30-05-2025
Bonding Over Politics and ‘Tiger King'
In fall 2018, Justin Joseph Papp was reporting for The Hour, a daily newspaper in Norwalk, Conn., typing notes on his laptop as he covered a Norwalk City Council noise ordinance committee meeting, which was being chaired by Eloisa Maria Melendez.
Both were in their 20s.
'I was usually the youngest person in the room and would notice younger people, journalists or speakers,' Ms. Melendez said.
Five years earlier, at 19, Ms. Melendez, who grew up in Norwalk, won a council seat in District A, making her the youngest woman to serve on the 15-member council (the first councilman her age won a seat in 1977).
'She was sinking her teeth into decibel levels at local restaurants, and had knowledgeable things to say,' said Mr. Papp, now 34, duly impressed. He grew up in New Milford, Conn., and graduated with a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Connecticut.
Ms. Melendez, now 31, was then also the council's only Latina and fluent Spanish-speaker — her mother is originally from Medellín, Colombia, and her father, who died in 2022, was 'Nuyorican,' she said.
'There is nothing I love more than my city,' said Ms. Melendez, who wears a gold-plated necklace of the State of Connecticut, and graduated with an associate degree in general studies from Norwalk Community College, now CT State Community College Norwalk, while in office.
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