WIKI TIKI WEDNESDAY IN WALLINGFORD

'TIMELESS'

"THE KENNEDY CURSE"

It's always a thrill when the televersion of my home state shows up in Toobworld.  Specifically, my hometown was mentioned in an episode of 'St. Elsewhere' - it's the city where the son of Dr. Kiem was found after walking away from Choate in Wallingford.

That same school showed up recently in an episode of 'Timeless'.  However, even though it was the same place in both shows, they aren't in the same TV dimension anymore.  (With the pilot episode, 'Timeless' began in Earth Prime-Time but with the alteration to the fate of the HIndenberg, it ended up in a new timeline.  And it has been creating new Toobworlds with every episode moving it farther and farther away from its original home.

Anyhoo, let's take a look at the Wallingford of the Real World....

From Wikipedia:

Wallingford is a town in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 45,135 at the 2010 census. The urban center of the town is the Wallingford Center census-designated place, with a population of 18,209 at the 2010 census. The community was named after Wallingford, in England.

The Connecticut General Assembly created the town on October 10, 1667. This original plot of land near the Quinnipiac River is now considered Main Street. Starting on May 12, 1670 there were 126 people who lived in temporary housing, and five years later in 1675 there were 40 permanent homes.

In 1697 Wallingford was the site of the last witchcraft trial in New England. Winifred Benham was thrice tried for witchcraft and acquitted all three times.

Wallingford has diversified its commercial and industrial base over the past decade attracting high-technology industries as compared to traditional heavy manufacturing. It is the home of a large variety of industries and major corporations spanning the spectrum of the medical, health care, service, high-tech specialty metal manufacturing and research development. The development of the Barnes Industrial Park, Casimir Pulaski Industrial Park, Wharton Brook Industrial Park, and the South Turnpike Road area have greatly contributed to this transition. The Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, the town’s largest taxpayer, has established a research and development facility in Wallingford’s MedWay Industrial Park. An Interchange Zone which permits very restrictive commercial development of office parks, research and development centers and hotels has been created at the intersection of Interstate 91 and Route 68.

In terms of Wallingford's manufacturing and design history, silver-producing companies like Simpson, Hall, Miller & Co. and R. Wallace & Sons are of particular note. Simpson, Hall, Miller & Co. as well as Wallingford's Watrous Manufacturing later became part of the International Silver Company, which was headquartered in the neighboring city of Meriden.

The town of Wallingford has both public and private education. The Wallingford Public School System consists of eight elementary schools, two middle schools, and two high schools. Wallingford has a private sector of schools offering the following: Choate Rosemary Hall, Heritage Baptist Academy, and Holy Trinity School.

And that leads us to the next Wikipedia entry for that episode of 'Timeless'....

Choate Rosemary Hall (often known as Choate) is a private, college-preparatory, coeducational, boarding school located in Wallingford, Connecticut. It took its present name and began a coeducational system with the merger in 1971 of two single-sex establishments, The Choate School (founded in 1896 in Wallingford) and Rosemary Hall (founded in 1890 in Wallingford, moved later to Greenwich, Connecticut). At the merger, the Wallingford campus was enlarged with a complex of modernist buildings on its eastern edge to accommodate the students from Rosemary Hall.

The school has educated generations of the upper-class New England establishment and the American political elite, and it has introduced many programs to diversify the student population, including the introduction of a free education for families whose income is $75,000 or less. Choate is a member of the Eight Schools Association, begun informally in 1973–74 and formalized in 2006, when former Choate headmaster Edward Shanahan was appointed its first president. The member schools are Choate, Andover, Exeter, Deerfield, St. Paul's, Hotchkiss, Lawrenceville, and Northfield Mount Hermon.

Choate is also a member of the Ten Schools Admissions Organization, established in 1966 and comprising Choate, Andover, Exeter, Deerfield, St. Paul's, Hotchkiss, Lawrenceville, Taft, Loomis Chaffee, and The Hill School.

Among Choate's alumni are President John F. Kennedy, two-time presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson, playwright Edward Albee, novelist John Dos Passos, investor Brett Icahn, Ivanka Trump daughter of US President Donald Trump, philanthropist Paul Mellon, screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher, and actors Glenn Close, Michael Douglas, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Paul Giamatti.

'Timeless' makes huge changes to History in each episode, so you could probably guess that the subject of this episode was young Jack Kennedy.  (One of the school's administrators tried to kill him in order to change History too early.  The later death of JFK was altered, but only in location....)

BCnU!