Westport RTM Invocation
(Note: As a member of Westport’s RTM, I was asked and honored to give the invocation for our meeting on August 12, 2026. Here is the text version of the speech.)
Thank you, everyone.
When I was asked to give tonight’s invocation, I thought about what it means to serve on the RTM, and what it means to represent Westport. And my mind went back to some of my very first experiences in this town, long before I lived here, and long before I served here.
My first real Westport experience was visiting my great uncle’s farm on Sturges Highway for family gatherings. It was a real working farm that had been in my family for almost 100 years, and when it was sold in 2010, it was one of the last working farms in town. As a kid from Fairfield, Westport felt a little different to me then. Not just Main Street and beaches and schools, but open fields, family stories, old barns, and a sense of history that was still very much alive.
Later, in the mid 1990s, I got to know a very different side of Westport when I worked at the Coffee Tree on Main Street. For those who remember it, it was one of those great local places where it felt like all of Westport passed through the door at some point.
And they really did.
Movie stars came in. Teenagers came in. Local business owners came in. Parents came in with kids. People came in before work, after work, between errands, between meetings, and sometimes, it seemed, just because they needed a place to be for a few minutes.
I was seventeen years old, skinny, probably overconfident, and almost certainly making cappuccinos that would not survive modern scrutiny. But I loved that job.
I loved it because I got to meet so many different kinds of people. I got to talk to them, serve them, joke with them, and see the community up close, one cup of coffee at a time.
At the end of the night, we would take the unsold pastries and bring them to the Gillespie Center. And on other nights, I would walk a bag full of thousands of dollars in cash up Main Street to what was then Fleet Bank. Again, I was seventeen, skinny, and in no way prepared to defend myself in any meaningful way. But I never worried. It felt like a town built on trust, connection, and a shared sense that we were all part of something together.
Those experiences stayed with me.
Because what I learned, first at my great uncle’s farm and later at the Coffee Tree, was that a community is not one kind of person or one kind of place. It is not one neighborhood, one opinion, one background, one party, one generation, or one point of view. A community is everyone who has helped shape it, everyone who lives in it now, and everyone who walks through the door.
And that is what we are called to remember as members of this body.
We represent all of Westport. Not just the people who agree with us. Not just the people who voted for us. Not just the people who write form letters in the guise of emails. We represent all of them.
The lifelong residents and the new arrivals. The families with young children and the seniors who built so much of what we now enjoy. The business owners, the teachers, the first responders, the volunteers, the commuters, the artists, the athletes, the skeptics, the optimists, and yes, even the people who believe very strongly that their side of the sidewalk issue is the only morally defensible side.
Our job is to listen. To serve. To argue when we must, but to do so with respect. To remember that behind every issue is a person, a family, a neighbor, or a future neighbor.
So tonight, I hope we carry forward a little of what I first saw in Westport, both on that farm on Sturges Highway and from behind the counter at the Coffee Tree. A town full of different people, with different stories, all worthy of being seen, heard, and served.
May we approach our work with humility, good humor, patience, and a genuine commitment to the whole community.
And may we always remember that public service, at its best, is not about who walks through the door. It is about making sure everyone feels they belong once they do.
Thank you.
