Published:
By Kate Callahan ’14
A ripped up parking ticket, a love of education, and a restaurant called Elmer’s Place: These are just a few things that define brothers Fred and Elmer Odell’s life-long connection to Central.
Fred Odell ‘66 recalls a fateful walk through the student center the day he noticed Mary Orsini, an elementary education student. Who was she? A work-study job had Fred Odell processing parking tickets that semester, when, to his delight, he encountered Orsini for the second time. She walked through the door with a sorority sister, prepared to pay her parking ticket. In a twist of fate, Fred ripped up Orsini’s ticket and asked her on a date. The two will celebrate their 55th wedding anniversary this year.
Central plays a part in the origin story of both Fred and his younger brother Elmer’s family and professional lives. They are proud Blue Devils and lifelong learners, most recently conquering the Zoom platform for the purposes of this interview.
The brothers, several of their siblings, one child, multiple nieces and nephews, including an adjunct professor, and now five grandchildren share a connection and/or degrees from Central.
The brothers owe their successes to a little bit of kismet and a lot of hard work. Elmer Odell ‘73 started as a student assistant on campus in what is now called the Devil’s Den. Managed by Aramark, Odell was promoted and stayed on as director for three years.
He recalls, “Aramark used to send their single managers to work as chefs in summer camps.” In an uncomfortable turn of events, Elmer nearly cut his finger off while attempting to catch a falling knife. What cut short his work in the summer camp that year led to his purchase of the failing Palma House, a local bar.
He needed a new name and a new business plan. He would turn the place back into a food and drink establishment and call it Horsefeathers. News got around and the liquor control agent tipped off Elmer that a proprietor out in Storrs, near the University of Connecticut, planned to sue Odell if he incorporated the word “horse” into the restaurant’s name.
“I had a deadline, and my mother said, why don’t you just call it Elmer’s Place?” Elmer Odell recalls. While he sold the establishment in 1981, the name remains as does its reputation as a beloved campus and neighborhood fixture.
“We used to feed the athletes who were living at school,” says Elmer Odell. “We were next to the Coffee Cupboard. So, I decided to tear the wall down, gut it, and turn it into a pizza place. We took New York pizza and made it into New Britain pizza.”
Having fed and been fed by Central’s community for many years, Elmer Odell appreciates his lasting connection to the college. “The professors at Central were excellent. One of the most profound said there’s only one reason to come to college, to learn how to think. So, I majored in General Business with a Marketing minor.”
Between ‘81 and the turn of the millennium Elmer Odell was involved with several restaurants and helped a friend at ARA by working a summer camp in Litchfield. In another stroke of luck, he sat idling at a red light one day and noticed a FOR RENT sign. He had always wanted to own a candy store and in 2004 the Litchfield Candy Company opened.
“I have penny candy all the way to 50 dollars a pound candy,” Elmer Odell says. The shop is only 20 feet by 23 feet. “I make use of every square inch from A to Z, including all the old candies, truffles, turtles, chocolate, and Neccos.”
Litchfield has a lot of transplants from New York City and Hollywood and Elmer Odell admits “a lot of [famous] people come in and I don't know who they are.” But he does recall special orders from Kevin Bacon and his wife Kyra Sedgwick as well as Michael J. Fox.
Elmer Odell says he “doesn’t do this to get rich.” He and his brother Fred Odell share in a life-long appreciation of satisfying work. When Fred Odell graduated from Central in 1966 he went on to law school at UConn, married Mary Orsini, and began practicing courtroom law with a large New Britain law firm.
Fred Odell attributes his successes to the professors at Central. “They were old timers,” he says. “They knew a lot. Their lectures were so interesting.” He majored in History with an emphasis in political science.
“Dr. Francis J. Glasheen, the head of the debate club, took little Central Connecticut all over the Northeast. We went to Harvard, Yale, the University of Vermont, we went to all of those campuses with our little debate team and we did very well. They kept inviting us back again and again.”
Fred Odell remarks, “The combination of speaking, history, political science and working in student government, that’s what led me right to law school. Law school, for me, was easier than Central.”
After completing school, Fred Odell missed being active in college affairs so he joined the Alumni Association and served as its president in 1971-72. In his 10 years active in the association, he saw great growth in the school as it grew from a state college to a university and built new buildings.
As president of the Alumni Association, he remembers, “We started sponsoring trips for the alumni, which were met with a lot of success.” The first alumni trip was on the maiden voyage of the Queen Elizabeth luxury liner.” Additionally, he presided over the amendment of the association’s constitution, which would allow anyone with an interest to join the alumni association.
Today, the Odells take pride in seeing their family’s younger generation receive an education at Central: Elmer Odell’s granddaughters Bailey Gilbert and Madison Dean are both enrolled. Fred and Mary Odell’s grandchildren Joseph, Michael, and Anthony Elmer Galatie also attend Central.