The Nominating Committee made up of Beverly Carbonella, Harvey Koizim, Charlie Murphy, Renate Recknagel and Bonnie Rosenberg recommend the following individuals for election to the Board of Directors for one year. Voting will take place at the HWSA Annual Meeting on Wednesday, January 18, 2012.
Cordalie Benoit (current board member) returned to New Haven in 2001, having fallen in love with the city while attending the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in 2000-2001. She is the treasurer of the CT Community Gardening Association and has, with other community members, planted more than 30 trees in Wooster Square and surrounding streets. Cordalie is also a member of the William Street Community Garden and a UConn certified Master Gardener. She also serves on the board of the Friends of Grove Street Cemetery. She resides on Court Street with her husband, David.
Beverly Bradshaw Carbonella (current board member and co-president) has made Wooster Square her home for more than 40 years. Her son and daughter grew up at 20 Academy Street, their former Italian Consulate home. Ever active in the community, Bev is a former New Haven Historic District Commissioner and served on the Board of the New Haven Preservation Trust and the New Haven Museum and Historical Society. She chaired the Cherry Blossom Concert and Festival for 20 years and was on the Commission when the Cherry Trees were planted.
Elsie Blackshear Chapman (current board member and co-president) lives in the Edward Rowland House on Academy Street, having lived for the 20 previous years in Ridgefield, CT. She retired in 1995 from IBM after working for 30 years in a variety of management and executive positions. She has since taught high school and college math and worked as a development officer for Yale and other nonprofit institutions. Elsie now serves on the boards of directors of several public and nonprofit cultural and historical institutions.
Rosemarie Conforti (current board member) is Associate Professor and Chairperson of the Media Studies Department at Southern Connecticut State University. Originally from New York, she has made Wooster Square her home for several years. She has studied cooking in Provence, history in Moscow, media culture in Edinburgh, and American Sign Language with the National Theater of the Deaf in Connecticut. Her free time is spent as an animal rescue volunteer, reading, and walking in Wooster Square Park with her husband, Chris Piscitelli, and their dogs Rufus and Bruno. She has also chaired the Cherry Blossom Festival.
Erin Gustafson (current board member) moved to New Haven 1999 from Oregon, where she grew up, and moved to Court Street in Wooster Square in 2005. She became active in New Haven early on, serving over the years on boards of the historic Trinity Church on the Green, New Haven Sister Cities, and the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team. She works for Yale as an immigration adviser and currently leads the Wooster Square Block Watch. She has been an active volunteer for Wooster Square events including the Court Street Halloween party, movie night, and the 2010 Block Party.
Harvey Koizim (current board member) is a 25-year resident of Wooster Square and native of Connecticut; he received a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1951. Harvey has practiced law and been a bank president and real estate developer. He serves on several New Haven non-profit boards such as CitySeed, ArtSpace, Edgerton Park Conservancy and HOME, Inc. Harvey resides with his wife, Ruth, and youngest son, Ben, in a restored brownstone overlooking our park.
Keith Lorch and his wife, Jackie, are among the original residents of The Gables at Wooster Square, the former St. Casimir’s Church on Greene Street. They moved to New Haven from Fairfield in 2006 after becoming empty nesters and having been captivated by Yale’s Sprague Hall. They have been active participants in neighborhood activities, including the community garden on Warren Street. Keith is also a member of the Wooster Street Grill, a notable feature of the annual Cherry Blossom Festival, and a regular volunteer at the Loaves and Fishes Food Pantry at St. Paul & St. James.
Marianne Mazan (current board member and treasurer) is a long-time resident and active member of the Wooster Square community. She is retired from her position as an administrator at the Yale School of Medicine. Marianne served as representative for Wooster Square on the Historic District Commission for 27 years. She currently serves on the Board of the New Haven Preservation Trust and volunteers at the New Haven Museum. Marianne has also been the treasurer of the association for several years.
Charlie Murphy (current board member and secretary) and his wife, Charlotte, have lived on the corner of Academy and Greene Streets since 2003. They moved to New Haven after several years in Wallingford, CT. Charlie is a Vietnam-era veteran (U.S. Navy) and a retired librarian who worked for 16 years each at Fuss & O’Neill consulting engineers in Manchester, CT, and Penn State University in State College. He currently volunteers at the Yale Peabody Museum Ornithology Library.
Renate Recknagel (current board member) has been a Wooster Square resident for 25 years, first at her brownstone on Chapel Street and subsequently on Olive Street. She is a co-founder (with Beverly Carbonella and erstwhile Ralph Marcarelli) of the Historic Wooster Square Association, a member of the board since its inception, and served as its president for several years. Renate is an attorney, a teacher, and a businesswoman. She has been involved politically in the community as a member of the 8th Ward Committee and continues to be interested in promoting community concerns.
Bonnie Rosenberg (current board member) is a resident of the Henry Cowell House (ca. 1869) on Greene Street. She is currently studying for her master’s degree in Library Science and looking forward to a third career. Her first 15-year profession was that of a chemist working for Loctite Corp. After a two-year sabbatical of world travel and art study, she embarked upon a new career in the visual arts field. During this time, her involvement with a local television station ultimately led to coordinating and producing live TV shows and documentary film work. Today Bonnie remains an avid freelance film researcher/photo archivist. Down time finds her in the kitchen experimenting with healthy ethnic cooking while listening to jazz.
Peter Thompson (current board member) has lived on Wooster Square since since 1986 when he bought a unit in the Matthew Elliott house (ca. 1835) at the corner of Chapel Street and Wooster Place, which had just been converted into condominiums. He plants and maintains the beautiful flowers on both sides of Wooster Place at that corner of Wooster Square Park. Peter studied the German language in Boulder, Colorado; Lucerne, Switzerland; Austria and Germany. He is an executive with a German manufacturer in the U.S.
Peter Webster (current board member) lives in the Matthew Elliott House (ca. 1835) at the corner of Wooster Place and Chapel Street. He is a theater and opera director who brings free, site-specific opera to New Haven with the company Opera in the Streets. He is married to Mary Lou Aleskie, Executive Director of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven. They, and their daughter, Rosemarie, and dog Boomer enjoy the ever-changing presence of the great Wooster Square at their doorstep.
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