For This Couple, Family Always Comes First
ou saved my life,” former students say to Richard Calabro.
“I didn’t do anything for you. I just showed you the way,” Richard replies.
When students complained in his classroom at Crosby High School in Waterbury, “I pounded them with the message that they were responsible” for what happens in their lives. “I would not let them get away with blaming” anyone else. And he tried to fortify seniors with the message that each one of them was as unique as their thumbprint.
Teaching was “my life dream. … I loved every minute of it,” says Richard, now retired after 34 years teaching sociology and psychology at Crosby.
He also loved Rhonda Cookson from the minute he met her at his cousin’s wedding in March 1967. “My feelings weren’t exactly on the same page,” says Rhonda, who at age 18, and newly graduated from high school, was maid-of-honor for her sister at that wedding. Richard and his cousin grew up in a two-family house, and the newlyweds moved to the house next door, which led Richard and Rhonda to see each other repeatedly. “Sometimes he would bring a girlfriend. Sometimes I would bring a boyfriend.”
“She was beautiful, young, sharp, witty, and a nice, nice person. I just knew it when I saw her” that she was the woman he wanted to marry, he says. But “I never told anyone.” Five years older than Rhonda, “I didn’t want to do that,” Richard says.
Rhonda started working in the office of a mill after high school, and over the next 2½ years, “I got to know him so well,” she says. “He is a lot of fun. He has unbelievable caring for his family. I never met another man like him. … He was such an independent person. He can iron his clothes. He can cook. He had it all. It took me a while to see through all that other stuff.”
On Feb. 9, 1969, Richard took Rhonda out to dinner and a movie and said, “I love you.”
“I just couldn’t go on without saying it,” he says. “I have not met another nicer person in my life.”
“I was crazy about him, and I was so happy he said it. … He was full inside. Others were a shell,” Rhonda says. “We started going steady,” but not for long.
Three months later, they became engaged. When they went to tell Rhonda’s mother, she said: “You don’t have to tell me. You’re getting married.”
But Richard’s mother didn’t believe him. “Oh, Richard, you’re such a kidder. You’re always joking,” she said.
“He was very private about his feelings. It took her off guard,” Rhonda says.
“My mother and I had a very close relationship,” Richard says. His mother had taken care of his father, who had a stroke when Richard was 3. “I watched the way she was” and followed her example. When Richard enrolled at American International College in Springfield, he took night classes so he could watch his older brother’s children and enable his sister-in-law to go to school during the day.
Rhonda’s father died shortly after her sister’s wedding, but when he saw Rhonda and Richard at that time, he said to Rhonda’s mother, “They make such a handsome couple.” Rhonda’s mother told her that before her wedding on August 30, 1969, and “I felt in my heart that my father knew something before I did,” Rhonda says.
After a honeymoon in Bermuda, Richard and Rhonda rented an apartment and returned to work. Rhonda’s employment was cut short when she wore a maternity dress to work a few months later. “I was told by human resources that I had to leave my job,” Rhonda says. “I was shocked. We weren’t planning on that.” She went to the state Department of Labor, but they told her she was “unemployable.”
On July 2, 1970, when their son was born, Richard was away at a National Guard camp in Watertown, N.Y. On hearing the news, he thought his fellow guardsmen were playing a joke on him. He didn’t believe them until his sergeant gave him 48 hours to drive to Connecticut, bring Rhonda home from the hospital, and drive back to camp.
In 1971 they had a second son, and in 1973, the growing family bought a newly built home in Prospect. When Rhonda was home taking care of their children, she would set up an easel in the living room and paint. “Richard supported me. This speaks volumes about the man I married,” she says. The first painting she submitted in the Bethlehem Fair won first prize. An artist at heart, Rhonda later started her own business making wedding invitations
After one year in their home, the house was robbed midday on a Saturday. “I was nine months pregnant” and had reluctantly joined Richard and their boys in his side job, delivering newspapers to news carriers. When they returned home, “The curtains were blowing out the open window” where there had been an air conditioner. “The movie camera, stereo, piggy banks filled with real silver coins, jewelry boxes” were taken, but not a little clamshell knocked on its side on her dresser. In it was Rhonda’s wedding ring.
Their daughter was born shortly after, and when she turned 10, Rhonda returned to work with Kelly Services. At the same time, the family was planning a cross-country trip. They bought a 35-foot motor home, and “We pulled out around 9 o’clock at night,” right after graduation at Crosby in 1986, Richard says. They spent 53 days driving to national parks, British Columbia, and Tijuana, Mexico. “When we came back home, we went to Rhode Island. We didn’t even stop at our house” until Richard had to go back to school.
“The national parks within themselves” top Rhonda’s list of favorites, while Richard was won over by the western coastline.
During his years teaching full time at Crosby, he also coached the baseball and cross-country teams, and became the athletic director. When he retired, he served as a consultant in developing the athletic program for a new high school, and he taught English as a Second Language for 17 years with the adult education program. “I loved both situations,” says Richard, who retired for health reasons last year.
Rhonda retired to become a “granny nanny” when their daughter, also a teacher, had their first grandchild in 2002. With their younger son and daughter living in Connecticut, Rhonda and Richard see their four grandchildren regularly, and they visit California to see their eldest son in the summer and winter.
A few years ago, they went to Pontelandolfo, Italy. “I was really overwhelmed to be in the house where my father was born,” Richard says, recalling that his parents emphasized: “There’s nothing more important than family.” It is a message Richard shares widely: “Teach your kids about the value of the family. Family comes first. Be there when they need help.”
“The last couple of years have been very, very tough” as he underwent back surgery and had a heart attack, Richard says. “My kids have been there every step of the way … and she [Rhonda] has saved my life many times. … She’s loving, caring, understanding. She’s the best person I ever met in my life.”
“We come from a very close family,” Rhonda says. “Our children have 17 first cousins. … He’s this caring, selfless person. … Forty-nine years later, every single day, he’ll come to me and say, ‘I love you,’” as sincerely as he did when he first revealed his heart.