Dr. Richard Glover grew up in Middletown’s South End neighborhood, where he was a basketball star. He now is a retired social worker who just completed his second doctorate degree. He recounts:
I was born and raised in Middletown, Connecticut. Born in 1953, in Middlesex Memorial Hospital. I went to the usual South End Schools, which was Stillman School for elementary, Central School for Middle School and Middletown High School. I think I was the last graduating class from Middletown High School in 1971 [before it moved locations]. They are all now residences.
The South End was just a very organic, thriving community. You didn’t have to have a purpose when you went out. You just went out until you saw somebody… If you wanted me to summarize what I remember most, it was just being a kid; just being a dumb, stupid kid, learning things, exploring things. Having adults around that would say “that’s something you don’t want to do, that’s something you don’t want to do,” right? [It was that] nostalgic neighborhood that everybody’s hoping for, where anybody could correct you. So if I did something wrong, if somebody saw me, by the time I got home, my mother’d be waiting for me.
So Otis Playground was the spot, okay. In the South End, right? It was on the corner of Sumner and William Street. Right behind what’s currently the armory. In fact, our basketball team from high school practiced and played its home games in the armory. Right. So that was kind of our spot. But, so everybody that played for Middletown High School, we, that’s what you did. You wore your sneakers. If the weather was okay, and sometimes even if it wasn’t, so long as there was a clear spot on the court, you went, you played ball. They had a playground there that was supervised. So during the summer you go and hang out for, you know, kids all ages had, you know, swings and stuff. It was a neighborhood kind of gathering place. And when folks from the Village and the South End got together, they normally got together in Otis Playground. Playing, you know, competitively playing ball, it just, it was the spot.
[The South End] could’ve been a Mecca for Black folks coming here because, I talked about kinship. You know, there’s still people coming here related to folks who are here. But if the word had gotten out, you can come here and start your businesses, then it could have started attracting the entrepreneurs. And, you know, we’ve all heard of the black Wall Streets, you know, they’re all over. We could have become a Mecca and built one of those here. The South End could’ve been…[And really], it was already there.
