written by: PAMELA DEY VOSSLER, photograph by: BAMBI RIEGEL | riegelpictureworks.com
Chris with Darien Girl Scout Troop 50027 during a recent nature walk he led through the DCA Bird Sanctuary
Chris Filmer builds bridges—12, so far. All in the open spaces of Darien that Chris has worked so tirelessly to preserve over the last 27 years, particularly since retiring in 2001. The bridge at the trailhead behind the Darien Nature Center in Cherry Lawn is even named for him. It’s an arched affair like you see all over Japan as Chris did on a trip there in the 1980s during his career with Pepsi International Beverages. He liked the lines. He liked what the Japanese said it stood for—the transition from one role to another as you cross it. So he learned to build it, replicating it eight times around town, triggering a cascade of construction from one point of view to another with the figurative bridges that came with the literal ones.
Like Selleck’s Woods, a 28-acre tract of open space hidden in plain sight on the eastern side of Darien.
True heroes teach us the most not by what they say but, rather, by what they do.
Chris, who moved to Darien from South Africa with his wife Sandy and children in 1977, had lived in town for nearly 13 years before discovering Selleck’s Woods. He’d joined the RTM and found out the town was considering using 12 acres of the Woods for senior housing. He decided to check it out and was surprised to learn it was a mere three-iron (as he says) from his backyard. Purchased by the town in 1963 then forgotten, it was fighting for its life by the time Chris arrived to see it. Vandals, trash and oil runoff from the I-95 rest stop that borders its north side, invasive species, late night revelers, motorcyles and dirt bikes vied for primacy of this neglected prize.
Chris saw the potential behind the abuse and got to it. For 19 years. The most worthwhile things tend to take time and Chris knows it.
He dove in, acquiring the knowledge he needed to be credible, to be heard. He lobbied the Department of Transportation and the rest stop operators to solve the oil leakage and trash problem. He worked with the Darien Land Trust which owns the adjoining 22-acre Dunlap Woods, the Darien Nature Center, the Friends of Selleck’s Woods (which cares for Selleck’s Woods in partnership with the Darien Parks and Rec Commission), Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and anyone willing to hold a rake, haul trash, plant trees, yank a non-native invasive intruder, lay woodchips, and do whatever it took to save what turned out to be seven different ecosystems and home to all manner of flora and fauna. In 1998, Selleck’s Woods was declared a nature preserve and certified wild habitat.
“If it’s valuable, it should be preserved,” said Chris, a man with the kind of certainty that comes from doing his homework, and the quiet grace born of a deeply ingrained humility. “There are so many wasteful things around us, in the things that we do. When we are actually doing something that is helping improve its value, there’s something that comes back. I’m so rewarded by this,” he continued.
You’ll still find Chris most days in Selleck’s Woods—tools in hand, alone or with members of many of the same groups with whom he started, repairing trails, planting, clearing, digging, chasing away miscreants (though that’s rare these days) and otherwise maintaining what they saved. You might also see him placing birds he’s carved and painted in trees, bursts of color positioned for the children who visit the woods to find in the I Spy corner he created. Or perhaps you’ll catch him hiding gnomes and fairies in hollowed out spaces at the base of trees to further engage and delight the children he brings through from local schools and scouting troops on the many nature walks he leads each year.
He cares that much.
“One of my greatest joys is working with young children. They’re closer to the ground and they have an innate sense of wonder,” explained Chris. “They’re often able to see the marvels that we don’t see. As Aristotle said, ‘In all things of nature, there’s something of the marvelous’ and they see those marvels before we do,” he added.
Plus, he knows: you can’t care about what you don’t know about. So he helps them learn to love the outdoors, just as he did:
… growing up in South Africa, visiting an aunt in Hermanus on the coast. There he would lose himself on its lovely beaches or trekking among the baboons in the mountains above them;
…on his father’s 30-acre farm outside Johannesburg where he fished, swam, collected crops, cleared debris, rode horses and found all manner of fun and adventure with his four brothers;
…helping his mom, an accomplished gardener, plant, prune and harvest;
…in decades of annual treks to Tortola with his wife and six children;
…in the many sports he could never resist.
The natural world and out of doors were his everyday.
