Clarence W. Brett
1946 – 1950 Chairman
SOURCE: The Record, Friday, October 8, 1971
A Part of Teaneck Comes Home
By RON WERTHEIMER, Staff Writer
TEANECK – The threatening storm clouds which hovered overhead all morning parted as Clarence W. Brett drove his rented car up to the new park.
The 81-year-old former mayor bounded from the green sedan looking like a healthy 50 and gave a big wave. Jim Brett-that’s what his friends call him-doesn’t get back to town much since he retired to Scottsdale, Ariz., in 1964.
He’s here for a week though, and for a good reason. Ten acres of Hackensack riverfront is about to be unveiled as Clarence W. Brett Park.
“It sorta makes a fella seem humble,” he said. A few feet away front his car, workmen were preparing a sign for tomorrow’s 2 p.m. ceremony.
It’s a small favor from the town which Brett continues to refer to as home.I’d be lying if I didn’t say this is still my home,” he said. I have so many friends here, and so many memories.
Reminiscences
Brett walked along the acreage which leads to the banks of the Hackensack River-it wasn’t as clear as it was when he moved here from Massachusetts in 1918-and reminisced.
We had three or four thousand people here then,” he recalled. “Where the park is, there used to be a farm. Right where we’re walking now, that used to be a rhubarb patch.
“Brett spent 30 years in government in Teaneck, first as school board trustee in the 1930s, then 12 years on the Township Council. He was Mayor Brett from 1946 to 1950. The office gave him a seat on the Planning Board. He remained on the board until he left for Arizona.
He hasn’t exactly been inactive in retirement either. Only last year he married for the third time.
During almost 50 years in Teaneck he saw a lot of growing, and had a hand in some of it.
“You know,” he recalls, “the high school was supposed to be put up on Queen Anne Road where it meets Route 4 now. I went over to the site withmy friend Frank Sample. We had a group called the Teaneck Athletic Association. We weren’t very athletic though.”
“That flat ground on Queen Anne looked perfect for a sports field. We asked the town to buy the hill above the field. It was covered with pine trees.
“The pine trees are mostly gone now, and the high school ,which serves this town of 42,355 overlooks the playing field he and Frank Sample imagined.
With the exception of places like the new Brett Park, there are not too many open spaces left here anymore.”You can build horizontally just so long, then you have to go vertically,” Brett observes.”I hate to say it, but I see high-rises coming to our town very soon.”
Looking dapper in his cranberry shirt, Brett stopped his stroll and watched the workmen preparing the sign. He walked back to his car, and you could see a little twinkle of pride in his eye. He drove off down River Road, and overhead the storm clouds started rolling back over the park.
Visit Brett Park!
Former Mayor Clarence W. Brett, the veteran political figure who served Teaneck in many governmental posts and civic leadership roles for more than 35 years, died Wednesday in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Mr. Brett was a member of the Board of Education from 1929 to 1934, serving as president during the last three years of his term. He was a member of the Township Council for 12 years, the mayor from 1946 to 1950.
A member of the Planning Board since 1954, Mr. Brett was chairman when he left for Arizona in 1968. A former member of the Patriotic Observance Advisory Board, he had received the Outstanding Citizen Award of the Teaneck Political Assembly in 1965.
A10-acre recreation area adjacent to the Hackensack River in the northern end of Teaneck was dedicated in his honor in 1971.
Mr. Brett was the president of the board of directors of the
Hackensack YMCA for five years and as one of the founders of the Teaneck Community Chest had served as its president in 1957.
Until his retirement in 1964, Mr. Brett was a sales engineer for Brett and Co. of New York City and Teaneck for 20 years. He was a member of the board of governors of the Town and Gown Society of Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Mr. Brett came here from Massachusetts in 1918 when the town’s population was only 3,000 to 4,000. He had graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1913 with a B. S. degree and was a member of its Kappa Sigma fraternity. He was a former vestrynian and warden of the Christ Church here.
Surviving are his wife, Garnet L.; two daughters, Marion C. Fleming of Leverett, Mass. and Virginia Herriman of Arizona; a son, William W. of Teaneck; and five grandchildren.
Services will be tomorrow at 1 p.m. at the Volk Funeral Home, 789 Teaneck Road, with burial in the Hackensack Cemetery.
Friends may call at the funeral home today from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m.
(This is the third in a series of articles describing the lives of the persons for whom Teaneck’s parks are named. The 10-acre park on River Road near Winthrop Road honors Clarence W. Brett.)
By Tricia Duffy, Staff Writer
(From: The Teaneck Suburbanite, Wednesday, November 11, 1981)
In 1918, when Clarence W. Brett moved from Massachusetts to Teaneck, he had no idea he would be recruited into a group of founding fathers second to none in Bergen County. The man who loved fishing and was known as a quiet conservative was instrumental in establishing the present manager-council form of government, and was among those- who literally swung axes to clear ground for ‘Teaneck High School’s first football field.
