Mark Your Calendar

CTRides: Free Bus Service thru March 31st.  See Connecticut free.  Plan your trip.

Sterling House Community Center Advanced Futbol Club:Tryouts: Last One Saturday, February 25th: All players interested in joining the Sterling Advanced Futbol Club MUST attend at least one of the upcoming tryouts.  Players will be assessed on foot skills, passing, on-field character, and Game IQ. Players will run through a series of drills and scrimmage play.  Registration is required for tryouts, no initial payment is needed.

Erin’s Gym: 2283 Main Street, Stratford

6p.m. – U7-10

7p.m. – U11 – U14

8 p.m. – U15+

 

Tuesday, February 28th, Birdseye Municipal Complex, from 11a.m. – 12 p.m. Join the Stratford Health Department and the Hispanic Health Council for a free 4-week session on Nutrition Health.  The Session will be on Food Safety.  To register or for more information contact:  Walter Owusu, wowusu@townofstratford.com, 203-385-4090

Save The Date Stratford Events:

March 25th: Boogie at the Brewery to benefit Sterling House Community Center.

May 20th the Goody Bassett Ball fundraiser for the Stratford Historical Society.

Celebrate Stratford 2023 Events

Make A Difference!

Be a Citizen Reporter for the Stratford Crier

We are a volunteer group, providing fact-based nonpartisan reporting,

and we want YOUR help in keeping our community informed.

 

We need Citizen Reporters to cover:

  • Town Government
  • Education
  • Environment and Climate Resilience

Please join us!  Reach out to Barbara@stratfordcrier.com

Mark Your Calendar

CTRides: Free Bus Service thru March 31st.  See Connecticut free.  Plan your trip.

   

Saturday, February 18th, “SheSpeak”at Open Door Tea is the brainchild of local creative artistic women. We celebrate our community of writers, performers and audience by sharing our creative selves through written and read stories that are performed throughout the evening. The February 18th program, themed RE-DEFINING YOURSELF, is produced by Rachel Babcock, of Branford, and Beatriz Allen, of Stratford.  Please join us for an evening of creative theatrical stories and delicious pastries both savory and sweet as well as teas, coffee, Beer or wine.  The program is free and open to the public. Space is limited and reservations are strongly recommended, call Open Door Tea at 203-345-9659

Monday, February 20th, President’s Day Closures:

Ø  All town buildings will be closed on Monday, February 20th in observance of Presidents’ Day.

Ø  Presidents Day is a federal holiday, all federal offices closed,

Ø  It’s a Connecticut State holiday,

Ø   and a Bank holiday.

Stratford Library will be closed on Sunday, February 19th and Monday, February 20th in observation of the Presidents’ Day holiday.  The library will reopen on Tuesday, February 21st at 10 am.  Current library hours are: Monday-Thursday: 10-8, Friday-Saturday: 10-5 and Sunday: 1-5 p.m.  For further library information, call 203.385.4161 or visit: http://www.stratfordlibrary.org .

Tuesday, February 28th, Birdseye Municipal Complex, from 11a.m. – 12 p.m. Join the Stratford Health Department and the Hispanic Health Council for a free 4-week session on Nutrition Health.  The Session will be on Food Safety.  To register or for more information contact:  Walter Owusu, wowusu@townofstratford.com, 203-385-4090

Save The Date Stratford Events:

March 25th: Boogie at the Brewery to benefit Sterling House Community Center.

May 20th the Goody Bassett Ball fundraiser for the Stratford Historical Society.

Celebrate Stratford 2023 Events

Make A Difference!

Be a Citizen Reporter for the Stratford Crier

We are a volunteer group, providing fact-based nonpartisan reporting,

and we want YOUR help in keeping our community informed.

 

We need Citizen Reporters to cover:

  • Town Government
  • Education
  • Environment and Climate Resilience

Please join us!  Reach out to Barbara@stratfordcrier.com

Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination

By Barbara Heimlich
Editor
Source: History.com

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4th, 1968, an event that sent shock waves reverberating around the world.

On the night of April 3rd, King gave a speech at the Mason Temple Church in Memphis.  In his speech, King seemed to foreshadow his own untimely passing, or at least to strike a particularly reflective note, ending with these now-historic words: “I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

At 6:05 p.m. the following day, King was standing on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where he and his associates were staying, when a sniper’s bullet struck him in the neck. He was rushed to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead about an hour later, at the age of 39.

A Baptist minister and founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), King had led the civil rights movement since the mid-1950s, using a combination of impassioned speeches and nonviolent protests to fight segregation and achieve significant civil rights advances for African Americans.

King Assassination Conspiracy

On June 8th, authorities apprehended the suspect in King’s murder, a small-time criminal named James Earl Ray, at London’s Heathrow Airport. Witnesses had seen him running from a boarding house near the Lorraine Motel carrying a bundle; prosecutors said he fired the fatal bullet from a bathroom in that building. Authorities found Ray’s fingerprints on the rifle used to kill King, a scope and a pair of binoculars.

