The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
A lifelong passion for his customers and baseball
Fortynine years ago, a young Bob Richards stopped in at Carofano of New Haven to get his eyeglasses adjusted. He didn’t know he would remain there for half a century.
“When I graduated from Hillhouse High School, I thought maybe I’d be a state trooper or a New Haven policeman,” Richards recalled. “But when I went to Carofano’s, Mr. (James) Carofano noticed I was wearing a coat and tie and asked me why. I said, ‘Mr. Carofano, I’m out looking for work.’”
“He adjusted my glasses and then he offered me a job. Just like that! I said, ‘I suppose I could give it a try.’ And here I am. I’m the last one standing.”
Richards apprenticed there for four years, got his optician’s license, eventually became a partner in the business and then the sole owner and employee. “It grew on me. I was meeting nice people and it kept going on and on. I just stuck with it.”
Carofano had opened his business in 1955 in a back room of Michael’s Jewelers downtown. About five years later, Richards said, Carofano moved up to 1215A Chapel Street, where the shop has been ever since.
“My first 25 years here, there were a lot of partners and people,” Richards told me after he finished another day’s work last Thursday afternoon. “For the last 25 years, I’ve been by myself. I love being on my own! I make all my own decisions.”
Richards had asked me to meet him after he closed at 5 p.m. because he was concerned that if I came earlier, he wouldn’t be able to pay full attention to any customers who walked in. “I don’t like to turn anybody away.”
While we spoke, he occasionally waved to passersby. “Everybody knows me,” he said.
Through the years, as the neighborhood went through some difficult changes, he and his neighboring merchants had to stick together. “This corner was the red light district of New Haven,” Richards said, nodding toward the intersection of Chapel and Howe streets. “Without Evelyn Schatz organizing our Chapel West (Special Services District), we would have fallen apart.”
After that part of town started to recover economically, the business owners faced another crisis: City officials wanted to tear down a row of buildings, including the one housing Richards’ shop, to make way for a magnet school.
“I told Mayor (John) DeStefano, ‘We don’t want to leave,’ ” Richards recalled. “Nobody wanted to move. You worry that your customers might not find you in your new location. I lost a lot of sleep. Finally we worked it out.”
Richards knows all about changing neighborhoods; he grew up in the city’s Newhallville section, near the Hamden town line. “It was wonderful! Nobody had a car, everybody palled around together.”
In 1955, at age 6, he began to play baseball, in the Newhallville Little League. “It was in my blood.”
Indeed, his dad was Ray “Pickles” Richards, a renowned pitcher who went on to umpire Yale baseball games and referee football games at Yale Bowl as well as basketball. “I still miss him,” Richards said.
After his Little League days in Newhallville, Richards played in the Pony League and the Babe Ruth League before becoming a star pitcher, just like his dad, at Hillhouse High School. During his two years at the University of New Haven, Richards played ball there.
He left UNH to devote himself full-time to opticians work. But always he played baseball.
“I used to play from Palm Sunday to Thanksgiving,” he said. “New Haven was a hotbed of softball. Every field had two or three games every night. We didn’t have all these distractions younger people have today. We had baseball. That was it.”
Richards is a Yankees fan, which became obvious when he showed me around his tidy work space, decorated with photos of Joe DiMaggio, Derek Jeter and Don Mattingly. We commiserated briefly about the events of the past week, then moved on.
Richards still has baseball, at age 69. “I’ve played for 63 years in a row, without missing a year. Hardball or softball, I never skipped a year.”
Richards is a regular in the Cheshire Men’s Softball League, which is modified fast-pitch softball.
“I play with 20-and-30year-olds,” he said. “I don’t play the senior leagues. Their rules are not how I want to play; there’s no sliding. I’m still sliding. I still dive for the ball. I still hit the heck out of the ball.”
But then Richards noted: “My time is coming. I’ll be finished soon. Probably in a couple of years, I’ll hang up the cleats.”
How has he avoided injuries all these years? “I play hard but for some reason it all worked out. I’ve had an occasional muscle pull, a couple of broken fingers from sliding. I played through it.”
He added, “Whatever (more serious) injuries I had were from basketball.” He plays in the Cheshire Parks and Recreation Department’s basketball league during baseball’s off-season.
Richards is a Yankees fan, which became obvious when he showed me around his tidy work space, decorated with photos of Joe DiMaggio, Derek Jeter and Don Mattingly. We commiserated briefly about the events of the past week, then moved on.
“These are all my antiques,” he said, his eyes lighting up as he pointed to the long-ago optician’s machines he keeps on display near the store’s entrance. The collection includes a lens drill press from 1949, a 1940 lens cutter and a popilometer from Paris, 1949.
“Mr. Carofano probably used these when he was an apprentice,” Richards said. “He had all of it down in the cellar. People love it.”
Richards told me, “I’m not an eye doctor. People come in with their doctor’s prescription. We select the frame and I tell them all the kinds of lenses that are available. I make the eyeglasses over the next seven -10 days. I cut the lens to the right shape.” He also repairs eyeglasses.
Richards has seen some famous people walk into his shop, since New Haven has prestigious theaters. “A man came in to have his eyeglasses adjusted. I didn’t know who he was but I looked at him and said, ‘Did anybody ever tell you that you look like Richard Dreyfuss?’ He stood up and said, ‘I am Richard Dreyfuss!’ ”
Richards had another: “When Judge (Clarence) Thomas was going through that big brouhaha and Anita Hill was testifying, I was watching on TV with my wife. I said, ‘Pat, I recognize that girl!’ The next day I looked at my records and sure enough: I made eyeglasses for her when she was at Yale. She was a nice person, with a beautiful smile.”
Richards keeps meticulous records of his customers in a row of file cabinets. He still doesn’t have a computer in his office. “You know what? I’m not interested. I’m just continuing the way Mr. Carofano did.”
But just as Richards recognizes he’s nearing the end of his baseball playing days, he knows he will be retiring and closing his shop within a few years. “I’m glad I’m near the end. I was much busier years ago. Now, Yale students buy their glasses on-line. The big department stores all have optician departments.”
“But I still have my core group of people who always come in,” he added. “There are people in this area who don’t drive or they’re handicapped. I help them out. When I’m gone, it’ll be hard for them.”
His son, Gary, and his daughter, Lesley Ryan, have other interests. They never considered working in their father’s shop. His wife, Patricia, has retired from nursing. They would like to travel — something that has been denied to them for all the years Richards was the only guy there to keep the shop open.
Asked if he has any regrets, Richards said, “I can only tell you that from day one, I enjoyed taking care of my customers. I made a profession for myself. It was not a big-paying job but that didn’t matter. I loved the people.”