The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
A first: Sisters serving in the General Assembly
Nicole Klarides-Ditria learning the ropes from Themis Klarides
It’s not quite like Seymour High School in 1983, when they played together on the tennis team.
Themis Klarides remembers that as a nerdy senior, she would intercept calls at home for her sister, Nicole, a freshman, suggesting that boys stop bothering her.
Now, with the elder sister leading the Republican caucus in the state House of Representatives, they get along much better, as the younger, first-term lawmaker navigates the winding, often-frustrating ways bills become laws or die.
For Nicole Klarides-Ditria, the learning curve has been accelerated by daily, nearly constant contact with the first female Republican House leader.
“We didn’t get along too well in high school because we had a different outlook,” Klarides-Ditria said during a lull in the hectic last days of the recent session. “She was very protective when we were younger.”
“She was the domineering one,” Klarides said. “She was the little sister who always wants to tag along until middle school. Later, she was the cool one, a cheerleader, good in school.”
Now, with much-higher stakes, Klarides, 51, is still the big sister and Klarides-Ditria, 48, is a freshman again. They look like twins and are a historic duo — the first sisters to serve simultaneously in the Connecticut General Assembly.
Down on the pecking order of the House GOP, Klarides-Ditria’s office is an afterthought, a small space butting up against majority Democrats. But she is another set of eyes for her big sister, attending meetings that the House leader didn’t have time to monitor.
Making a commitment
By the spring of last year, after years of trying, Themis Klarides had given up on recruiting her sister, one of the seven members of Seymour’s Board of Aldermen, to run for the House seat occupied by three-term Democrat state Rep. Theresa Conroy.
But then, Conway supported the Democratic budget in the House.
“When Democrats and Governor (Danel P.) Malloy voted the state’s second-highest tax increase, she called me one night,” Klarides said. “She hadn’t talked about it, but that night Nicole said she was going to do it — ‘I need to take responsibility for this.’”
“I said, ‘I can’t sit back and watch this continue anymore,’” KlaridesDitria recalled thinking.
The experience as a deputy first selectman for five years was a key to learning municipal finance and taxation.
“I can’t imagine people coming into this not having any background,” she said. “It was a wealth of knowledge to learn how a small town runs and how it can springboard into what you need to do for the state.”
And while running her door-todoor election campaign, KlaridesDitria got a peek at statewide public policy after she and her sister went looking for a new cat. The sisters stumbled into a Monroe shelter that was generally filthy. From there they called police and state officials.
“It was 95 degrees,” Klarides recalled. “Dogs were outside, barking, trying to get inside, but it was too disgusting to let them inside.”
The owner of the SPCA of Connecticut kennel, Frederick B. Acker, was convicted last year of 11 counts of misdemeanor animal cruelty and sentenced to three months in prison and three years’ probation.
“We talked to the Department of Agriculture (and) the first selectman, so she saw how that worked, and that really jazzed her up,” Klarides said. “You’re helping animals and people, and those days can really make you feel good.”
Reaching across the aisle
As a selectman, Klarides-Ditria had worked in a regional effort to combine the animal shelters of Seymour, Woodbridge and Monroe. She focused on several major pieces of legislation during the recently completed legislative session, including a private animal-shelter registration bill and an expansion of the state’s effort to help young athletes by educating volunteer youth coaches about concussions.
Klarides-Ditria worked with Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, co-chairman of the Public Health Committee, who said it was important to have a colleague from the other side or the aisle, with her experience dealing with young athletes as an athletic trainer.
“She brought her expertise to the party,” Steinberg said last week. “As a trainer herself, she had an insider’s understanding of concussions that we found very valuable. And equally valuable was having a partner on the other side of the aisle who was at least as passionate as I was about trying to come up with a solution for youth sports.”
The bill died in the House without a vote.
“But Nicole was endlessly patient,” Steinberg said. “We worked very well together in bringing together the various stakeholders at different times. She was flexible. When we had to make some compromises she was willing to do so. So I thought it was the epitome of a good, collaborative relationship.”
While Klarides went on to law school after Trinity College, where she was on the swim team, Klarides-Ditria played tennis at Quinnipiac University. They remember being competitive in athletics since before kindergarten.
The daughters of Peter and Theodora Klarides worked in the family’s grocery store on Route 67 in Seymour, just east of Route 8. When she got her business degree from Quinnipiac, Klarides-Ditria went into the business, then, after the family decided to sell, she earned a master’s degree in sports training from Southern Connecticut State University.
She is currently the football trainer at Seymour High School and the full-time trainer at Lauralton Hall, the private girls’ school in Milford.
“It’s obviously a challenge,” Klarides-Ditria said. “Football is only in the fall, so I am OK with that, but Lauralton is a great school, with a great group of girls, and the administration is very good. Their academics are amazing. There is a group of trainers to cover for me on days I am not there.”
The sisters learned early about working long hours while not neglecting family.
“Growing up in our family business, Dad wouldn’t come home until 7, 8, 9 o’clock on Saturdays, Sundays, and he still took time to make our sporting events,” said Klarides, a lawyer who is of counsel at Cohen & Wolf’s office in Orange. “That’s how we grew up. As much as work took time from other things, there was always time for our personal lives.”
“I think the ways our parents have brought us up is important,” Klarides-Ditria said. “You listen to both sides of the story and try and compromise. If you believe in something, you push it as much as you want, but there is always compromise to make things happen.”