Larry Cassella has earned a good retirement

A photo of Susan St. James and Larry Cassella which appeared in another area newspaper Friday prompted me to hurry with that first cup of coffee and call Cassella, something I had been meaning to do for two weeks.

The picture’s caption contained the information that Ms. St. James and husband Dick Ebersol had donated $100,000 to LARC from the Teddy Ebersol Family Foundation. (Teddy died in a plane crash in 2004.) Teddy’s mother, Susan, presented the check during a retirement celebration for Cassella at the Torrington Country Club on June 16.

Susan St. James has long been an ardent and active supporter of Special Olympics and organizations such as LARC.

“The Ebersols do great good for a lot of things, “Cassella said.

It’s going to be tough for the community to bid this guy goodbye. I got to know him about three decades ago when my daughter Tricia, who worked at LARC for a couple of years, came home and began talking about Larry. She had high praise

for him as a boss and as a “neat” guy. Not long after that, I had occasion to meet him for a story I was writing.

Like Cassella, Tricia graduated from the University of Oklahoma.

Cassella is a very healthy and vibrant 70 years old, so when he retires, after 36 years as executive director of LARC on June 30, he won’t just be sitting on his porch in New Hartford, whittling toys for his four grandkids.

“My wife Patty and I are both looking forward to traveling a bit and spending lots of time with our grandchildren,” he said Friday.

He’ll get some reading done, too. “I just finished Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography,” he said. “I’m a big Springsteen fan. And I’m starting a Steven Ambrose book about the invasion of Normandy. I love history and I’m not one who reads many novels.”

In this, he’s a man after my own heart.

Patty is an Oklahoma City native. They met at the University of Oklahoma in Norman when both were students there.

Their marriage produced a daughter and a son. Daughter Jennifer is a school psychiatrist in Bristol. She and husband Jason Pace have three daughters, five, three and one years old, and if you think those cuties aren’t the apples of Larry’s eye, think again.

Jason Pace was for six years the head football coach at Wolcott High School. “He just left Wolcott to become head coach at Newington High,” Cassella said.

Son Michael and his fiancée Aurbry have an eight year old son, Aiden, also a Cassella favorite.

LARC has made great strides under Cassella. It takes a special, dedicated type of person to do this job well; and for 36 years, Cassella has done it well. More and more, the object has been what he calls “inclusion,” getting the LARC clients to become part of the community. “We have formally adopted that vision,” he said.

There has been considerable expansion during his tenure. In 2006, the organization moved to new headquarters, offering all the things needed in such a facility, on Torrington’s Main Street. “We’ve also constructed five new group homes, “Cassella said.

Camp Moe is named for “Little Moe” Renzullo, a beloved young boy and LARC client who died of leukemia several years ago. It is known far and wide as a model integrated summer day camp. Camp Moe was also under the purview of Larry Cassella.

So off he goes. The last words he said to me Friday, were, “Tell Trish hello for me.”

That’s Larry, one of the better people I’ve known.