Unionville Will Miss Its Renaissance Man

The elderly gentleman frequented his favorite Unionville haunts in the distinguished manner of a dignitary.

If age had taken a toll on his physical stature, it had done nothing to blunt his indelible memory and intellectual acuity.

Such was the late-in-life persona of Thomas John “Jack” Crockett III, the unofficial town historian whose knowledge about Unionville was equaled only by his love for it.

His thirst for the truth, his tireless research efforts and his determination to share what he learned made him locally famous. He was the source that prominent townsfolk sought out when important decisions about Unionville’s future were pending.

Crockett died June 28 at the age of 89. His presence will be missed and his contributions not forgotten.

Among his local contributions, Crockett was one of the founders of the Unionville Museum on School Street. His opinions were vital to decisions about the village’s future when the Unionville Village Improvement Association, formed in 2000, helped formulate its philosophy for the most recent redevelopment.

“The essence of Jack was his knowledge of the world’s cultures and people throughout his experiences,” said Ted Lindquist, a lifetime resident and charter member of the UVIA. “Everything he did boiled down to the connection he had with people in their lives and what they offered to the world. … He was always about the big picture, but more about the people who made an impression on him.”

Crockett was raised on Lovely Street, graduated from Farmington High School and attended Harvard College. After a short stint as a Hartford Times reporter and military duty, he spent 40 years working with the U.S. State Department, which stationed him in Eastern Europe, Vietnam, the Philippines, Tunisia and Israel.

When he retired from public service, he trained his worldly focus on life in his hometown.

“He didn’t retire. [His service to Unionville] was almost a second career,” Unionville Museum director Cliff Alderman said. “He was involved with anything that could uplift Unionville, but Farmington as well. He was a true son of Unionville. He had a vital role in preserving our history and improving our lot.”

Among Crockett’s most lasting legacies is joining with Patti LeBouthillier to found the Unionville Museum.

“He was the first to make a major financial contribution,” Alderman said. “He became the unofficial archivist and curator, archiving the materials people brought in. When he gave up the job, he had catalogued over 3,000 items related to Unionville and Farmington history.”

Alderman said Crockett never got comfortable using computers.

“All the category cards were done in duplicate on the typewriter his mother gave him when he went to Harvard,” Alderman said. “The volume is amazing. He also documented little stories and information that helps bring things to life.”

Crockett meticulously kept a diary for 55 years beginning in 1954 that chronicled his day-to-day activities. The 56 volumes are on file at the Connecticut Historical Society, according to the CHS blog entitled “A Look Back.” The blog said Crockett documented “the people he met, the places he visited, the books he read and the movies he’d seen,” complete with the expenditures he laid out.

The families of Crockett and Alderman were woven together in the fabric that binds Unionville for generations. Their final interaction came when Crockett, although his health had taken a turn for the worse, helped Alderman produce a Unionville book for Arcadia Publishing Company’s “Images of America” series released last September.

“It was like his last big project,” Alderman said. “He kept me from making errors. He made it a better book by polishing it up on the edges and it made a big difference. … It was impressive and heartwarming that he would do it for me and for Unionville, too.”

Lindquist noted that Crockett’s participation in the decisions that reshaped the village center were invaluable.

“Because he was such a town historian, he was very interested in providing roadmaps for the future based on the past,” Lindquist said. “When we started talking about what buildings should be constructed, he had such a great memory and would say to consider what they looked like in the past.”

The Lindquist family benefited from the neighborly ways of a man who kept a garden at his home on Progress Avenue that was so complete and scrupulously maintained that it received a write-up in the New York Times in June, 1999.

“Because he was in the neighborhood, when kids were born they got little pewter cups with their names engraved on them, and he did that for a number of people,” Lindquist said. “It was not like a cute little gift. He gave them something to last, like history lasts.”

Lindquist always looked forward to Crockett’s heartfelt discourses on local history.

“One of the great pleasures was listening to Jack at Memorial Day parades about the wars and the stories of people from town,” he said. “He made history very personal and very local. It was a day I looked forward to all year long about people who in essence were the ghosts of our town.”

Crockett made the dedication speech on Memorial Day, 1992 for the Veterans’ Memorial, the columned structure on Monteith Drive in front of Town Hall.

He also enriched Central Connecticut State University’s Italian Resource Center by donating two pastel drawings done by 1975 Nobel Prize poet Eugenio Montale.

Alderman called Crockett a Renaissance man.

“He was really on a higher plane,” Alderman said. “He was very intellectual but made you feel at ease by talking about anything under the sun. He had a very keen mind.”

Services for Jack Crockett will be today at 11:30 a.m. at St. Mary Star of the Sea in Unionville. To read his obituary, click here.