|
|
 In the News This Week -- Sept. 29, 2006 |
 |
 |
|
 Bittersweet Appalachian Trail Odyssey Ends By JIM KEVLIN COOPERSTOWN Hank Nicols had hiked more than 2,000 miles on the Appalachian Trail, in rain, heat and snow. He'd encountered bears, and deer poachers – a tense meeting that momentarily brought "Deliverance" to mind. He experienced joy, then weeks of tedium, and finally – with just a few hundred miles to go – a burst of energy. He was tearing through New Hampshire's White Mountain, 20 miles a day, en route to Mount Katahdin when his Blackberry sounded. It was his wife, Joan, calling. Terri's gone, she said. Who? he asked. Terri O'Donnell, a beloved sister-in-law, was in her 40s, too young to die. But, in fact, she had. Hank had persevered through all the hardships. When he was in Pennsylvania, he learned one of his daughter's basements have been filled by heavy rains. The RV in his Cooperstown yard had been flooded. He sprained his ankle and was holed up for 10 days. These were all legitimate excuses to give up, but none like this. "Let me put Tom on," Joan said. Don't give up, Terri's widower told his brother-in-law. Terri would have wanted you to go on. Tears welled up as Hank told this story the other day, sitting in the livingroom of his Walnut Street home, 48 hours since he'd stood on Katahdin's summit. "After I cried, I thought: If other people can value how important this was, then it became even more important to me," said Nicols, a former village police chief, railroad security officer, Bassett Healthcare director of systems support, now a University of Buffalo adjunct professor, teaching around the world. The Robert Service poem came to his lips: "I will not be won by weaklings, subtle, suave and mild, "But by men with the hearts of Vikings, and the simple faith of a child." When he was 11 and living on Long Island, his father, a Scout leader, took Hank and the rest of his troop to Bear Mountain, where they walked a few miles on the Appalachian Trail. Since, Nicols' dream had been to walk the 2,175 miles – he repeats the number with polished familiarity – from Springer Mountain, Georgia, to Maine's tallest peak. He grew up, went to SUNY Oneonta, where he met Joan, who graduated from Hartwick College. After a stint as an MP, the couple drew a 50-mile circle around Oneonta and he accepted the police-chief job in Hancock. In 1978, he moved to the top post in the Cooperstown force. You either walk the trail when you're young, or – missing that – when your children are grown and responsibilities are less urgent. Hank was proud but a bit rueful when his daughter, Diana, now Cooperstown police chief, completed the A-T in 1998 with her German shepherd, Sergeant, (rechristened "Sausage" by one of the grandkids; the name stuck.) So this year, at age 57, he took a sabbatical from UB and headed south beginning his hike March 29. (He would complete it 181 days later on Monday, Sept. 25.) Joan accompanied him for the first three days, covering 7 1/2 miles a day. She left and, his feet trail-hardened, he raised that to 10 miles a day, then 15. The first six weeks were "a tremendously exciting adventure," learning to live in the woods, learning to live in the rain, testing his fortitude. The 16-18 weeks that followed were "very tedious. Your job: Get up when the sun comes up and walk until the sun goes down." But not all was drudgery. Hank remembers standing on a peak in Virginia – that state has the A-T's longest stretch, 400 miles – "360 degrees, there was nothing but trees and hills. It was beautiful." It was during this period when he had his closest encounter with the bear kind. He'd seen bears in the morning. This was afternoon, and he heard an unfamilar sound. Edging toward the sound, he spotted a female bear about 30 feet away, tearing away at a tree trunk, looking for grubs. "Hi bear," he said. She heard, but he was downwind, and she stared off in the opposite direction. Suddenly, her bear cub saw him and, in a panic, scurried 30 feet up a tree, hugging the trunk and looking at the intruder with big eyes. He remembered a lesson from the Boy Scout manual: Don't run from a bear. "I'm leaving now," he said, as calmly as he could, and backed slowly down the trail. Later, he read that only 50 humans have been killed by bears in the past century, a fact that would have been nice to know at the time. The Appalachian Trail is "the longest park in the world," begun in 1921 by Benton McKaye. The goal was wilderness trails close to urban areas, so city dwellers could experience the wilds. Landowners voluntarily participated. By the 1970s, however, the suburbs had impigned mightily on the A-T and the federal government began buying rights-of-way. Where eminent domain was used, Hank found hostility – the A-T guide asked hikers to use caution. But other towns – Damascus, Va., Hot Springs, N.C. and Andover, Maine, for instance – were "hiker friendly" towns that catered to the trekkers who walked down their main streets. Still, 98 percent