On March 10, 1969, Ray pleaded guilty to King’s murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. No testimony was heard in his trial. Shortly afterwards, however, Ray recanted his confession, claiming he was the victim of a conspiracy. The House Select Committee on Assassinations (who also investigated the assassination of JFK) maintained that Ray’s shot killed king.

Ray later found sympathy in an unlikely place: Members of King’s family, including his son Dexter, who publicly met with Ray in 1977 and began arguing for a reopening of his case. Though the U.S. government conducted several investigations into the trial—each time confirming Ray’s guilt as the sole assassin—controversy still surrounds the assassination.

At the time of Ray’s death in 1998, King’s widow Coretta Scott King (who in the weeks after her husband’s death had courageously continued the campaign to aid the striking Memphis sanitation workers and carried on his mission of social change through nonviolent means) publicly lamented that “America will never have the benefit of Mr. Ray’s trial, which would have produced new revelations about the assassination…as well as establish the facts concerning Mr. Ray’s innocence.”

For some 50 years, the federal government has maintained that James Earl Ray was the gunman who assassinated King that day. But within Martin Luther King’s family, there remains a persistent belief that Ray is innocent, and was set up to take the fall.

FBI investigators at the time traced the shot to a rooming house across the street, and witnesses directed them to a large bundle dropped on the sidewalk after the shooting. It contained a pair of binoculars, a newspaper with a story about King staying at the Lorraine Motel, and a .30-06 Remington Gamemaster that had fired one shot. All three bore the fingerprints of an escaped convict named James Earl Ray.

Ray, a white supporter of segregationist George Wallace, was a career criminal who’d been convicted at least four separate times for robbing a cafe, a taxi, a post office and a grocery store. A year before, he’d escaped from Missouri State Penitentiary while serving a 20-year sentence, and was on the lam at the time King was shot. An international manhunt led to his capture in June 1968 at Heathrow Airport in London, where he was caught carrying two fake Canadian passports. Ray confessed to the crime on March 10, 1969 and received a 99-year prison sentence, which increased to a 100-year sentence after he briefly escaped in 1977.

But within a few days of confessing, Ray began to claim his innocence, arguing that that he had been set up by a man he knew only as “Raoul.” It was Raoul, Ray said, who had directed him to buy the gun and the binoculars, and rent the room across the street from the motel. Ray said he wasn’t in the room when King was shot, but he was unable to consistently explain where he had been, or keep other important details in his story straight. Over several decades, federal investigators have routinely concluded that Raoul doesn’t exist.

This doesn’t mean that Ray couldn’t have received assistance. Some people had trouble, for example, believing Ray had arranged his international escape all by himself, since he had a track record of getting caught for more minor crimes. When authorities caught him in London, he’d been planning to travel to Rhodesia, a former African state ruled by a white minority in present-day Zimbabwe.

But even if Ray had help, the evidence strongly pointed to him pulling the trigger. Ray’s fingerprints were the only ones found on the gun, and there were no witnesses who had seen him with Raoul during the nine months they supposedly knew each other (Ray’s description of Raoul also changed a few times).

During the years following King’s assassination, doubts about the adequacy of the case against Ray were fueled by revelations of the extensive surveillance of King by the FBI and other government agencies. Beginning in 1976 the House Select Committee on Assassinations, chaired by Representative Louis Stokes, re-examined the evidence concerning King’s assassination, as well as that of President John F. Kennedy. The committee’s final report suggested that Ray may have had co-conspirators. The report nonetheless concluded that there was no convincing evidence of government complicity in King’s assassination.

Winter Sports, Art Classes, Safe Sitter Classes

Pickle Ball Lessons and Games

Sterling House Community Center Has Something for Everyone

Soccer:  Winter off-season soccer skills clinic.  Co-ed classes on Saturday’s in Erin’s Gym.  Led by advanced soccer training coaches, players will work on agility, foot skills, shooting tactics, game IQ and teamwork.

Session 1 will be January 7th-February 11th.  Session 2, February 25th – April 1st.

To register go to: sterlinghousecc.org/soccer

Channel Your Inner Artist:  Opportunity to learn the fundamentals of art from begging to end. Youth and Teen classes will be held on Saturdays with the following schedule:

Beginners: ages 6-12, 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.

Advanced, ages 10-12, 10:30 a.m. to 11?45 a.m.

Teens, ages 13-19, 11:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m.

Session 3 begins on January 14th for 5 weeks

Session 4 starts February 18th for 5 weeks

 

Adult Art Classes: Thursay evenings from 7:15 p.m. – 8:45 p.m.