On August 6, 1968, Clarence “Jim” Brett was honored for his long and distinguished service to the community in a formal dinner at Temple Emeth on what the town proclaimed “Clarence W. Brett Day.” The podium was shared by Mayor Thomas J. Costa, Peter Wilhelm, Duncan E. Hill, Dr. A. Milton Bell, Deputy Mayor Max A. Hasse., Jr., and Charles L. Steel, Jr.
After a toast front Dean Marinus C. Galanti, the group celebrated Brett’s retirement with proclamations and presents and announced the formal dedication of the new Brett Park. Since Brett had played such an active role in the establishment of a park system throughout Teaneck, the council had indeed found it appropriate to name the 10-acre Park, located on River Road near Winthrop Road, after him).
Brett, whose family name originated in Brittany, France, during the Crusades, was a true New Englander, born in North Arlington, Mass. on Saint Patrick’s Day in 1891. Brett graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1913 with a degree in civil engineering. While in college, he was one of three students who formed a fraternity which later became part of Kappa Sigma National. Brett accepted a job with the Dodge Corporation in New York City in 1918, and moved to Teaneck with his wife, Verdi, and his two daughters Marion and Clara. His son, William, was born in l925 in Englewood Hospital.
Town leader
Still a resident of Teaneck, Bill Brett reminisced on his father’s accomplishments in town, saying the man who was so active in the development of Teaneck, was a sensitive father with a dry New England wit.
“He was a reserved man with blond hair and sparkling blue eves, and he loved Teaneck. In those days there was perhaps 2,000 or 3,000 residents here, and everything was done by a very small group of people. Paul Volcker, the town first township manager, was my father’s closest friend. They would vacation together, and they loved to fish, I still have photographs of Volcker’s son Bud and myself catching fish when we were just boys,” Brett said. “The men in Town decided where the school would be and where the athletic field would be. They held a big picnic, where the men cut down the trees and the women were in charge of food. It was like a town party. That’s the way things used to be here.”
Brett became active in many facets of the new government. He was an officer in the old West Englewood Park Civic Association that owned the Station Park in West Englewood, which was later presented to the township as a gift.
In addition, he was a member of the board of education from 1929 to 1935 and served as its president for three years. Brett laid the cornerstones for the Lowell School in 1920 and the first addition to the high school.
Churchman
Active in his church, Brett sang in the choir of Christ Church and served as vestryman and warden. It was a member of the church who decided “Jim” was a more suitable name for Brett then Clarence. The nickname stuck and in later years Brett answered to both.
In 1942, Brett was elected to the township council for three consecutive terms and was elected mayor in his second term. During his term on the council, Overpeck Park was turned over to the county and the town acquired Andreas Park. While mayor, Brett laid the cornerstone at the fire headquarters on Teaneck Road, and helped found the local Community Chest, for which, he served as president in 1954.
In addition to his township responsibilities, Brett was a member of the board of directors of the YMCA in Hackensack from 1951 to 1961 and was its president for four years.
Wide interests
Described by his son as an over-acheiver, Brett’s energetic interests extended into every facet of life.
He did everything. He loved to paint, paper, build cabinets. He could really work with his hands. After he retired to Arizona and he was in his late 70’s, he became interested in the planning board there. We used to send tapes cross-country instead of letters. He had acquired a number of friends in Scottsdale, Arizona who were on the council and planning board,” Bill Brett said. “He served as a special consultant to the planning board there. He came back to Teaneck when they gave him the testimonial dinner and named the park after him, but he really did like Arizona.”
Jim Brett is best remembered for his 22 years as a member of the Teaneck Planning Board. During that time the town prepared a master plan and a zoning ordinance to govern the town’s future growth. Serving as board chairman for seven years, Brett urged town officials to purchase parkland along the Hackensack River.
Family
Clarence Brett was married three times. His first wife Verdi died at the age of 62, after 35 years of marriage. His second wife, Ruth died in Arizona shortly after the couple moved there. At the age of 78, Brett married his third wife, Garnett, who survived him. Clarencm “Jim” Brett died in Arizona on January 2 1974, just hours before his daughter Marion and son Bill could reach him.
Jim Brett’s daughter Clara died at the age of 26 from Hopkins Disease. His daughter Marion, son-in-law Bill, and granddaughter Verdi Lou are residents of Moores Corner, Massachusetts where the family farm is located. Bill Brett and wife Gloria are residents of Teaneck and, carrying on the Brett, tradition are very involved in town affairs. They have one daughter, Patricia and a new baby grandson, Brett C. Shupnik.