Still, how does a guy from South Africa who quotes Aristotle and wrote a book called Famous Lives about 12 civilizations and 50 legendary figures for middle schoolers in hopes of getting them to love history as much as he does, the second of four boys who knows enough Xhosa to get its distinctive click just right, a boxer and gymnast in his younger years then a near scratch golfer who played for his state in South Africa and continued to win local tournaments … a heckuva racquets guy and the captain of his rugby team when he moved to England after university (when he wasn’t playing cricket), channeling the speed that earned him “colors” when he was at Saint Andrew’s College, the British-style boarding school he attended for high school … a guy who spent most of his career traveling the world for Pepsi, raising six kids in the process with Sandy who he’s been married to for 50 years and with whom he has 12 grandchildren … how does someone like this wind up in Connecticut, joining the RTM in protest over racist sentiments expressed by the man he made his mission to unseat then championing plants, bushes, birds, bats and all manner of living things under lush canopies of native trees, enchanting children with the wonders of nature while drawing in countless others to help with his cause?
The same way he learned Afrikaans, of which he spoke nearly none when he signed up to go to college at the Afrikaans-only Stellenbosch University.
“I went to an Afrikaans university because my marks were all good but my Afrikaans was always bad. I had to correct this Afrikaans thing. You couldn’t get a decent job (in South Africa), certainly not a serious one, if you couldn’t speak the language properly,” explained Chris.
So he spent three years doing all his work in Afrikaans. “It was a helluva challenge,” said Chris who wound up fluent with good marks and an even better job.
He identified the problem, met it head on and went to work—with intelligence, tenacity and the quiet wit for which he is well-known.
It’s what he does for the open spaces he works on in Darien, methodically, starting with “thinking” – affirming the need. From “thinking” he moves to “planning,” using the art skills that earned him the top art prize in high school (still one of his proudest accomplishments) to sketch a solution.
From the drawings, he “gears up,” acquiring the tools he’ll need, then moves on to what he calls “operations”—the doing.
And doing is one of the things he does best.
“I have always rued idleness as a complete waste of valuable time and considered my available hours to be fleeting and to be used wisely,” said Chris.
And wisely have they been used, with Sandy’s quiet, unreserved support. Not only in Selleck’s Woods but also in the Bird Sanctuary that he and a core group of volunteers who call themselves the Musketeers carved out of an area gone wild beside the Darien Community Association.
Countless numbers of those hours are in nearly every one of the Darien Land Trust’s properties as well—in all he has built, cleared and otherwise tended, endlessly, with his fellow environmental champions in town during his 26 years on the Land Trust Board, several as president.
All this doing is something he learned from his father, Norman, a pioneer in South Africa’s radio broadcasting industry. Born in 1906 in Cape Town, he made his own radio as a school boy. He studied radio at the nascent Marconi School in London and became a ship radio officer.
He returned to South Africa and became Director General of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). On weekends, he took the family to his farm where he worked the land and its buildings. Eight Bells, he called it, for the bells that mark the watch change aboard a ship.
“He always had to have some purpose and I kind of inherited that,” said Chris. “Whatever I’m doing, it’s for a purpose. Maybe it’s a kind thing, maybe it’s fixing something, maybe it’s reading something that I need to learn about. But to sit around and twittle my thumbs, that has never been for me,” said Chris. “My dad has always said, apply yourself to something a little every day for 15 minutes and in six months, you will know more than just about anyone else,” said Chris’s youngest son Steve.
“He’s been into self-improvement his whole life, long before it became a thing …and in (improving himself), he improves things around him,” he continued of his Dad’s willingness to do whatever it takes to master whatever he takes on—a topic, a task, a sport, a campaign.
“Consistency is his secret and because of his consistency, you can rely on him,” he added. As for Chris, his secret to life is simple: find someone to love, something to look forward to and something worthwhile to do.
“Whether you’ve met him surfing off the coast of Africa, battling on a rugby pitch, court or golf links, in the boardroom or while walking in the park, one quickly realizes this man brings a bevy of talent and winning personality wherever he goes,” said Friends of Selleck’s Woods Board Member Den Frelinghuysen who also worked with Chris as a Darien Land Trust board member. “The long list of what Chris has done for Darien is only part of the story: his professional accomplishments and personal relationships span the globe and no doubt are fueled by his integrity, good humor and zest for life,” he added.
“Chris has become a mentor to many people here in town,” said Mike Sgroe, a DCA Bird Sanctuary Musketeer who also works with Chris on the Friends of Selleck’s Woods board. “He’s a leader. He emanates a tremendous amount of energy and it’s not like he doesn’t have a busy life. …It’s kind of amazing that he’s found a way to balance his time to have this constant stream of contributions to Darien.”
The best leaders teach us the most by what they do. It is in their daily habits and the goals they set, what they care about and how they show it, how they treat others, how they solve problems. And the humor they bring to it all. The best of the best lead with such humility, such subtlety, it is sometimes not until we are lined up behind them, inspired to find the best in ourselves as we work with them, that we truly understand the gift we’ve been given.
That is Chris Filmer, a class act in every way.