of the trail still runs through remote-seeming areas, Nicols said. The day he left Springer Mountain, so did 200 other hikers, but only a fraction would make it to the end. At Katahdin, only 300 hikers had made it all the way so far this year. "It was the longest trip of introspection I've ever done in my life," Hank said. "While you're doing along, you're thinking about where you've been, where you'd like to be and where you're going." Pressed for specifics, he said he isn't ready to say more yet; he's still sorting out the experience. But he did quote Thoreau: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." It was a bittersweet journey as it came toward the end, not only due to Terri O'Donnell. A dear friend, Cooperstown dentist Gerry Bers, was also active in the Scouts and always talked about hiking the trail, but he died before he could. Hank carried his ashes the whole journey, laying them to rest just below Katahdin's peak in a sheltered spot where Gerry had napped when they'd hiked the mountain a few years before. On Sept. 11, a flagpole in front of St. Mary's Catholic Church on Elm Street was dedicated to Hank's son, Henry Jr., a hemophiliac who had contracted AIDS and spent his final years helping people understand the scourge, talking to students and other groups. The father and son hiked Mount Katahdin together three times. Hank carried an AIDS pin the distance in his son's memory, and pinned it to the sign at trail's end. A 205-pound man had walked into the woods six months before; a 166-pound one emerged. He had slept 10-12 hours a night, but returned home exhausted, yet too excited to sleep very well. "One of the hallmarks of goal-accepting adults," said the father of three (an older daughter, Jennifer Curtis, is a professor), "is that we are able to delay gratification." And so he did. And so the journey's come to an end.   Bullish Cherry Valley Crowd Cheers Revised Turbine Law CHERRY VALLEY Wind-farm foes hammered away, many citing scientific studies: Turbines are too noisy and obtrusive, ruining neighborhoods. They can pollute. They can throw built-up ice great distances. They can catch fire. They can catch the light of the setting and rising sun and flicker, flicker, flicker. Dave Lamouret, a school teacher and organic farmer, had attended the public hearing Monday, Sept. 25, intent on decrying the Town of Cherry Valley's wind ordinance as an unwarranted intrusion on property rights. But listening to the presentation by one of the town's consultants and the subsequent testimony, "I changed my mind." "Facts dictate policy, from the engineering point of view," said Lamouret, who served in an Army engineering unit and once worked construction on a windmill farm. According to the tally kept by Advocates for Cherry Valley, 46 townfolks spoke, and only three opposed the wind regulations, which would require turbines to be at least 1,2000 feet from property lines and 2,000-feet from the nearest dwelling. David Little, Reunion Power's vice president for development, has said the setbacks leave only two-tenths of an acre eligible for a turbine. Of the 13 non-residents who spoke, four were against the ordinance: Three from Reunion – Little, Managing Partner Steve Eisenberg and public-relations consultant Marion Trieste – and Dan Wightman; his family's company, Wightman Lumber of Portlandville, owns tracts of land on East Hill where turbines are planned. The comment period on the proposed "Wind Energy Facility Law" will continue until Oct. 10. Reunion Power is planning an informational meeting at 7 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 5, at the Cherry Valley Community Center (the former school). The town had been invited to co-sponsor the event, but Supervisor Tom Garretson said he declined to do so. He expects a vote on the law before the end of October. Some 150 townspeople sat in the bleachers and the gallery in the gym of the former school, and cheers were loud as people spoke in favor of the proposed ordinance, many praising the planning board. When James Faliveno, president of General CADD Products, rose to relate how he had been prevented from putting an L-shaped addition on his offices a decade ago, the audience quieted, expecting him to be the first to criticize the law. Faliveno recalled how he attended the village board meeting, where he asked: "In other words, you're going to tell me that I can't expand and hire more people? The vote changed on the spot." He made his addition sensitive to the village's historicity. Soon thereafter, however, the Quickway came to downtown Cherry Valley, a modern, brightly lit structure right in the center of the historic village, "the only building in downtown Cherry Valley that is so ticky-tacky looking." The lesson he learned was that planning helps people who want to do the right thing, and hinders those who don't. "I urge you fellas to support the planning board," he told the town board, and the crowd applauded. That tone dominated the evening. "When you've