remember that the Westport Police had a firing range on the upper grounds? I recall digging out :45 slugs and keeping them for years in my secret spot in our attic.
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John Bailey
1970
view posts
Wednesday, 08/23/2000
05:07:46
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I absolutely detested Camp Mahackeno. In fact, it was one of the most traumatic periods of my life. It was a boys camp, and at age 8 or so, I just didn't fit in with the other boys. They all knew each other, and knew how to be little boys; I didn't. I didn't know the code; didn't know how to be cool; didn't know what to like, how to talk, how to act, how to do anything. September to June was fine; I was smart, teachers loved me, kids wanted me to do their work for them, I was in my own milieu, and I thrived. Summer, however, was hell. I don't think counselors had much training then, so they just sort of gravitated to the 8-year-olds who were athletic or could at least handle themselves in a social situation; they ignored -- or made fun of -- the rest of us. The worst day of all was when we had a campout, which for some reason I was supposed to be excited about and like, but which I dreaded because I had no one to sleep out with. What's worse, my tuna fish sandwich got all soggy, so I not only had no friends, but I went to sleep hungry. The only camp experience worse than Mahackeno was Weston Field Club, because there EVERYONE knew each other (they were all from Weston), and I was not only excluded but mocked. Thankfully, when I was 11 I went to Camp Robinson Crusoe in Sturbridge, Mass., a sleepaway camp that was as liberal and progressive and wonderful as Mahackeno had been conservative and traditional and frightening. I thrived for four years at Robinson Crusoe; I had grown up and developed social skills, and I was surrounded by kids I had something in common with. To my utter regret, however, I turned into one of the tormentors of people who reminded me of what I had once been. If only I could do it over, knowing then what I know now...
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Dan Woog
1971
view posts
Wednesday, 08/23/2000
18:11:32
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Firinn's tale of Camp Mahackeno brough back a flood of memory. My left shin started to itch as I looked down at the scar, still visible after 58 years. I was among a hardy band of young campers in the summer of 1942. We were the first "Y" campers to use the site. I think there was some kind of camp at the field house on the BJH/Staples campus on riverside. I don't know what the complex was originally built for but the rooms had no plasterboard on them, just some beaverboard partitions. We were divided into little groups (8 to 10) with our Counselors in Training as leaders. The CITs were our everyday leaders. Many of these boys as well as the real counselors ended up in the war. There was an assembly area behind the main building with a flag pole. We had a formal flag raising everyday as well as Retreat at the end of the day. WW2 was at its very beginings and patriotism was at a high point. We could see a sand bag pill box up where the Merrit Parkway bridge crossed the river. It was unmanned but ready for the home guard if necessary. A brook flowed down through a little swampy area to the river. This swamp was bridged by a little zig zag bridge made of 4x4"s and planked with 2 2x10". The whole busines was about 40ft across and all bolted together with large nuts and bolts. The bridge led to a bluff that went up to what became our playing fields.There was a wagon track that led out to River Lane about a half mile away. One day while up on the fields the bugle sounded for swim time. The CIT told me and another boy to put the bats and balls on the porch of the cabin. We did the job. Not wanting to miss any swimn, we ran down the path and on to the bridge, I got about halfway across at full tilt the bridge zigged and I zagged right off the span gashing my shin on one of the bolts. I bled like a stuck pig. The counselors did first aid and and the camp Dr. called. I think it was Dr. Solway, but I can't remember for sure. The Dr. arrived about five minutes after my mom. I got 3 stiches and a BIG ole Tetanus shot. I remember the swimming part well but a little differently than Firinn. When the whistle blew you had until a count of three to have your buddy's hand in yours or else your swim period was over. I got all my swim badges through the Y (At the Y in those days swimming was not Co-ed and the men and boys swam naked. Years later I took my lifesaving course at the Y and was a lifeguard at the Weston Field Club and the next year at Longshore. When we had our lunch we had to sing for our desserts. "Here we sit like birds in the wilderness," "I ain't going to grieve my lord now more" and the all time favorite "John Jacob Dingle Heimer Schmidt." Believe it or not there were no houses close to the river from the camp down to the Kings Higway bridge and in the years that followed I and my little friends owned the West side of the river. We played war, camped, fished and trapped in those woods winter and summer until the population exploded in the 50s.
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Donnell Miller
1953
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Wednesday, 08/23/2000
03:37:29
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I attended the camp (notice how I am avoiding spelling it) at about age 7 or 8, and my only clear recollection is an overnight camp out. Lots of s'mores around the fire (ugh!). And one of the counselors or older campers told a ghost story. About an old Westport resident who had died some horrible death, and gone to live as the undead in the river. Who would rise periodically, covered with slime and dripping with seaweed (yeah, I know, rivers don't really have seaweed, but who was analyzing this story for realism anyway), with long, sharp fingernails that he used to...
Suffice it to say that there was little sleep that night. And that this guy haunted my dreams for years.
I was happy to switch to a nice, low key sleep away camp, where pretending I was a native american led to much easier dreams.
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Diana Lurie
1974
view posts
Wednesday, 08/23/2000
20:24:12
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Camp Mahackeno Image Gallery
Please send any images you'd like added to the gallery to admin@westporters.com. Include as much information about the picture as you can: Who is in it, when and where it was taken. Thanks!
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