A search in New Haven for things past

My family moved to New Haven when I was 4 and I lived in the Elm City, as it was called before the blight did in the elms, and the nearby suburb of Hamden until I left home for New York after I graduated from Yale Law School. Recently, a friend whom I knew had developed a major interest in Thornton Wilder and his play “Our Town” asked me to accompany him to New Haven and to show him the home of the playwright that I had told him was in Hamden. When I looked up the address of the Wilder home on Deepwood Drive in Hamden, I learned that — as the local library website proclaimed — the house is now regarded as “one of the major literary sites in Connecticut.” I was interested to see it.

I confess to considerable ignorance when it comes to Wilder and more broadly to the theater and plays generally. I am much stronger on the stuff of the sports pages, but I have read and seen “Our Town” and I recognize the timeless themes and fine craftsmanship that Wilder so deftly married. My friend believes the play is the finest written by an American. As an Irishman, I have long been drawn to the O'Neill tragedies where, as I watched them unfold, I often had the thought I was seeing some of my own family history being presented. But Wilder's play is now a classic and it continues to be produced hundreds of times a year by theaters all over the country. Wilder was a Yale graduate and he lived and worked quietly in a lovely house built on a ridge overlooking the broad plain that extends three or four miles to New Haven and then beyond to Long Island Sound. One can imagine the author sitting in his study gazing out over the city to the water and having serene and solid theological thoughts.

The name of the street — Deepwood Drive — is an accurate description of the terrain. To reach the Wilder house, the narrow road winds through a leafy bower in which several modern-styled homes have been built no doubt by Yale faculty and other Brahmins who sought out the quiet and peace of the area. Wilder and his sister lived in a more traditional home, now painted a dark green, and one has a sense this is not a neighborhood where the neighbors are likely to dash over regularly to borrow a cup of sugar or a few tea bags. These are the homes of senior faculty and senior partners in law firms and of prominent doctors. The houses are not grand and not even impressive, but the presence of the few modern ones probably designed by Yale architects signals this is a well sought-after area. In my youth, the kids I knew who lived on that street were all silently viewed by the rest of us as rich. The street exudes the sense of tweed jackets, pipes and soft preppy attire. Only one boy in my class lived there.

Not far from the Wilder home is Laurel Drive where Bart Giamatti, my good friend and predecessor as baseball commissioner, lived after he left the presidency of Yale. We stopped to tip our hats to Bart as memories of that good and talented man came flooding back. He and I shared a love of New Haven and of Yale and we often drove aimlessly through the area talking and enjoying the variety and even the beauty of a city that is much maligned and not very well appreciated. The thing that set Bart apart was the quality and range of his conversation. Indeed, he once proudly proclaimed, “The only thing I do very well is talk.” He was wrong. He also wrote like an angel.

The recent visit to New Haven was punctuated by a brief stop at the Grove Street Cemetery where we paid respects at the graves of Bart and his wife Toni. The friend with me admired Bart as much as I did and there was a surge of emotion as we paused in the warm sun of a lovely October afternoon surrounded by the gravestones of numerous other Yale luminaries to remember this noble — a Bart word — son of Yale and Italy. Being old means memories become richer and more precious. For me New Haven is Proustian — I search there for things past.