gone and screwed something up," said Mark Cornwell, who raises horses with his wife, Christine, "you've got to go back and fix it. I'd rather see a plan in place." "Pass this wind ordinance as it stands," said County Representative Phil Durkin, who represents the northeast corner towns. There's no rush, added his wife, Leila: "If the wind is that good, they will come." "This ordinance was written by our own neighbors," said Jane Sapinsky, executive director of Cherry Valley Artworks. "Their (Reunion's) interests are for their profit and reduction of lilability," said Patricia Siebolt. "This law considers our interests." The wind-turbine proposals, first at Cape Wyckoff, now at East Hill, have caused "a great divide in Cherry Valley," said Carl Waldman. "Reunion Power has played on this divide when it served their purpose." He called the proposed law "a healthy document." Lynn Marsh, a leader of Advocates for Cherry Valley, praised the setbacks, but said the town should charge higher fees: A building permit to put a second story addition on her home would cost $50. Reunion Power would have to pay only $50 a megawatt plus a $25 building permit. Michelle Freehafer said the ordinance would "separate the men from the boys," barring "fly-by-night developers." And Dennis Wentraub said, "It defies common sense that we would scar the viewscape, the landscape and the soundscape of East Hill in the name of conservation." But Patrick Rooney, a landowner who stands to benefit from Reunion's plan, called the proposal "a classic example of excessive regulation." Richard Mark also spoke against the law, saying it's too broad, not only stymying Reunion's plans, but anyone else's. "You're taking my rights away to build a wind-generating facility," he said.  Key Bank Marks Half-Century in Cooperstown By BREN MIOSEK COOPERSTOWN Like any other normal business day, KeyBank in Cooperstown locked its vault to customers at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 27, but opened its doors to patrons, business owners and community members to celebrate 50 years of business in the historic village that celebrates America's National Pastime. Surrounded by friends, fellow executives, past and present employees, and customers, Cooperstown KeyBank Vice President James H. Empie, along with County Representative Steve Fournier, an advisory board member, thanked all for making the momentous day a memorable one. “We're doing our best to walk the walk of a community bank," said Empie. "Not only has Key Bank been in business in Cooperstown for 50 years, but our employees are citizens here too. It's important for us to recognize our role as a good corporate citizen." To mark the occasion, he presented $500 each to the Fly Creek Fire Company and the Cooperstown Food Bank, calling the organizations "fine neighbors we are grateful to have around.” Among the celebrants was Bernice Key of Pierstown, who joined Key in 1951 when it was Second National Bank of Cooperstown. “Back then, things were entirely different," she said. "Back then, we only had checking accounts, savings accounts and mortgages. Things were simple. We didn't have computers, but when we eventually started using them, we had to go to class to learn how to use them.” Key's fondest memories weren't so much days spent at the office, but rather the company picnics at Belvedere Lake in Roseboom. “Back then, Belvedere Lake was like a private resort for KeyBank employees,” said Key. “We used to have a lot of functions up there.” Key, the wife of Ray Key, retired from her position with KeyBank in 1997 after more than 40 years of service. So many customers depended on her, Empie recalled, one in particular. “A customer walked in an asked to be helped by Bernice," said the banker, who was then new to town. “I explained to the gentleman that Bernice was on vacation for the next two weeks and asked if I could be of service. The customer looked right at me and said, 'No thanks, I'll wait the two weeks.' “Now that's what I call customer service,” said Empie. Cooperstown Mayor Carol B. Waller read a proclamation on behalf of KeyBank and its 50 years of service in Cooperstown. The bank that today is Key was founded in 1853 as the Bank of Cooperstown. In 1956, it was purchased by the National Commercial Bank of Albany, and went through several other owners before emerging as part of Key. KeyBank N.A. is one of the state's largest financial service companies, with one of the largest statewide networks of branches and ATMs. The 12-county Central New York District has 59 branches, 95 ATMs and more than 500 employees.  