New London - When Sally Ryan wakes up, she feels 50 years old.

Which isn't bad, considering the city's first and only municipal historian is 80.

"I age as the day goes on,'' said Ryan, who gives lectures on the city's history every fall at the public library, leads walking tours of downtown for New London Landmarks and is the acting director of the Hempstead Houses.

She's also a docent at Lyman Allyn Art Museum and volunteers every Monday during the summer months at the Trolley Visitors Center on Eugene O'Neill Drive.

Ryan was appointed New London's municipal historian in 1988, but she's spent a lifetime trying to instill a love of history in others.

"She's somebody for all of us to hold up and think, 'If Sally can do it, so can we,' '' said Sandra Chalk, executive director of New London Landmarks.

With history books, historical diaries and papers at her fingertips, Ryan can answer almost any question about the city's past. She knows who used to live in the old houses at the south end of the city, the long-gone businesses that prospered downtown, and the backgrounds of many of the city's influential families.

She's the go-to person for remembering and researching the past.

"Sally works with a lot of different historical organizations,'' said Edward Baker, president of the New London County Historical Society. "She's involved with all kinds of things. ... Anything that deals with the city's history, we involve her.''

'History was important'

Ryan, who was named Sarah when she was born in 1930 but goes by Sally, traces her love of the old to long Sunday drives as a child and stories told by Irish relatives.

While she was growing up in New London, her father would pile the family into the car on Sunday afternoons and drive around the region.

"There was plenty of gas then,'' she said, so there was no need to worry about conserving energy.

The family would visit Norwichtown, Fort Griswold in Groton and Fort Shantock in Monvtille. She remembers one trip down a dirt road that ended at a gathering of trailers and small rustic houses.

"I was in second grade. I've never forgotten it,'' she said. "There was a man in overalls, with short dark hair and dark skin." Her father got out of the car and chatted with the man. It was the Mashantucket Pequot reservation.

Ryan said her father would tell stories about the places they visited and give mini-history lessons.

"History was important,'' said Ryan, who lives on Montauk Avenue in the family home that was purchased in 1896. "You were expected to know certain things."

She was also influenced by her grandmother, who was born in 1854. As a teenager, Ryan would spend Wednesday afternoons "sitting with Grandma,'' who would tell her young granddaughter stories about growing up in Ireland. She remembered Ulysses S. Grant touring England, Ryan said.

"If you know history, you know your roots,'' she added. "You value who you are and where you came from. ... I think you learn to respect other cultures. You learn to value what they stood for."

Ryan was 2 when her mother died, leaving her father, a sister and a brother to live with two aunts. She graduated from Williams Memorial Institute, the private college-prep high school for girls, in 1948. A history teacher there ignited a love of history.

Ryan went to the College of New Rochelle to become a social worker and for a time worked for the state welfare department. She soon learned she didn't like the job. "I couldn't close the door and leave the cases when I got home,'' she said. "I found it very emotional. They had real problems and you couldn't help some of them."

Ryan worked in recreation for 18 months at an Army base in West Germany. When she came home, she volunteered to teach school in Alaska, much to the shock of her family. She joined the Jesuit Volunteers and spent 1959 teaching in Holy Cross, a remote village on the Yukon River.

"We flew in in September and didn't leave until June,'' she said. There were four teachers who taught the Eskimos and Indians. They lived off the land. The two-way radio had to be on all the time because Holy Cross was the relay station to get information to towns even more remote. The clearest radio station broadcast from Russia.

"It was a wonderful time,'' she said. "I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's one of the best things I ever did."

Into the classroom

When she returned to New London to care for her aunts, she started teaching, first at St. Mary's, then the former Waller School and Harbor School, before landing at Edgerton School. She worked for the next 27 years in the same fourth-grade classroom, retiring in 1990.

At Edgerton she developed a curriculum to teach her students about their past. She read the "Little House on the Prairie" books and took the children to the Hempstead Houses, where they could see a wide fireplace like the one Laura Ingalls Wilder cooked on.

"We have treasures in these houses,'' Ryan said one day as she sat in the front hall of the 1678 frame house on the Hempstead property. But finding the oldest buildings in the city, which are hidden in the outskirts of downtown at the intersection of Hempstead and Truman streets, is not easy.

"Last weekend someone came in and said, 'Wow, I found you,' '' Ryan said. "I think we'd get more people if we had better signs."

Ryan said she received a stipend the first year she became the city's official historian, but she can't remember how much it was. She hasn't received any compensation since. But she says she doesn't mind; she likes sharing her knowledge and searching archives looking for clues to the past. Every day, she says, she learns something new.

"If someone wanted the job, I'd step down,'' she said. "But I'd continue to teach."

Baker, from the historical society, said historians like Ryan help members of a community remember that they are not alone in shaping their surroundings.

"This town is here because of decisions made in the past. The people who live here, the type of community we have, is based around decisions made in the past,'' he said. "We stand on the shoulders of lots of people. Without understanding our history, it's too easy to think we did all this. We didn't do all this. We are beneficiaries of lot work of that went on before this. A town historian helps us to not forget that.''

k.edgecomb@theday.com

HISTORY SERIES

What: New London History Series with Sally Ryan

When: 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m., Tuesdays starting Sept. 14

Where: New London Public Library, 63 Huntington St.

How much: Free, but registration requested

Contact: (860) 447-1411, extension 3