Session 3 beginis January 12th for 5 weeks

Session 4 starts February 16th for 5 weeks

To register online go to: sterlinghousecc.org/art

Pickle Ball:  Calling all Stratford Seniors join the latest exercise craze – 4 week courses on Pickle Ball.  In partnership with Stratford Recreation and the Baldwin Center,  SHCC will be conducting Pickle Ball classes that teach the basic rules, skills, and techniques.  There will be short drills, practice time and friendly scrimmages

All classes will be on Wednesdays.  Session 1 will be from January 25th to February 15th.  Session 2 is from March 8th – March 29th.

Safesitters Classes:  Learn how to be safe when watching younger siblings or babysitting.  Safesitter classes for ages 11+ on Saturday, January 28th from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.  Register today at: www.sterlinghousecc.org

2023 Spring Lacrosse with the Stratford Storm can be found at:

www.stratfordstorm.com  Registration is now open and ends March 1st.  Games begin April 1st.

“Cloak and Dagger – The Revolution’s Secret War”

“Sunday Afternoon Talks” 2023
Stratford Library 2-3:30 p.m. in the Lovell Room

Historian Eric Chandler Returns on January 8th
Free and Open to the Public

The Stratford Library continues “Sunday Afternoon Talks”, its series of informative and entertaining talks featuring prominent local guest speakers, on Sunday, January 8th, 2023, with historian Eric Chandler and his presentation, “Cloak and Dagger – The Revolution’s Secret War”. The talk will be presented live in the Library’s Lovell Room. It is free and open to the public.

Spying may be the world’s second oldest profession, even recounted in the Old Testament. By the time of the Revolution, England already had a long tradition of the Great Game, its tentacles spread through the British Iles and deep within the European Continent.

However, on this side of the Atlantic with 13 separate and competing colonies? Enter George Washington – first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen….and America’s first spymaster. As the new Commander-in-Chief, George Washington would have to make it up as he went along, through trial and error and sometimes with disastrous results. “Cloak and Dagger – The Revolution’s Secret War” explores who spied for love and who for greed. Chandler will explain the who, the how, and the successes and failures of America’s first foray into intelligence gathering and the part it played in the ultimate success of the American War for Independence.

Eric Chandler is retired from a 30+ year career as an underwriter for a leading land title insurance company. He has been involved in American Revolutionary War Living History since 1974 and has portrayed infantry, light infantry, whaleboat raider and mounted and dismounted dragoons. He is currently serving his third term as a member of the Norwalk Historical Commission and sits on the Norwalk Historical Society Board of Directors.

The “Sunday Afternoon Talks” series, hosted by Charles Lautier of Stratford. For further information visit: www.stratfordlibrary.org or call the Library at: 203.385-4162

Stratford School District to End Reduced Meals in Schools

Beginning Tuesday, January 3rd

The Stratford School District reported that beginning Tuesday, January 3rd, it will charge full price for meals because the School Meals Assistance Revenue for Transition (SMART) funds, which are used to provide free breakfasts and lunches to all students through a grant provided by the Connecticut State Department of Education, will expire on Friday, December 23rd.

Students whose households are eligible for free or reduced meals can submit free and reduced-price meal applications, the district said.  School officials said it is important for families to apply as soon as possible to avoid any possible charges.  The online application is located on the district’s website:

https://www.stratfordk12.org/page/food-service-free-reduced-meal-application

Officials said the following schools will continue to offer free meals for the entire school year:

Franklin

Lordship

Nichols

Second Hill Lane

Johnson House

Victoria Soto

Students at these schools don’t need to submit the free or reduced-price meal applications, the district reported.

Stratford Elves

Sterling House Community Center

High School Hoops

Sterling House Community Center

Register Now
Games Start in January

Basketball is back at SHCC! Get back out on the basketball court this season with our recreational basketball league. Scholarships available for those interested in participating.

High School Basketball League:

JV Division: 9th and 10th graders

Varsity Division: 11th and 12th graders

Players are encouraged to form their own teams with a required adult coach over the age of 21. Games start in January.

Students playing for a high school team are not eligible for this league due to CIAC state rules.

Registration Still Open

Become an After School Counselor

Sterling House Community Center

 

Menorah Lighting

Monday, December 19th at 6 p.m.
Town Hall Green

In celebration of Hanukkah, which begins at sundown on Sunday, December 18th, Rabbi Joseph Stock of the Mishkan Israel Day Camp will be on-hand to light an oversized menorah, which, in his own words, will “shine a light on all humanity.” Mayor Hoydick will be joining Rabbi Stock in the celebration. The event will take place entirely outdoors.

Rabbi Stock invites friends and family members to partake in the festivities, sharing stories from past celebrations and highlighting Jewish heritage and traditions. Light refreshments and hot cocoa will be available after the ceremonial menorah lighting, while Hebrew music fills the Town Hall green.

For more information, visit www.CelebrateStratford.com.