Mary and Nelson Gelfman have spent decades contributing to their community, she as a school board member and a hearing officer for the state Department of Education, he as a doctor at Danbury Hospital and by looking out for the town’s wild creatures and habitats on the Conservation and the Planning and Zoning commissions. —Macklin Reid photo
Defender of frogs, turtles and habitats, conservationist, planning and zoning commissioner, a quiet voice at one of the most talkative tables in town politics, Nelson Gelfman is retiring from public office after close to half a century of service.
And Mary Gelfman, education attorney and advocate, has ended her 20-year career as a state hearings officer for special education cases, expulsion appeals, and the like.
“It went from 8,000 to 25,000 people. And obviously, the traffic problem developed,” Dr. Gelfman said thinking of the smaller town he moved to in the ’60s, and the seemingly endless growth.
“The thing that’s bothered me the most is the loss of open space,” he said. “I’ve seen many species disappear from town. That was my first love. I was always out looking for them.”
The prime example would be the Muhlenberg turtle, which was a “protected species” in this area, but still seems to have disappeared.
“The last Muhlenberg I saw was up in Ridgebury on the Sarah Bishop trail — that was way back toward the early ’70s,” Dr. Gelfman said.
“The wood turtle was very abundant when we got here. Now there are a few still up in the Ridgebury area. The box turtles have become very scarce. The last time I saw one out in the wild was where The Regency is now, up in that property.
“Amphibians in general are way down,” said Dr. Gelfman, who since childhood has befriended reptiles, amphibians and other mud dwellers.
“The thing that did in most of these creatures was loss of habitat,” he said.
The words were spoken with a certain resignation by a man who’d spent four decades fighting to preserve woodlands and wetlands, the vernal pools where salamanders breed, and the swamps where frogs can still be heard singing on spring nights.
Why call it quits?
“Ill health,” Dr. Gelfman said. “Otherwise I would still be there, or try to be.”
Mary Gelfman’s retirement was two weeks before Monday’s Democratic caucus, which nominated the likely successor to Dr. Gelfman on planning and zoning.
Before law school and her 20 years as a state Department of Education hearing officer, Mary Gelfman served 11 years on Ridgefield’s school board, three as chair.
“I have some projects I’m working on,” she said. “A friend of mine and I, who both did high school expulsion hearings, are trying to write an article for the Connecticut Bar Association magazine.
“At least 50% of them were what I call ‘dumb kid mistakes,’ ” she said.
The expulsion hearings were largely from the state’s technical high schools.
Indicative today’s realities, the majority of the hearings she presided over concerned special education disputes between school districts and parents. She also had some residency and transportation hearings — local decisions, appealed to the state.
She did about 20 a year, but any given hearing could run on. “Some lasted 10 or 12 days, some settled in one day,” she said
Nelson Gelfman’s service to the town goes back 48 years. He was first appointed the Conservation Commission in 1965. He joined the Planning and Zoning Commission in 1967 and will retire after the November election with 46 years’ tenure.
Dr. Gelfman’s initial appointment to the Conservation Commission was by former First Selectman Leo F. Carroll.
“I had hassled him about Peterson Gorge,” Dr. Gelfman said. “He wanted to put a road across it, and Louise Peck and some other people got the Nature Conservancy interested and they bought it from the town and then later the town compensated them and got it back as open space.”
Because it’s in the thick of development — laying out plans, creating regulations and zones, approving projects — the Planning and Zoning Commission is a venue where Dr. Gelfman found he could best fight conservation battles, swamp by swamp, acre by acre, tree by tree.
“I served under every chairman P&Z ever had,” he said, and rattled off names — Dan McKeon, Bob Hoffman, Irv Conklin, Sue Manning, John Katz, James McChesney, Di Masters, Rebecca Mucchetti. Dr. Gelfman served as chairman, as well.
He liked the job his friend the late James McChesney did. “Jim was probably the best chairperson we ever had. He was so impartial, so organized, so honest. Knew how to handle people well.”
What does he view as the commission’s best and worst decisions, over the years?
“The worst decision, I think, is the current one, the Gateway Zone,” he said, referring to regulation changes — now being challenged in court — that would allow development of retail stores and small shopping centers in the area around Route 7 and 35.
“And the best decision — it wasn’t exactly a decision, it was a negotiation that may have gone on for 20 years with George Bakes, over the Camp Adventure property.”
Camp Adventure, off Route 7, was more than 100 acres with frontage on Great Pond, the same pond used by Martin Park, the town’s only public swimming area.
After the town rejected buying the land, George Bakes acquired it and pushed a long list of development ideas — shopping centers, corporate offices, light industry.
The commission resisted, frustrating other town officials who were hungry of development and tax dollars. The commission and the owner finally worked out a plan under which Mr. Bakes donated half the property — 50 acres including all the Great Pond frontage and steep hillsides that drained towards it — to the town. He was then permitted cluster relatively dense development along Route 7, on the other side of the ridge so the pond was protected as a drainage basin and also visually.
The development permitted followed the concept of a community that could serve senior citizens as they aged — independent living units, assisted living units, a nursing home. Sold off and developed by different owners, it is today The Regency townhouses, Ridgefield Crossings assisted living, and Laurel Ridge Health Care Center.
Dr. Gelfman looks at it as a deal that benefited both the town and the landowner.
“He got the front half facing Route 7 and we got the back half, around Great Pond,” he said. “We settled on the ridge. You know the mountain where Chicken’s Rock is? The separation is that ridge line. We went out and hoisted balloons to see if you could see them from the shore.”
Great progress came at the state level, with the advent of state inland wetland regulations in 1972, better protecting swamps, streams, rivers, ponds, lakes and allowing tighter regulation of development in “upland review areas” that drain into wetlands.
“Copps Hill came in because we didn’t have wetland regulations. It was half marsh and half dry land,” Dr. Gelfman said.
The commission battled over filling of wetlands with Jordan Asketh, the owner of the property that was eventually sold to the town and became the recreation center off Danbury Road.
“It was a huge affair, and he went in there himself with a drag line and bulldozer and chain and chopped down the swamp and started filling it by digging holes and smoothing it out. And there wasn’t a thing we could do about it.”
In addition to his planning and zoning activities, Dr. Gelfman served on the three school building committees during the town’s student population growth spurt.
He worked at Danbury Hospital, starting in the department of pathology in 1962. He served as director of the dialysis unit the hospital started in 1969, heading both pathology and dialysis for about a decade, then focusing on the dialysis unit. He is now retired from medical work, but his name lives on at Danbury Hospital in the Nelson A. Gelfman Dialysis Unit.
The Gelfmans met at the University of Wisconsin; he was an intern, she was taking summer courses.
The Gelfmans have three children and four grandchildren to keep them busy. Celia lives in Rhode Island with two of the grandchildren and son David and daughter Kay both live in town, each with one grandchild.