Cal Brouwer Sails Into Retirement

Ledyard Town Clerk Cal Brouwer remembers the woman who came to see him years ago, just after the state instituted mandatory rabies shots for dogs. The woman wanted an exemption.

“I told her she would need a pretty good reason, and she said, well, he’s 17 years old, he has heart worm, he’s blind and he has no teeth, so he couldn’t bite anyone anyhow.”

The woman got her exemption, he said.

Brouwer, 64, is retiring this week. He said he could write a book about the people he has known and worked with during a career in municipal government that began in 1984, when he became town clerk of Waterford.

Brouwer didn’t start out in government. A graduate of Waterford High School, he served four years in the Air Force before joining Pfizer, where he would work for 24 years.

“But my heart was always in politics,” said Brouwer, who served as Waterford Republican Town Committee chairman during the late 1970s.

His first stint as town clerk was under former Waterford First Selectman Larry Bettencourt, a job he held until the 1992 state legislative session, when he went to Hartford to work as assistant clerk to the Human Services Committee.

One of his bosses was Joe Courtney. “I always thought Joe was a nice guy, even though I never cared much for his politics,” said Brouwer, who resides in Quaker Hill in the house he grew up in.

Through his membership in the Connecticut Town Clerks Association, Brouwer became friends with former Ledyard Town Clerk Pat Karns, and in 1993 he came to Ledyard as assistant town clerk. For the next 18 years his professional career would rise and fall and rise again on the town’s political winds.

Brouwer succeeded Karns when she retired in 1997, but was not reappointed by then-Mayor Wes Johnson in 1999. He returned to town hall as town council clerk in 2001, and in 2003 got his old job back when Sue Mendenhall was elected mayor.

Through the years he has also served as vice president of the New London County Clerks. He was executive vice president of the Connecticut Town Clerks Association for two years and served six years on its education committee.

When he needed a break from politics, there was always the winds off the Thames Yacht Club in New London, where he has sailed since he was 7 years old, and recently served as commodore. “I've won a fair number of races... nothing of any significance.”

“I’m going to miss it,” Brouwer said of his time in town hall, although one has the sense he will adapt.  “I’m going to Florida next month,” he said.

And expect to see him out on the water next summer in his International 110 sloop. “I’ve always been a summer person,” he said.