By Mary A. Jacobson
Mention the name Albert “Terry” E. Betteridge III to most residents in Greenwich and they will associate it with the esteemed jewelry stores in Greenwich, Palm Beach, Aspen, or Vail.
However, the Terry Betteridge who was interviewed by Oral History Project volunteer Jan DeAngelo in 2013 is the home-grown boy whose endearing memories of growing up in Greenwich bring a smile and, at times, a tear.
The first name “Albert” goes back to his great-grandfather, who emigrated to the States from England to Ellis Island in the 1890s. “So, we all had nicknames just to separate one from another. I became Terry because I was terrible.”
Until the age of six, he lived in a home in Riverside. He and his sister, just two years older, would go out fishing in a “fake Boston Whaler” with a “seven-and-a-half horsepower Evinrude. My father used to say that two of the horses had died and a couple had thrown shoes, because it just barely putted.”
The next home which the Betteridges inhabited was on Riversville Road, across from the Boy Scout reservation. On about eight acres, there was plenty to explore and plenty of mischief to get into. Terry’s job was cutting grass and taking care of the sheep. “My father thought all children should take care of animals, so we had sheep and goats.” Terry’s memories included “riding my sheep around the yard. We’d ride them like horses.”
What kind of activities filled the idle hours of a young boy in Greenwich before video games and computers? “It was just a fun place in those days… I would go down through the woods, follow the west branch of the Byram River, exploring the long-gone Wilcox Nut and Bolt Works factory dam and millpond.” Terry reminisced, “In the winter, we would ice skate on that pond, had great big hockey games there, and if you hit the puck across the dam, it would go off thirty feet. There was always that concern that one of us was going to take the fatal dive, but our parents kind of let us do anything in those days. We just had to be home by dark.”
When Terry managed to save up money as a child, he would happily go to Molly’s stationery store and buy a balsa-wood plane. “Then I’d ride my bike out to Westchester Airport, because I knew some of the pilots there and I was fascinated with flying. They’d let me fly my balsa-wood airplane on the runway… right alongside a Cessna. Then I had to be home by dark. No more concern than that. It was really a lovely time.”
Terry’s memories of Parkway School centered mostly on the long ride on the school bus. “It was quite a trek over, hour each way. First ones on, last ones off, so you got to be good friends.” A number of those who shared this “Room of Gloom” bus ride remain lifelong friends. Terry decided with one of them to find a way to make a little extra money by setting up a toll road on Riversville Road. “So, we got a long stick, and we closed off Riversville Road, and as the cars stopped, we’d say, ‘It’s a quarter to go any further.’ And, amazingly, about the first five people each gave us a quarter.” However, the sixth car was a police car “and he made us go find the people. We knew who they were because if you drove up Riversville in those days, you were going home.” However, further disgrace came after the policeman took them back home “and we had to tell our parents what we were doing, and how awful we were.”
Terry’s favorite, most memorable, teacher was Mrs. Kawolski in the fourth grade. “She taught me all sorts of silly things including how to fold a letter… and I still do it. It’s the superior way.” In Greenwich High School, Dan Barrett, an oceanography teacher, was “a complete inspiration to me… everything a teacher should be… one of the gems of public education.” He took the entire class to the Grand Bahamas to go diving. First, the students took diving classes at the YMCA to become certified. Then, they had to raise money to go on the trip through “bake sales, movies, snowplowing, and shoveling.” He and local boy Hans Isbrandtsen “would get up at two in the morning to go plow and shovel out people in snowstorms to make the money to go on the trip.”
Terry’s interest in natural history took him to Connecticut College, where he pursued interests in ornithology and ecology with some thought of becoming an environmental lawyer and following his maternal side of the family into law. However, Terry’s OHP interview encompasses a wide range of experiences from working in the Everglades to Zambia (where he met Steve Irwin) to guiding tourists in British Columbia. Eventually, “I began to miss New England a little bit, truthfully.”
His return to Connecticut was precipitated by his dad’s’ heart attack and the bankruptcy of the family jewelry business in Greenwich in 1973. Terry answered his father’s despondency by reminding him that “you still have the faith and credit of the guy who was in the business a long time and well-known. Let’s start it up again.” Also looming was the Betteridge family legacy dating back to his great-grandfather, who listed his occupation on his immigration papers in the 1890s as “goldsmith.” However, Terry found that his dad, “a big robust drill sergeant kind of a dad… didn’t want to come in anymore, so it was up to me.”
The Betteridges still owned the building on Greenwich Avenue, even if “the business was then defunct, and the building also empty.” Terry decided to learn the business from diamond dealer friends of his dad’s, from setters, and from polishers. “I knew a lot of the diamond dealers on a very friendly basis, because I’d sit and grade things for them.”
Suffice it to say that the store reopened and an expanded Betteridge’s three times its original size relocated in 2017 to the corner of Greenwich Avenue and East Elm Street. As of 2022, it was acquired by Watches of Switzerland. This home-grown Greenwich boy can now witness the Betteridge name achieve a global reach.
The interview “Terry Betteridge: Renaissance Man” may be read in its entirety or checked out at Greenwich Library and is available for purchase at the OHP office. The OHP is sponsored by Friends of Greenwich Library. Visit the website at glohistory.org. Our narrator’s recollections are personal and have not been subjected to factual scrutiny. Mary Jacobson serves as blog editor.
