KENT—The ghost of Kent’s Civilian Conservation Corps past recently revisited the town when historian Marge Smith gave a presentation about the Depression-era program and its effect on the young men housed in Kent at Camp Macedonia.
The Nov. 20 presentation was part of the senior center’s “People and Places of Kent” series. There was lively interest among Smith’s listeners, who peppered her with questions and remembrances.
In the Northwest Corner, CCC camps were located in Kent and nearby Housatonic Meadows in Sharon. Others still were in Torrington and Barkhamsted. In Kent, the boys worked building roads, walls and the like in Macedonia and Kent Falls state parks.
Enrollees had to be single, from impoverished families, weigh at least 107 pounds, and have at least three teeth, upper and lower jaw. They were shipped to the camps by trains and trucks, were given uniforms, and put in barracks where they were controlled by a supervisory staff.
Most questions asked by program attendees centered on physical remains of the camps and the workers’ projects.
Mason Lord, for instance, inquired about whether buildings at Macedonia State Park were built by the CCC, but Smith said that those buildings post-dated the local camp. She explained that, while Kent’s CCC camp was known as Camp Macedonia, it was actually located near Kent Falls.
Workers were transported by truck from the camp to Macedonia State Park where they built a road and walls. Another road and wall were constructed in Kent Falls State Park.
Smith revealed that the stone chimney in a lot west of Route 7, where it passes Kent Falls, is not a remnant of the camp, however, but rather the last vestige of a restaurant that was once there.
Catherine Bachrach recalled that the CCC was a New Deal program that scooped up unemployed young men and used them to complete civic projects, primarily planting trees on denuded hills.
The young men were paid $30 a month but were only allowed to retain $5 per pay period for their own use. The remainder was sent home to their struggling families.
“There was a little store in camp where they could buy things,” Smith added, “and sometimes they were allowed to go into town to a dance or something.”
Bachrach added that the CCC program also provided work for older men who were residents of the town as they were hired to provide skilled services.
Many of the young men graduated from the CCC camps and went directly into the armed services as World War II began, and were better prepared for it because they had been living in a military environment.
Smith recalled Charlie Bigelow, who died in 2016, and Elmer Trombly, who died in 2009, both graduates of the CCC.
Bigelow’s six-month enlistment ended in 1937 and he did not re-enlist again because Camp Macedonia was closing, and he didn’t want to go to another camp.
Smith noted that Bigelow had credited his time in Kent with setting him up for his later success in life. He entered the camp with only two years of vocational instruction in carpentry but was able to pursue high school subjects at Camp Macedonia.
“Without Camp Macedonia, Charlie’s life would have been totally different,” Smith observed.
Bigelow returned in his later years to look for the old camp and he created a diorama of what the camp had looked like, a rare glimpse of the facility as only two pictures of it have ever been located.
A jobless Trombly was living in Manchester when he heard about the CCC and decided to sign up. He remained in the program for about two years, assigned to help build the two-mile-long road through Macedonia park.
On weekends, he would attend dances in Cornwall Bridge, where he met his wife, Beatrice Thompson, whose family welcomed him to work on their farm. When they retired, he did not want to take over the farm and went into carpentry.
A World War II veteran, he was captured by the Nazis and spent most of the war in German concentration camps.
Jerry Tobin noted that during the war Trombly had flown gliders, which were known as “flying coffins,” because he got an extra $50 in his paycheck.
With the war over, he returned to Beatrice and the two made their home in Kent for the remainder of their lives.
The CCC camps existed for only a decade before they were phased out, but during that time they provided a healthy environment, work and pay for young men who were left jobless and starving by the Great Depression.
The CCC was disbanded in 1942 due to the need for men to go to war.
