Risk-Taking Spices Their Adventure
‘Stop! Get down!” the Zambian guide told the handful of foreigners on a walking safari in his homeland. “Five lions were just there, very close,” Ron McCutcheon says. It was one of many adventures Ron has shared with his wife, Lois, during their four African safaris and travels closer to home.
But risk-taking is their spirit and is why they met.
Lois Erickson headed to California with a few girlfriends from high school and worked for 2 1⁄ years in San Francisco. She had just
2 moved to her parents’ home in Middletown in February 1964, after driving with her friends in a Ford convertible to Acapulco and across the United States. On returning, Lois wanted to get out in the snow and ski, and through a friend, it was arranged for her to go with Ron McCutcheon.
“She’s too old,” Ron thought when he drove up to Lois’ parents’ house to take her skiing on Mt. Tom, in Massachusetts. But a few minutes later, when he met Lois, “It was love at first sight.” The woman Ron had seen out front was Lois’ mother. Lois, meanwhile, thought that the friend Ron brought with him, was Ron.
After one day on the slopes with Ron, “That was it,” Lois says. “We had a lot to talk about.” Ron, 28, and Lois, 24, had each been to Europe. Lois had grown up in Riverside, R.I., near Narragansett Bay, but her parents had moved to Connecticut and settled around the corner from Ron’s family, which made dating easy. He was working in pharmaceutical sales, and Lois took a bus to her job at an advertising agency in Hartford. She was always tired from her commute, but at night she and Ron rallied to rehearse for their chorus roles in the musical “Guys and Dolls” at Miss Porter’s School in
Farmington. In the summer, they were fans of Connecticut beaches.
In October on a day trip to Boston, while sitting on a bench along the Charles River, Ron surprised Lois by proposing. Two months later, on December 30, 1964, they were married in Holy Trinity Church in Middletown, where one of Ron’s uncles had painted the interior, another had painted the stencils, a third baked the bread for their wedding communion service, and Ron’s father played the organ for their ceremony. After their reception, the newlyweds drove to Lee, Mass., for their honeymoon at the Morgan House. Enraptured, they did not notice that the car had no oil in it going up or back.
When they came home, “We couldn’t find a place to live,” Lois says, but driving through the Middle Haddam section of East Hampton, they noticed a carriage house behind a bigger home. Through a friend, they met the new owners of the property, and suggested renting it. They “became fast friends,” and after painting the interior and installing heat, Lois and Ron moved in.
“We fell in love with this village,” Ron says. Four years later, they were anxious to start their own business and opened Town and Country Real Estate with a partner. “With relatives and friends in the business, it appealed to us — especially when we lived in such a beautiful historic area; we wanted to concentrate on early colonial homes.” They took real estate classes at the University of Connecticut, and in September 1994, Lois left the law firm where she had been working in Middletown to nurture their new business. “Concerned about paying our bills,” Ron continued with his job.
“It was scary” taking that leap, Lois says. Those were lean years for the couple. For entertainment on New Year’s Eve, they would walk through the neighborhood and look to see who was having the best parties, Ron says.
Shortly after starting their company, a woman asked them to sell her house. “We looked at it and fell in love with it,” Lois says. “We showed the house, but we were hoping no one would buy it.” The owner liked Lois and Ron and after six months, she gave them a second loan to help them cover the $30,000 sale price.
“Back then, $30,000 was a lot of money,” Ron says.
“It was a fortune,” Lois says. They had been paying $75 per month for their carriage house rental.
Their clients became people with a “special interest in old houses,” Ron says. Their own house was Civil War era, but they sold homes built in the late 1700s and expanded their listings into Middletown. In 1968 they had grown enough for Ron to work full-time with Lois. They also had their daughter Margaret, and took another risk, purchasing the Middle Haddam Post Office building with two other investors. Over the years they rented out some of the space to various entrepreneurs who sold marine hardware, ice cream, antiques, and more. In the late 1970s, they decided to move their home office to the quaint building.
“We worked seven-day per week,” Ron says. “Oh, yeah. Weekends, 24/7,” Lois says with a sigh of exhaustion as she recalls the pace of their work.
As the business grew, they were able to take vacations with their daughter, and if they needed a babysitter, they had two sets of grandparents ready to help. They have purchased or handled the sale of relatives’ homes, acquiring 14 properties which they now manage. In 2008 when the real estate bubble burst, they stopped taking new listings and focused entirely on property management. After 54 years on their own — they never had any employees — they are still managing the properties and traveling whenever they can. Last year they rented a car and drove through Spain, this spring they went to Ireland, and they are planning a trip to Cinque Terre in Italy or Burgundy, France. Undaunted by the lions on their last safari, they hope to go back to Africa soon with their two grandchildren and their daughter and her husband, who started their own eco-safari business Classic Africa.
Lois and Ron stayed fit playing tennis regularly with friends and running, with
Ron competing in six marathons from London, his favorite, to Vienna, Rotterdam, Boston, New York and Connecticut. He has also run the seven-mile uphill race to the top of Mount Washington, New Hampshire, twice. Now married 57 years, Lois and Ron still drive to Hammonasset Beach State Park in Madison and stay agile dancing and exercising at the Middletown YMCA. Lois also gets together with the girlfriends she drove cross-country with, though they are now scattered in Phoenix and Boston.
“I loved the idea that she wanted to travel,” Ron says about his initial attractions to Lois. Plus, “She was very beautiful.”
“He just struck me. ... I was looking for somebody who would be fun, enthusiastic,” Lois says. “We had the same ideas about things,” and throughout the changes over the last five decades, they still do share the same outlook and romanticism.