No one at the bakery is sure how long this town institution has been open, but a bill of sale to the second owner is dated 1909.
Yet a couple of months ago, Mrs. DeMarco, founder of the Stratfield Village Association, was at the heart of a protest against the demise of the Stratfield Supermarket, a town institution, to make way for a Walgreen's pharmacy.
The oil and aircraft industries have all but disappeared as bulwarks of the regional economy, and most of the formerly influential banks have been merged into out-of-town institutions.
In a city where children often attend the same grammar schools their parents did, and where parents and their grown children often live together in two-family houses, merchants had become annoyed at the impersonal service they were receiving at banks owned by the larger out-of-town institutions.
Oct. 12-15: Wynton Marsalis celebrates his fiftieth birthday at his home-town institution, Jazz at Lincoln Center, with assistance from the tap dancer Jared Grimes, the vocalist Gregory Porter, the pianist Marcus Roberts, the violinist Mark O'Connor (Oct . 12-14only), and others.
Thomas G. Ferrara, the chairman of the board, calls Community Mutual "the old plain-vanilla bank" and compares it to the mythical and intimate small-town institution in the Christmas chestnut "It's a Wonderful Life".
12-15: Wynton Marsalis celebrates his fiftieth birthday at his home-town institution, Jazz at Lincoln Center, with assistance from the tap dancer Jared Grimes, the vocalist Gregory Porter, the pianist Marcus Roberts, the violinist Mark O'Connor (Oct . 12-14only), and others.
Washington – so the stereotype goes – is a town of institutions and long-held ideals.
