By JIM KEVLIN

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MILFORD

It’s a story of twists and turns, punctuated by coincidences.
It began with Chris Lord, as a boy in the 1950s, clambering on the lions that flanked the steps of The Major’s Inn in his native Gilbertsville.
In 1962, when Lord was 12, then-owner Jack Still sold the Tudor Revival landmark on Route 51 and moved back to his native Bradford, Pa.
“He took the two lions” – cast-zinc statues produced by J.L. Mott Ironworks, New York City, in the 19th Century – “which upset people in town, including me,” Lord recalled the other day at the Cooperstown & Charlotte Valley Railroad shed, Milford, where he works on the locomotives.
The news that Ed Landers had just repaired and returned two lion statues to the steps of his Landmark Inn, Cooperstown, brought the memories vividly back to Chris Lord’s mind.
As the years went on, as he left his birthplace for points as distant as Arkansas, the loss of the lions continued to rankle him.
In 1971, Chris found himself back in his picturesque hometown and living in The Major’s Inn, helping maintain the place for a Shakespeare dinner-theater that was operating there at the time.
What did he run across in the course of his duties but an old metal paw from one of the lions. Perhaps sensing he might need it some day, he tucked it away for safekeeping under the back stairs.
In 1976, that premonition developed into “a wild idea,” he recalled. “Let’s see if we can’t find the lions and get them back,” he said to himself.
Chris drove down to Bradford, found Jack Still, but was told the lions had been broken up.
“But he told me, ‘If you go to Cooperstown, you’ll find some there,’” Lord continued. “And sure enough, they were there, at The Lions Tourist Home,” at 64 Chestnut, where Ed Landers’ Landmark Inn is today.


Coincidence One: The paws were broken off.
So Chris Lord approached the manager – it was Howard Wrench, who now works at the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum, who was tending the tourist home for his father, Stanley – with a deal.
If Wrench would lend him the lions to duplicate them – these were still the cast-zinc J.L. Mott originals, Lord said – he would repair the lions’ paws. Done, said Wrench.
“My father came by,” Howard remembers, “and he said, ‘Where the heck are my lions?’”
Those of you who were around then might remember the Novelty Nook, on Route 7 east of Oneonta, where Floyd Deane produced and sold cement lawn statues.
Approached by Chris Lord, Deane agreed – if Chris would help – to make a mold and create two new statues for Gilbertsville, just like the ones that were taken away 14 years before.
In return, he would keep the mold to make future lions for sale. It was something of a lengthy
process. Every day for a while, Lord would stop by the Novelty Nook and paint another layer
of liquid latex on the statues.
Over time, he built up a coat about a quarter-inch thick. The latex coat was removed and – reinforced with plaster and even Rebar – it was placed inside a master mold, a larger box that would hold the latex mold in place.
“It was all working out,” said Chris. “And no money involved.”
Floyd poured the cement and created the new statues. Chris hauled them to Gilbertsville and the originals back to Cooperstown. In the years that followed, he observed the statues popping up here and there – at The Fiesta restaurant on Oneonta’s River Street (now Bella Michael’s), in the East End Cemetery, and so on.
Soon, however, the Gilbertsville lions, subjected to the elements of Upstate winters, began to deteriorate. By 1996, they were in pretty bad shape.
Chris Lord returned to the Novelty Nook, but Floyd Deane had retired to Florida. He had
sold off all his molds, except the two lions – his favorites – which he took with him, intending to continuing casting statues in the Sunshine State.
“He couldn’t bear to part with them,” Chris said.
A dead end, until along came Coincidence Two.
The Gilbertsville inn, the lions’ home, was now owned by The Major’s Inn Foundation, managed by Cece Rowe, who with hubby John was in Endicott, heading out on vacation. She happened to glance down a side street, and there was a replica of one of The Major’s Inn lions.
Following up with the homeowner, she discovered the lion had been purchased at Tudor Statuary in Loman, near Elmira. It turned out that Tudor had bought Floyd Deane’s molds – all of them – with the understanding that when the Novelty Nook owner passed away, the lion molds would be forwarded to Loman.
Reenter Chris Lord, who went out to examine the molds, but found them to be in such poor shape that new lions couldn’t be poured.
“Everything was in a jumble,” he said.
However, if he could transport the Cooperstown lions – they were still in pretty good shape – to Loman, the molds could be fitted around the fairly intact statues, repaired, and new lions created.
So Chris returned to Cooperstown, where The Lions Tourist Home was now owned by Peter
Millspaugh of Falls Church, Va., who had converted it in to five apartments. The zinc lions, Millspaugh told Lord, had continued deteriorating and he had consigned them to a restorer
from the Syracuse area, who absconded with all his clients’ artifacts.
The original lions were gone, perhaps irretrievably. But Millspaugh wanted lions back, so he agreed to help pay for materials.
So Chris Lord took the ruined Gilbertsville lions to Loman, where – it turned out – they were sufficiently intact that the molds could be repaired around them.
This time, Lord attempted to place a layer of powdered zinc on the inside of the mold, to replicate the originals to some degree. He then poured a mixed of vermiculite – a natural clay
that can expand and contract without cracking – gypsum and a plastic polymer, and used chunks of Styrofoam to bulk it out.
Then he and a buddy, Dan Backman of Gilbertsville, loaded the four statues on trucks, dropped two off at The Major’s Inn and took the other two to Cooperstown, where they were guarding the steps when Ed Landers bought what would become The Landmark Inn in 1999.
In the fall of 2007, a ceremony was organized in Gilbertsville to officially welcome back the lions.
Meanwhile, CeCe Rowe made a deal with Tudor, and The Major’s Inn Foundation acquired the molds “because,” said Lord, “whatever happened, we would have the molds.” And so ended Chris Lord’s 45-year odyssey, launched by a boy’s perception of right and wrong.
“Originally, as a kid, I was just indignant,” he explains. “What right did they have to take our lions away?”

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