100 friends 100 years

WINSTED — Longtime Winsted resident and community leader Anna Harding celebrated her 100th birthday at the Winsted Senior Center on Tuesday, April 20, with 100 friends, family members and other residents.

“It’s 100 to help Anna celebrate her 100th,� Senior Center Director Ellen Schroeder announced during the festivities.

Harding has served on a number of boards and commissions during her more than 80 years as a Winsted resident, including a term on the board of selectmen in the early 1990s and several years as the chairman of the Senior Citizens Advisory Committee.

During her time on the committee, she helped plan and lead the development of the town’s senior center.

“I am very proud of this center and knowing all of you,� Harding said during her birthday speech.

Currently, she sits on the board of the Winsted Health Center, remains an active volunteer at the Auxiliary Thrift Shop and the Open Door Soup Kitchen, which she was instrumental in founding.

In addition, the centenarian is a member of St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church and the Secular Franciscan Order, an international Catholic organization that was founded by and follows the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi.

Harding, who served as the director of Winsted’s Salvation Army service for 21 years, said volunteering and community service has been an important part of her adult life.

“When you stop thinking about yourself, you start thinking of others,� she said.

Harding — born the third of 12 children in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1910 — moved with her siblings and parents Anna and Thomas O’Brien from the city to her maternal grandparent’s farm in Sandisfield, Mass., when she was 10.

A short time later, the family moved to Norfolk, where Harding attended Norfolk Grammar school. A few years later, the family finally settled in Winsted, where Harding was a student at Gilbert High School.

“Which I enjoyed very much,� she said.

In 1933 she married Leland Harding. The couple later had three daughters: Lee Anne, Edith and Jessie.

Professionally, Harding was the original executive director of Winsted’s Homemaker Home Health Aid Service, which eventually merged with the regional Visiting Nurses Association.

Eventually, she moved on to work for 34 years at the former Winsted Memorial Hospital, now the site of the Winsted Health Center.

Harding will hold a second celebration at the Knights of Columbus Hall here on Sunday, April 25. And her actual birthday falls on April 27.

Harding’s daughter, Jessie Harding, attributes her mother’s longevity to a joyfulness and thankfulness for each new day.

“I think that it’s my mother’s interest in life that has kept her active mentally and physically,� she said. “And I know she sees her longevity as a gift from God.�

Anna Harding said it has also been the positive relationships she has developed with people.

“On the way, I have made many, many wonderful friends,� Harding said. “Because without that, you can’t go very far.�

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less