By Anne W. Semmes
Sentinel Features Reporter
As an aviator, Greenwich Realtor Curt Wood goes the extra mile if his client wishes a larger view of the property he’s considering. Wood, an agent for William Raveis Real Estate, offers what you might call a 3D presentation: the aerial view, the house site itself, and a deep-rooted history of its Greenwich location.
“I’ve lived in Greenwich my entire life,” says Wood, “Greenwich is a piece of me. I’m connected to the town with my house. It’s my history.”
Wood lives inside the halls of history: “Dearfields,” built circa 1798, with its historic plaque from the Greenwich Historical Society and a placard that reads “Home of Thomas A. Mead—General Lafayette entertained here 1824.”
The house, a white clapboard Colonial in pristine condition, sits on Grove Lane across from the house where President George H.W. Bush was raised.
The wife of Dearfield’s first owner, Mrs. Amos Mead (mother of Thomas), would often look out her front window when her house sat where the Greenwich Library sits now, and say, “What dear fields,” seeing as she could in the early 1800’s all the way down to Long Island Sound. Hence the house name of Dearfields, and presumably the street name, too.
Wood, who moved in with his parents when they purchased it in 1977, is still pondering the reason why the house was moved to Grove Lane in 1929. He does know why the front of the house is now the backside—because the lady of the house wasn’t happy facing all that traffic noise from Model T’s.
It’s interesting to see inside just where General Lafayette was hanging about. He apparently was on a tour of the U.S. by presidential invitation to celebrate the country’s 50th anniversary. Wood stands in a small library with a French fleur de lis over the doorway, where Lafayette likely held court. But it was in the grand attic with its arched roof and impressive post and beams one imagines Lafayette bedding down. If houses could only talk. The Wood family would use it for parachute rigging.
Curt’s father Hadden Wood passed down his adventurous love of aviation. “My dad was doing sky diving in the 1960’s,” says Wood. And when he wasn’t working to support the family with his aviation sales and charters, he was trying to make history in a helium balloon. “My dad was one of the first to attempt crossing the Atlantic in a helium balloon.”
Hadden Wood did not exactly have firm control of his 1975 attempt off Massachusetts. An account reads, “The 200-pound Wood, who helped design the balloon and gondola, hitched himself to a trailing rope when the balloon took off about 1 a.m. Thursday, and went along for the ride,” which lasted 125 miles, ending when the balloon sprung a leak. (Wood was hoisted aboard when discovered.)
Even his father’s death in a plane accident at age 65 did not discourage Curt from becoming both a commercial and instrument flying pilot who’s kept busy introducing the high-spirited to tandem parachute jumps, just as former Grove Lane resident George Bush had a penchant for doing.
But young Curt’s dad did one better. Hadden found a way to attach an American flag to a parachute so that all those times Curt Wood parachuted into the Riverside homestead of his friend state Sen. Scott Frantz—during Frantz’s annual party—he made quite a splash, in the days before 9/11.
Wood had planned to make aviation his fulltime career. “My dad and I did a lot of exhibition jumps, for polo events at Conyers Farm, for the United Way September Fest,” he says, but he wasn’t finding a piloting job. So he elected to join the work of his pioneering Realtor mom, Dorothy Wood.
“I worked with my dad and my mom, I loved them so,” is how Wood puts it.
Dorothy Wood was one of few women in real estate in the 1960’s but she became managing partner of vintage realtor Thomas N. Cooke, later bought by William Raveis. It was after his mother co-founded Carrott & Wood Greenwich Realty, Inc., that Curt joined the business, similarly sold to William Raveis. “My mom kept going until 2005,” says Wood. “She had great kindness towards people and knowledge of everything.” And “She could beat anyone at poker.”
Wood has nostalgia about those early years alongside his hardworking mom. “Greenwich then was a sleepy town, a nice suburban atmosphere.” Today, when he flies clients over properties, he sees their wonderment. “They are amazed at how big Greenwich is,” he says. “They take a deep breath when they see how many big houses there are.”
Wood is now in the midst of great change in his life. A divorce has put Dearfields on the market. A contract has been signed. Now he has his eye out for an historic house for himself and his nine-year-old twins, Mollie and Hadden.
Wood stands in the hallway of his house with its portraits of his ancestor Nehemiah Bates, one of the original settlers of Bedford Village, and his wife Frances McDonald Bates. “The Bates name came from Scotland,” he says. Through the Bateses he claims Princess Di as a ninth generation cousin.
“This house is a true Colonial,” he says. “It has a balanced layout with a formal entranceway. It has larger rooms and windows than a farmhouse. This old house is built a lot better than new houses are. The foundation is secure.”
Today, he often sees property buyers as less informed about how houses are built. “These new houses go up in a month’s time. The walls might be paper-thin. The builders are using green wood. Green wood will warp. This house has over an inch-thick plaster walls, hand cut oak beams. Builders don’t usually do that now—the cost is high.”
Wood shares his Realtor modus operandi with clients. “I look for a house with personality and charm, a house with character. I share my knowledge of the town, my opinion of how well their investment will hold up, how it will sell. I’ll give them the ups and downs.”
“I have a reputation of being a straight forward person who stands by his word and will go out of my way to help others,” he says. “That’s the way I was brought up. I care.”
