Walk into Euro Dry Cleaners, located just behind Aspen Dental on the east side of Putney Road in North Brattleboro, and chances are you will be greeted by the manager, Linda Vartuli. Chances are also good customers will also walk in with an armful of crumpled shirts, a stained dress or coat, or a laundry bag full of clothes that just overwhelm you. Vartuli has been working at Euro Dry Cleaners for 22 years and counting. But more than longevity on the job, it's her larger-than-life personality, her ready laugh and, of course, her utter competence that draws customers in.

The Momaneys, most from Dummerston and Brattleboro, were and are house painters. Moe’s father was, his Dad’s cousin, his uncle Walter, his Uncle Ed, his brother Mitch….. Moe’s son Terran works with him now and his daughter Ambria even got into the business for awhile.

Jumi Cha has had a clothing repair and alteration shop in the Vermont Marketplace at 580 Canal Street just off Interstate 91, Exit 1 for the past several years. (He set up his first shop in The Brooks House in Brattleboro just over 20 years ago.) He was born in Incheon, Korea, just west of Seoul, in 1952, which makes him 73 today. He lived in Incheon for most of his early life. His father, who retired in 1970, was a policeman most of his life; his mother was a hair stylist and ran a beauty shop. In 1985, at age 33, he married Euisoon Jung and they lived in Incheon.

Natalie Sensor is 19. She will be twenty on June 17, 2025 and is already employed full-time by M and T Bank. She is being trained and is, for the time being, a “Float Teller”. When the M and T Banks in Newfane, Bellows Falls, Putney, Wilmington, Newfane or maybe even Chester, are short a teller for a day or more due to ill-health or other reasons, Natalie fills in. In the meantime, she’s being trained by the bank to gradually move higher up in the business. When she works in Putney, she works with three other women who manage the business there, all of whom are professionals, all of whom love working together and having a very good time together and with customers. One of them referred to Natalie as “a ray of sunshine.”

Ruth Grandy has lived all but five or six days of her 81 years in Westminster, VT. She was born July 18, 1943 in the hospital in Walpole, New Hampshire, then adjacent to the Walpole Library on Main Street. She and her mother spent a few days in that little hospital and then went across the Connecticut River to their home in Westminster. She never left town.

Ken Fitzkee and Liam Terry work as a team for Jancewicz & Son Roofing in North Walpole, NH. Ken lives right there in town; Liam lives just across The Connecticut River in Bellows Falls. Ken is what the company calls a Project Manager who gets the initial workorder from management but from that point on these two roofers-craftsmen work together out of a two-seater company truck. (Each day the company sends out seven or eight roofing crews, one insulation crew, and five or six carpentry crews ranging from two to six guys each day.) They work throughout southern Vermont, Northern Massachusetts,and Eastern NH, pretty much within a 1 ½ hr. driving radius from North Walpole.

In 1982, then Windham County Sheriff Bill Graham hired Holly Ellis as a part-time dispatcher. Graham would have known Holly as a girl because he had grown up with her father in Putney. In fact, Holly’s father, Ken Ellis from Putney (and her mother Shirley Stomberg - originally from Wisconsin), were both well-known to Sherrif Graham growing up. So, in 1982, when the previous day-shift dispatcher, Nancy Kent, moved up to the Office Manager position, Graham hired Holly to replace Kent full-time. In May, 2024, 42 years later, Holly will soon be retiring from her role as an administrative assistant in the Sheriff’s Department now located on Old Ferry Road.

Lisa (Patno) Bianconi was born in Rutland, Vermont in 1963. In 1981 she graduated from high school there, having been deeply engaged in music, band choir and debate and athletics. Four years later she earned a degree from Norte Dame College in Manchester, NH in 1985 with a Bachelor’s degree in music education. In 1989 she  earned a Master of Education from Keene State College. At 21 years old,  Lisa looked for work in music education and in two weeks or so accepted the job as the Music Director at Kurn Hattin Homes for Children in Westminster, VT.  She’s still teaching with passion there after 39 years.

