Little Pink House_ A True Story of Defiance and Courage - Jeff Benedict [90]
“I won’t let you down, Bull,” he said with a grin. “I’ll stick with you.”
With Von Winkle on board, Bullock picked up another plaintiff, Von Winkle’s friend Rich Beyer. Though he didn’t reside in New London, Beyer owned a business and two buildings in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood. A highly skilled, thirty-one-year-old building contractor, Beyer had renovated one of the buildings and converted it into rental apartments. He had been in the process of renovating the second building when the NLDC padlocked the front door, confiscated his tools and building materials, and tried to force him out after he refused the agency’s take-it-or-leave-it offer. The heavy-handed tactics motivated Beyer to stand and fight beside the neighborhood’s residents as a matter of principle.
Bullock couldn’t have scripted a more suitable plaintiff than Beyer, a self-employed, hardworking guy dedicated to supporting his young family and minding his own business. But his business had been threatened by the NLDC’s quest for his property.
Before leaving New London, Bullock lined up the rest of the plaintiffs.
Matt and Sue Dery agreed to join the suit. As the titleholder to the family home, Dery’s elderly mother, Wilhelmina, would appear on the complaint. She had never lived elsewhere, and she had no interest in moving. Matt agreed to be her advocate in the fight.
Another elderly couple, Pasquale and Margherita Cristofaro, also pledged to sign on to the suit. They had moved to the neighborhood decades earlier—after losing their previous home to the city’s eminent domain. Their son Michael agreed to speak on behalf of his parents in the lawsuit.
James and Laura Guretsky, a younger couple living on Susette’s block, also signed on.
So did Byron Athenian, a mechanic with a wheelchair-bound granddaughter, who lived a block from Susette. He and his mother had a modest home near the Italian Dramatic Club.
Between them, the group owned fifteen of the twenty-two Fort Trumbull properties targeted by the NLDC. They were largely a lunch-pail group—a carpenter, an auto mechanic, a nurse, a self-employed businessman, and some senior citizens hoping to spend their final days in the homes they had occupied for decades. Most of them had dirt under their nails at the end of the workday.
Convinced the institute had to take the case, Bullock returned to Washington and put together a final proposal to submit to his firm’s board of directors for approval.
30
WOLVES AT THE DOOR
November 22, 2000
As a cold wind whipped off the water, Susette trudged up the front steps to her house. The sun had already set, though it was barely past 5 p.m. It had been a long day at the hospital. With aching feet and a sore back, she planned to spend the evening prepping food for the following day’s Thanksgiving dinner.
Reaching for the doorknob, she spotted a paper taped to her door. She yanked it down and started reading. “The CITY OF NEW LONDON, acting by the NEW LONDON DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION (the ‘Condemner’), has filed with the Clerk of the Superior Court for the Judicial District of New London at New London a Statement of Compensation relative to the taking of the property described in that statement.”
Time had run out. Her property had been condemned. The notice made it clear that she no longer owned her property; the NLDC did. “Upon receipt of such return of notice,” she read, “the Clerk of the Superior Court shall issue a Certificate of Taking. Upon the recording of the Certificate of Taking, title to the premises described therein shall vest in the municipality.”
For the first time, she felt the city had invaded her home. Sometime earlier that day, she realized, a stranger had come on her property and affixed a notice to her door informing her that her home was no longer hers.
She rushed inside and called Von Winkle. He had also received condemnation papers. Others had, too. The elderly