How'd You Get To Bethel? - John Schmuecker

“There are no straight lines in this house,” John Schmuecker says as he takes me on a tour of his and his wife’s Bethel home. It’s a striking historic house that is older than the nation and has overlooked Greenwood Avenue for more than two and a half centuries. During the centuries, the earth beneath the house had shifted, causing the floors to slant, but such imperfections have enhanced the house’s character and add to the allure of the stories its walls have seen.

Built by Captain Benjamin Hickok in 1760, it served as a tavern during the Revolutionary War, a restaurant during the 1900s, and much more in between. Since 1957, it has been in the Schmuecker family and today, Schmuecker sees himself as the custodian of the home, not just for his extended family, but for the larger Bethel community and history of the nation. The story of how his family came to own the home is one of immigration, hard work, and chance.

A Story of Immigration and Migration

“My great-great-grandmother was the sister of a Catholic missionary,” Schmuecker says. This brother and sister pair left Switzerland in 1878 and came to the U.S. They went into St Louis, then migrated to Arkansas, where they established the first Catholic churches, schools, and a hospital in rural Northeast Arkansas. Meanwhile, Schmuecker’s forebearers on his mother’s side immigrated from Scotland around the same time. “They went through Tennessee, and then they wound up in Arkansas also, which is kind of bizarre, since I'm sitting in Bethel, Connecticut,” he says. “It was only through a twist of fate that I'm not living in Arkansas today.”

That twist of fate was set in motion when Schmuecker’s parents, Leo Schmuecker and Rayanna Boyd, met and fell in love in Arkansas. His mom came from a southern Baptist family but converted to Catholicism for the marriage to go forward. “Her mother disowned her because she became Catholic. They eventually got back together, but it was pretty bad,” Schmuecker says.

The marriage occurred during the great depression, and even though Leo was a school teacher educated in Switzerland, Schmuecker’s dad couldn’t support the family in Arkansas. “He was starving to death,” Schmuecker says. “He was paid in chickens.”

Through a relative, Leo learned of a potential job in St. Louis working for the Sperry Rail Service. The Sperry Rail Service had a method for testing defects in rail tracks while driving over the tracks. Schmuecker’s father drove one of these testing cars across the country, but even with the technologically advanced test, the work was slow because the detector car could only travel at low speeds while testing the tracks. “My father covered all of the United States and Canada at two miles an hour,” Schmuecker says.

How The Schmuecker’s Came to Bethel

Schmuecker is one of six children. He was born in St. Louis, but in 1950 the Sperry Rail Service relocated to Danbury, Connecticut, drawn by financial incentives designed to help the city replace the fading hatting industry. The company’s headquarters were near the Bethel line — close to where Charter Oak Brewery is today. So Schmuecker’s family bought a small house on Bethpage Drive. Then, in 1957, desperate for more space, they bought Schmuecker’s current house overlooking Greenwood Avenue.

Schmuecker grew up in that house with his siblings. He went to St. Peter’s Catholic School and Immaculate High School. His father spoke multiple languages, encouraged his children to speak a second language and learn about the larger world. It was advice all the children took to heart. One of Schmuecker’s sisters studied in South America, another went to Italy, and another brother went to college in Thailand. Schmuecker, himself, attended college in Mexico City.

“My degree from the University of America in Mexico was in International Journalism. I was the editor of the school newspaper,” he says. When he came back to the area, he began professional life as a journalist. “I worked at the Danbury News-Times for a while, then I realized I was gonna starve.”

Schmuecker returned to school to get his MBA at UConn. Eventually, he opened his own business called Clarke Sign Systems. “We distributed high-tech sign-making equipment and graphics equipment,” he says. The business occupied the first building in Clarke Industrial Park in 1986. Schmuecker ended up opening branches in Maryland and Indianapolis before ultimately selling his company to a larger company based in St. Louis, where he’d been born. “Fate is fate,” he says.

Why He Stays in Bethel

When Schmuecker tells someone from the surrounding area where he lives, the response, he says, is always, “We love your town.”

Schmuecker understands that love as well as anyone. His siblings have spread across the globe from other towns in Connecticut to Hawaii and Italy, and so have his three children who live in San Diego, Florida and Maine, respectively. On the other hand, Schmuecker has never wanted to settle anywhere else but here. He loves the sense of community Bethel fosters at regular events, whether it’s the Halloween costume competition or the Memorial Day Parade. “Christmas — I mean, horse-drawn carriages, a tree lighting moved to the green because it's so enormous, and the entire town singing carols, where else are you gonna get that?” he says. “There is no other place I'd rather live in the world. We've traveled all over the world. I’ve had the opportunity to live in lots of places.” He adds, none of them replicate what he loves so much about Bethel. “It's safe. It's a small town community. It's got great residents, it's got a great government.”

Today, Schmuecker serves on the library board of directors and works to ensure reading access of both physical and digital books for the Bethel community. He also volunteers his time doing things, like helping senior citizens prepare their taxes in March and April. Beyond that work, he advocates for protecting what he sees as the essential elements of Bethel. “​​How do you maintain that small town character and vibe while still promoting growth? It's a very delicate balance,” he says.

His historic home also keeps him busy. Back in the early 2000s, after the death of both his parents, Schmuecker’s brothers and sisters talked him into buying his family’s historic house with his wife, Annette. Since then, they’ve done three major restorations, updating the house’s plumbing, electricity and more.

“This is a house of perpetual maintenance,” he says. Over the years, he’s lost track of how much he and Annette have spent on keeping the house up. But it’s also clear, as he says this, that this upkeep, though expensive and difficult, is a passion of his. He wants to keep the house alive for future generations, not just for his family’s history, but for history in general and town history in particular. The house, after all, is a piece of Bethel.

‍