Daisy (Goldschmid) Unsicker was born in 1976 on Daigle Road in Westminster where her mother Raine Kaine (her father is Tom Goldschmid.) had planted lovely perennial beds all around their home. Even before Daisy started first grade at the Westminster West School – where Claire Oglesby and this writer’s wife, Mary Hayward, were her teachers in grades 1-4  – she helped her Mom with flowers as well as their family’s large vegetable garden. 

Imagine you’re in your late 60’s. You’re living in calm, quiet, woodsy Marlboro with your husband. You’ve just retired from a professional life teaching art at the college level. Your two daughters in their late 30’s are living happy, productive lives here in the Northeast. Everything is coming up roses. 

 “We drove schoolbuses and got our kids safely to school.” That’s what Sandy McDermid, now 76, and her husband Archie, now 83, both told me they had done for a living – both now retired.

Deborah Stanford describes her life as a series of abrupt pivots.  She grew up in Greenwich Village in New York City with an actress mother, Anita Cipriani, who exposed her to the vast cultural opportunities that existed for artists and performers.  “When I was growing up, we did not own a television.  My mother insisted that I read the classics.  She instilled in me a love of literature.  And she demanded that I always strive for more than I achieved.” Deborah’s mother was a hard taskmaster – a mix of stern and loving.  “She referred to me as ‘My daughter, the doctor” or ‘My daughter, the lawyer.’” Having faced discrimination as a black woman, Anita was determined that her child would never be considered second best.

Ryan Golding, now 46 years of age, owns Mastaler Cleaning Service in Brattleboro. His office is adjacent to WTSA's with glorious views out over the Retreat Meadows and The West River.

Isaac was born Feb 25, 1995 and spent the first four months of his life in an incubator having been born prematurely. He grew up in public housing – known as The Projects - in Woodside, Queens. Roughly 25 years later, he now has a BA from Landmark College in Putney, an MA from The University of Phoenix, and, having overcome his own learning disabilities, he is now Assistant Director of Social Coaching within the Department of Programming and Social Coaching at Landmark College in Putney, VT.  He helps neuro-diverse students find their way in the social world of young adulthood and their first year of college 

In 1980, Claire Wilson, a refined and soft-spoken Quaker - now in her 90’s and still living in Putney - met at the home of Paul and Dorothea Stockwell in West Brattleboro with a group of twelve or so folks interested in starting a spinnery. It would be a small business that would refine raw sheep’s wool into fine yarn. David Richie, now 80 with 35 years of his life invested in The Spinnery, was in that meeting. He recalls Claire saying “Why do we have sheep up here in the hills of Vermont but we have nothing to show for it?”

“In October, 2017, my husband David and I were sitting on Elliot Street on Gallery Walk one Friday evening in Brattleboro – a beautiful October evening: food trucks, kids running around, teenagers and parents. This is where I could tend my own garden: my, ourcommunity. I decided right then and there I would start interviewing people in SE Vermont. I would set up my own radio show on BCTV to celebrate this remarkable corner of the world. I’d call the show simply “Here We Are.”

Starting when he moved from NYC to Putney after 9/11, Julian McBrowne has worked as a sound engineer quietly behind the scenes at music performances here in SE Vermont: Yellow Barn, Next Stage in Putney, Eugene Uman’s Vermont Jazz Center, for Becky Graber and the Brattleboro Womens' Chorus or Friends of Music at Guilford.….. Before 9/11, he was a sound engineer working across England, Europe, even Japan.

Fourteen movie theaters in Vermont are still operating, albeit on a shoestring. On Nov 9, 2024, The Big Picture Theater and Café in Waitsfield closed. Merrill’s Roxy Cinema in Burlington closed a week or so later. The theater in Manchester, VT closed in 2019. The Flagship Cinemas in Rutland closed in 2020 due to the pandemic and never reopened. The Latchis in Brattleboro and the Opera House in Bellows Falls are two of the fourteen still fruitfully operating in the state.

Fred Homer lives up a back road in Williamsville. He’s 85 and is married to Deb Feiner, a physical therapist practicing cranio-sacral therapy. Their two children are married and live away. But today, Fred and Deb share their home and have for years with a 13-year-old Barred Owl named Stella along with other recuperating rescue birds in rescue cages out in the barn or basement.