Discarded Treasure: NCHS Class of ’39 Yearbook Turns Up at Dump

New Canaan’s Steve Benko was at the Transfer Station making his regular Saturday morning dump run on a recent weekend, when one of the guys who works there flagged him down.

Someone had been discarding books into the bin there, Benko learned, and one of them was an old New Canaan High School yearbook that had his own (Benko’s) father pictured in it.

“It was pretty neat,” Benko, New Canaan’s longtime recreation director, said on a recent afternoon from his office at Waveny House. “It was fun. He told me somebody was throwing out books and he saw this one, thought I may want it.”

He was right.

The 1939 “Perannos” (Latin for “through the years,” as Mrs. Berry taught many of us) features 60 seniors with names familiar to townies, such as Apy, Bianco, Benko, DePalma, Duryea, Franco, Liberatore, Jones, Reddington, Nicoletti, Tiani, Ritter, Spadacinni and Saggese.

Members of what’s been called The Greatest Generation, they would graduate about 18 months ahead of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the nation’s entry into World War II.

Benko said that his father Stephen enlisted in the Marines with brothers John and Lewis, while two other brothers, Bill and Paul, joined the Navy and Army, respectively.

Their parents (Benko’s grandparents) put a flag with five stars out on the front porch of the family’s home on Summer Street—one for each son. Lewis would die at Iwo Jima (his name is on the rock that marks Gold Star Walk at Mead Park).

Many others in the class of 1939 would go on to serve during the war, such as Jerry Lambo, who survived the Bataan Death March.

NewCanaanite.com spoke to Benko and some others who knew members of the NCHS class of ’39, and what follows is some of what they told us. If anyone would like to share more memories, please post a comment on this article or email me (editor@nctest.proxy02.mageenet.net) and we’ll update the remembered person’s bio in the caption area of the photo gallery above:

William “Slap” Apy: “I never heard the nickname ‘Slap.’ His daughter and two granddaughters were just here the weekend before last. He ended up being ‘Mad Men.’ He worked on Madison Avenue, got divorced, married a young ballerina, moved to Chicago and had two more kids. Whenever I’m watching ‘Mad Men,’ I see Don Draper and I see my uncle Bill. He was Don Draper.”—Beth Jones

Stephen Benko: Born on White Oak Shade Road, he graduated in ’39, served with the Marines during World War II and would marry a 1941 NCHS graduate, Madeline, and build the famiy’s house on Orchard Drive. “He came out of the military and eventually worked for CL&P for 39 years. He had a lot of talents. He was a good handyman, a good carpenter and did a lot of work that way.”—Steve Benko (Jr.)

Richard Franco: He had nine older brothers and sisters (including Albert Franco, who had founded Franco’s, a grocery store, on Main Street some 20 years earlier). “He held the 440-yard track record at Mead Park. I believe the time was 54.3. I used his track shoes from 1939 [during] my freshman track season, in 1968. They were black leather with no heel, but the sole was thick leather (like on a pair of wingtips) with spikes in them. Very funny! He had a pact with another guy, they flipped a coin their freshman year to see who would run for president and vice-president of the class and then alternated for all four years. They always won. During his senior year he went to see his guidance counselor about college; the guy told him that Italians were not suppose to go to college making Dad furious … as we know Dad went on to Villanova and U Penn.”—The Francos

The Franco family additionally found this same class’s 8th grade class photo at the Junior High School (now Schoolhouse Apartments):