Agree that the book was a tease. You’d probably learn more from reading the 80+ articles Dolan wrote for The Advocate. But for a Stamford native who was an oblivious kid in the 70s, the book was an eye opener. I think Im also a little younger than you. I was too busy playing stickball in the perfect cul de sac at the end of Three Lakes Drive, chasing the Good Humor truck and trying to avoid getting roughed up by the kids in my neighborhood who learned from their parents not to like people from my religious background.
My only memories of corrupt Stamford until I read the book were the annual illegal July 4 fireworks extravaganza my neighbor staged for the entire neighborhood (attended by cops), and going with my mother to pick up my father at the train station from his weekly Amtrak trips to DC - and running the gauntlet of prostitutes on Washington Blvd between Columbus Park and the Roger Williams Hotel.
I didn’t know that a top cop was running southern CT’s biggest drug operation out of the towers on Washington/Tresser, in cahoots with West Side drug dealers and NYC crime families. I didn’t know that a young girlfriend of a major dealer was murdered and dumped in the High Ridge cemetery because she knew too much. The book really is a reminder of the seedy side of Stamford in the 70s and 80s, and it was quite seedy… from the West Side, to downtown, to police HQ, to the department of public works and other government departments.
I wrote sports copy for the great Len Gambino at WSTC for two summers while I was in high school. He used to joke about his distant cousins and their activities in Stamford. I always thought he was kidding. He wasn’t.
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