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NORWALK, Conn. Give Susan Gunn Bromley some time and she'll weave a story with many different elements, all of them true: the time when Norwalk was known as the Clam Town, how a Norwalk businessman broke up an attempted conglomerate and the reason oystermen learned to sweep up starfish.
The oystering exhibit just inside the doors of the Norwalk Museum ties together "the nature and evolution of ideas, and time, and inventions and men and business," said Bromley, curator of Norwalk's municipal museum whose job is in jeopardy.
The museum and its curator are not in the city's proposed budget for 2012-13. Pressed to pay for services in tough times, Mayor Richard Moccia plans to close the museum and put its collection in storage, thereby saving $216,395.
Thomas Hamilton, the city's finance director, said only about 1,500 people a year visit the museum, and both he and Moccia have expressed frustration about the lack of record keeping.
"I don't want to be confrontational with the mayor, but they have never asked me for anything," said Bromley, who files a report monthly with the historical commission. "I have asked them, 'What do you want this museum to be, for the community?' And I think out of all of this, if we find a way to buy some time, or rethink, we need to sit down and have community meetings, ask the community what they want us to be."
A page from the city's proposed budget shows an average of 4,000 people a year visit the museum, based on its visitor log. More than 2,000 requests for information were made, 250 donations were received and 3.5 major exhibits were put up last year.
Bromley's job description includes duties beyond the museum. She coordinates the routine maintenance and emergency repair of historical buildings and grounds entrusted to the city. She also works with the Building Maintenance unit in keeping up these properties, according to a document obtained from Norwalk's personnel department. She is the museum's only employee and is the city's staff person assigned to the historical commission, for which she "prepares statistical and narrative reports of some complexity."
Bromley said she cares for nine historic buildings and four cemeteries for the commission. "When we have a hurricane like Irene and we have damage to the buildings, I am the one who meets with the contractors. ... That's very time consuming," she said.
Mike Mocciae, director of the Department of Recreation & Parks, said the commission "will take a stronger role in the building maintenance issues" if the museum was closed and the curator position eliminated. The Department of Public Works would also be involved.
Plans to increase revenue for the museum include selling old photographs through the city's website more than 500 have been digitally scanned and more than 9,000 prints are catalogued into the museum's database, Bromley said. "Where we're stuck there, the city has to create a credit card account for us," she said. "We need to get it up on the website. I am in the process of doing that."
The museum used to receive donations from people who used it for evening events, but Bromley is not allowed to work past 5:30 p.m.
Bromley said the museum attracts people heading to an afternoon movie or having lunch in the area, maybe across the street at the Bull's Head Market. It's a different kind of museum, she said. "We are much more personal, we spend a lot of time, the volunteers do, in making connections."
Recently a woman who grew up in Norwalk came in from out of town. Bromley found a photo of her mother in the museum's collection for her, a photo of her mother as a child.
Blight on oysters in the 1950s led to Norwalk being called the Clam Town, she said. "The energetic oystermen were able to dig beneath the oyster beds for the clams. We supplied Campbell's soup with oysters for their oyster stew and clams for their clam chowder for years."
Starfish eat oysters, she said, prompting oystermen to sweep the floor of Long Island Sound to cut the number of predators after their cash crop.
In the 1900s, an attempt was made to keep all the oystering efforts as part of one business. A Norwalk man took a conglomerate to court, breaking it up. One of the resultant companies was Birds Eye frozen food. "It was about getting oysters, fresh oysters, to the middle of the country," she said. "It was all about getting food around the world.
"Our oystering business helped support us during the Depression. We were able to shuck oysters and can them and send them to Europe. So between our dairy farms, which supplied a lot of families with milk and cheese and food, and being right on Long Island Sound with our rivers, we were able to have access to fresh meat by way of fish and seafood. So whereas many communities in the middle of the country had very tough times, we lost a lot of business and stuff, but we were still able to keep our families together and feed ourselves, which is a monumental part of who we are."
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