The Plainville
Cit itiz ize en
Volume 12, Number 29
Plainville’s Only Weekly Newspaper
www.plainvillecitizen.com
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Remembering the town’s Cold War missile site By Daniel Jackson Special to The Citizen
Nike missiles on display at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama.
Melvin Morris sat at his sister-in-law’s kitchen table, turning through old newspaper clippings from the Plainville News, chronicling the rise and decline of the Nike Missile Base in town. The soldiers in the photographs were unnamed, but Morris, who served in the Army at the base in the 1950s, knew them. One was his bowling buddy, another, a “kid out of Minnesota,” who could cook, he said. Another photo showed a group of soldiers huddled around controls for the site’s radar. “That’s the chair I used to sit in,” he said of the place where he monitored the radar. Today, only concrete slabs and rusty barbed wire mark the site of the Cassidy-Wojitilla Nike Missile Base — partially named
for a Plainville resident who died in Italy during World War II. What used to be a bare hill with radar sweeping the skies, the back line of defense against a Russian air attack, is now overgrown, home to wildlife and visited by the occasional hiker. Plainville’s Nike Missile Base was one of 12 built in Connecticut as part of its air defense during the Cold War. The Nike missiles, named for the Greek winged goddess of victory, were the United States’ first guided missile system. During the late 50s, the government built hundreds of these sites to protect the nation’s major cities from attack. “It was cold warfare,” Morris said. See Missile, page 5
And they’re off Photo by Patrick Matthews
Runners set out on the sixth annual General Electric 5K Road Race Sunday morning, July 14, in Plainville. The race, a fundraiser for the Petit Family Foundation, drew about 3,000 runners and walkers. Jon Krell and Emily D’Addario, both of Farmington, were the overall winners. See page 19 for race results and photos.
New librarian settling in at Plainville Public Library By Julie Sopchak The Plainville Citizen Plainville Public Library has welcomed Kimberly White as its new assistant director and children’s librarian. White, who started her new role in June, came from Otis Public Library in Norwich, where she won a Faith Hekton Award for developing and implementing an outstanding program for children in the spring. The program involved setting up a satellite location for the
public library at one of the elementary schools over the summer. White explained there are seven elementary schools in Norwich, which aren’t particularly close to the downtown area. Setting up the program involved coordinating with schools, food service, and bus transportation, but it all worked together. “We opened one of the school libraries during the summer and brought library services to the neighbor-
See Librarian, page 6
1292478