Biographical Information for Curtis Read

Biographical Information for Curtis Read
I was born in 1949 in Glen Cove, New York. In my upbringing I knew both joy and adversity. My
younger sister was born a “blue baby” with a faulty heart valve and my mother was badly
disabled by polio shortly thereafter. My grandmother made sure that my older sister and I were
cared for through the 1950’s until we were able to be more of a help at home.
Fortunately, I could walk to school through the Long Island woods to a small grade school
where I made many lifelong friends and avidly played sports as well as being a good student.
Then I was “sent” to a boarding school in Pennsylvania for my high school years. The education
was comprehensive and outstanding and made the transition to Hamilton College in upstate
New York a bit easier. One of the highlights of college was my junior year studying at the
Sorbonne in Paris. I graduated in 1971 with a degree in French Literature and was somewhat
fluent. However, my real interests were filmmaking and photography.
I also loved to travel and had an opportunity to work on a cattle and sheep station in South
Africa when I was sixteen. This was a seminal experience in many ways. It was my first
encounter with farming, travel photography, other foreign lands and extreme racism in the
form of apartheid. After college I traveled around the world on a small budget for almost a year
working as a photographer. I went around South America, to Polynesia, New Zealand, Australia,
Indonesia, Southeast Asia, India, Nepal, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Turkey, and eventually
across Europe.
When I was twenty-four and almost broke, I searched for a place to put down roots and
establish a home base for a career as an international photo journalist. I ended up finding a
mountaintop cabin in the Potomac Highlands of West Virginia. It was a foreign culture to some
degree, but I soon latched on to a local neighbor who taught me the old ways of living off the
land. This included raising farm animals, hunting and working harder than I ever had imagined
to re-vitalize an old farm. My film and photography career was relegated to a hobby.
Eventually, my future wife, Louise Lindsay, came to live with me and after five years of toil we
moved to Morgantown, WV where I completed a Masters of Agriculture degree and she
worked as a nurse. I then was hired as a farm manager for a 1,200 acre cattle and sheep
operation in central West Virginia where with the help of an old farm hand and my border collie
I cared for 100 cows/calves, 200 summer grazing steers and 300 ewes with up to 500 lambs.
After Louise and I were married and had our first child, we decided to try to find other work
where we were not so isolated and underpaid. We wanted to return to our roots and be near
our families in the Northeast. As much as we loved West Virginia, we knew that our children
would never get exposed to a good education or cultural opportunities. Luckily, I landed a job
with the Sunny Valley Foundation to start a demonstration farm and program to help re-vitalize
the sheep industry in New England. That’s how we landed in Bridgewater in 1982 and I became
known as “The Bridgewater Shepherd”. I formed a regional wool marketing cooperative and
sold breeding stock and lambs to underwrite the educational programs and pay for new barns
and fences on the Hut Hill Farm.
The Sunny Valley Foundation eventually was taken over by its parent organization, the Nature
Conservancy, due to financial difficulties at the dairy farm and board mismanagement. My
Sheep Project became a casualty. Louise and I had three children by 1987 and minimal
prospects for meaningful employment. I did odd carpentry jobs and sheared sheep seasonally
around our region. We spent our savings and secured two partners to open a CT Certified
Laboratory in New Milford in 1988. I started and successfully managed Hydro Technologies, Inc.
until 1999. I also started another company, Lablite LLC in 1996 which develops software to help
manage laboratory data. We now have clients all across the USA and service labs in many
industries and cities. This company is also based in New Milford.
My wife worked as a teacher at the Washington Montessori School and as a nurse at several
locations. She graduated from Yale with a Masters in Nursing in 2006 but was diagnosed with
cancer weeks later. Our family suffered a terrible blow when Louise died in 2008.
Apart from starting and managing private businesses, I have been active in non-profit
organizations for many years since coming to Connecticut. Jimmy Allen urged me to join the
Litchfield County Soil and Water Conservation District in 1988. I eventually became Chairman of
the Board and President of the CT Association of Conservation Districts. I pushed to re-organize
the eight county districts into five regional districts. With name changes and more income
streams the Districts are now much stronger and more effective. I still serve as Chairman of the
newly named Northwest Conservation District, Inc. One of our recent projects was helping to
get funding and install the solar array at the Bridgewater Senior Center.
I was also a founding member of the Pomperaug River Watershed Coalition whose mission
includes protection of the river and groundwater aquifer in five towns. My work through Hydro
Technologies led to the discovery and eventual remediation of sub-surface gasoline
contamination in Woodbury.
My environmental work has included membership on the Bridgewater Conservation and Inland
Wetlands Commission since 1986 with one year off to serve as a consultant for the Commission
on an affordable housing proposal. I was Chairman for many years and have enjoyed serving on
a very reasonable and capable town appointed commission.
One other area of valuable experience has been serving as the President of Little Simon
Properties, Inc. which is a land holding company in the Adirondacks of upstate New York. I
manage employees, oversee road work, timber harvests, lake resources and many other
aspects. This is also where I vacation with family and friends whenever time allows.
Over the past 32 years living in Bridgewater I have helped out with my son’s baseball team,
coached youth hockey teams in Washington for eight years, worked for FISH installing
emergency beepers and phones for the elderly and cleared trails for the Sunny Valley Preserve.
Bridgewater is a beautiful place to live and I feel lucky to live here. My last four years as a
Selectman and all my past experiences should help me serve the Town of Bridgewater as First
Selectman.