It Gave Meaning To Many COOPERSTOWN On the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend, 2006, Gerry Holzman arrived at The Farmers' Museum in a golf cart. The inspiration behind the 20-year effort to build and find a permanent home for the Empire State Carousel had suffered a heart attack just 10 days before. If he seemed frail then, you wouldn't have known it when Holzman and "The Buffalo Girls" – University of Buffalo classmates of his wife, Arlene, who have been meeting annually since the 1950s – gathered at the scene of his triumph the other day. There he was, vigorous, smiling, amid his live friends and his carved ones – Freddie de Frogge, Louie Loon, Felicia Fawn, Benny Brook Trout; amid the carved portraits – Jackie Robinson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Walt Whitman, Harriet Tubman; amid panels of state history – Washington's inauguration at Federal Hall, immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, Fenimore Cooper's Deerslayer. Which brought the question to mind: How did this all come about? Gerry's writing a book about it with the working title, "All I Wanted To Do Was Build a Blankety-Blank Merry-Go-Round." He hopes to finish it by Thanksgiving. But he told the story anyhow. It goes back to early December 1970 when his mother asked Gerry, then a harried school administrator in Islip, Long Island, what he wanted for Christmas. She didn't have much money, and he'd seen a $7.95 Exacto carving kit advertised in the New York Times. It was perfect. After Christmas, he "took an old piece of pine and scratched around for an hour or so," then put it aside. Trying to kill a couple of hours a few months later, he picked up the kit again, "took a piece of lathing strip and carved a fairly decent-looking sailor." He took it to a carving instructor, who suggested: "Why don't you try painting?" The wrong thing to say to a stubborn Holzman, who within a few years was selling pieces at street fairs and had even placed items with Abercrombie & Fitch. In 1974, Arlene, who had been semi-retired, raising three daughters, filled in for a teacher out on a year's sick leave, and the couple found themselves with an extra $6,000. They could buy a new car, invest in the stock market, or "have a hell of a good time." So the whole family went to England for a summer built around visiting cathedrals, and visiting woodcarvers, in particular, Gino Massero, a master carver. There was "instant chemistry." Massero gave Holzman a lesson, and Holzman mailed him a copy of Carl Sandburg's "Family of Man." A six-year apprenticeship followed, until the master told the student, "Your on your own. Go out and make some mistakes." Teaching and school administration was "very frustrating. You're entirely dependent on bureaucracies and politics for your success." Carving was "almost immediately rewarding. You pick up a piece, look at it, see what progress can be made in 7-8 hours. I was destined to do it," he said, noting "Holzman" means "woodsman" in German. About that time, South Street Seaport was being developed on Manhattan, and Holzman was contracted to do "very traditional signs. Back in the 19th century, a lot of people couldn't read, so the sign had to convey the meaning of the business." He did a large megaphone for an athletic shop, Pinocchio for a toy shop. He did a few cigar-store Indians. He began restoring carousel horses about the same time, and carved one for a replica of the Saratoga Carousel being built at Disneyworld. About this time, Gerry reached his early '50s. He and Arlene had married young. The kids were out of college. "My responsibilities were over and I became a full-time carver." He stumbled on what would become his 20-year obsession almost by accident. One, he responded to an ad in Carousel magazine to go to Alaska and build a state merry-go-round. The bad news was, there was no money to pay him. Disappointed, he was sitting on the back porch of his summer home in Middleburgh, Schoharie County, on another Memorial Day, 1983, when "a skunk came walking across the field, very majestically. They don't really concern themselves with anybody else. "'On my God,' I thought, 'what a grand animal to carve.' I could do a skunk, a deer, a fox. Why not put them all together on a merry-go-round? A New York State merry-go-round. The ideas kept flowing. I was taking notes. Before I knew it, I had six pages of ideas." He recruited a couple of carving buddies to help him, and they figured they'd have the job done in three years. He wrote up a proposal for funding and began shopping it around. It took a year before he found any. He said of potential donors, "I mistook their politeness for enthusiasm." In 1984, the effort incorporated as a non-profit. State Sen. John Cochran, his local representative, "really liked the idea" and obtained a $2,500 appropriation, a "member item" much decried today. He carved a miniature of the beaver, the state animal, and "started talking to various groups around Long Island." Then came his big break: Dick Selchow, the owner of a 100-year-old game business, was in one of the audiences. The company made a game called "Trivial Pursuit," another called "Scrabble," a third called "Parcheesi." Said Holzman, "They were rolling in mondy and were looking for something to do with it." Gerry asked for $20,000. Selchow called in a couple of days and gave him $10,000. Holzman's response was "gulp." "I came to despise fundraising," he said, but had raised $400,000 by the time the project was done. There were continuous setbacks. When Garet Livermore, New York State Historical Association vice president for education, he related a series of slogans that characterized the delays: "We'll Be Done in Ninety-One" became "No More Tricks, It's Ninety-Six," then "We'll Come On Line In 19 Hundred and 99." The final version: "We've gotten our kicks and taken out licks, it's Cooperstown in 2006." And so it was, but it was a long trail. An Islip friend provided the frame and mechanism from an abandoned merry-go-round that was being cannibalized. Gerry leased an old municipal barn for $1 a year. The carving was going strong. If the darkest is right before the dawning, one of the darker years was 2000. Everything was ready to go in Patchogue. The village was willing to put up a bond for part of the cost. Village merchants, seeing a possible draw, put up $100,000. The building was designed, a contractor picked. Then came election day. The mayor who had made the carousel a centerpiece of renewal effort was defeated. The new mayor, saying his predecessor was trying to do too much, too fast, put every project on hold, including the carousel. The carousel promoters dusted themselves off, and by October 2003 had found a new site, installed the carousel and had a grand opening attended by 6,000 people. NBC was there. Success. "Three weeks later, the town discovered the building they had given us and we'd spent $30,000 modifying didn't meet code," he said. "We finally decided we have to get out of the political world, to put the thing in a museum where it properly belongs." Holzman had been talking to the American Museum of Natural History when one of those "mystical things" happened. The phone rang in January 2005 at his Islip home. It was Livermore. He and Joe Siracusa, The Farmers' Museum director of operations, went down to Long Island to take a look. "The rest is history," said Holzman. He takes a pause here for what he calls "a commercial." Last spring, Gerry and Arlene again went to England. Five days after returning, they came up to Cooperstown. Gerry delivered a speech to the community at the Otesaga. Afterwards, they had supper in the Hawkeye Lounge. Just before desert, the heart attack hit. "We're used to being treated like Long Islanders on Long Island: Take a number, unless you're bleeding in spurts." He was sped to the Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital, with a police car 100 yards ahead. As he entered the emergency room, he was reaching for his wallet to find his insurance card. "We'll take care of that later," he was told, "what's the problem?" Within three minutes, he was hooked to monitors. Within six, treatment had begun. "I was a very difficult moment for us," Holzman recalled. "We hever expected the compassion and the competence that we got. That has touched us very, very deeply." Then he falls back into kidding mode: "If you ever want to have a heart attack in America, do it at the Bassett." So what did all of this teach Holzman? Patience. Perseverance. Avoid politicians whenever possible. "Probably the most important thing I've learned is: People need some place to go. They need something to do. They need some way of saying: I was here. I was on this earth. And it had some meaning, it had some purpose." For 1,000 people who helped Gerry Holzman complete the carousel, that source of purpose can be seen up the road at The Farmers' Museum. COOPERSTOWN Dust out those cobwebs at 7:45 a.m. next Wednesday, Oct. 4, with a nice brisk walk. The Cooperstown Pedestrian Safety Committee and PTO are planning a "walking school bus" in conjunction with International Walk To School Day. Walkers – youngsters and their parents – will gather in the Triple A parking lot at Elm and Chestnut and walk down Delaware Avenue to Cooperstown Elementary School. "Decorate your shoes!" says the publicity being distributed by Village Trustee Milo V. Stewart Jr. "Carry signs celebrating walking! Sing walking songs! Show how happy you are to be able to walk to school!" | Jan. 04, 2008 | Local Honor Roll | Pages From The Paper | july 6th 2007 | Hall of Fame Friday | Hall of Fame Saturday | Hall of Fame Sunday | Hall of Fame Monday | July282006 Archive | Aug042006 Archive | Aug112006 Archive | Aug182006 Archive | Sept012006 Archive | Sept082006 Archive | Sept152006 Archive | Sept222006 Archive | Sept292006 Archive | Oct062006 Archive | Oct132006 Archive | Oct202006 Archive | Oct272006 Archive | Nov032006 Archive | Nov172006 Archive | Nov242006 Archive | Dec012006 Archive | Dec082006 Archive | Dec152006 Archive | Dec222006 Archive | Dec292006 Archive | Jan052007 Archive | Jan192007 Archive | Jan262007 Archive | February092007 Archive | February162007 Archive | February232007 Archive | March162007 Archive | March232007 Archive | March302007 Archive | March302007 Archive | April132007 News Archive | Chris Gentile | Obituary | April272007 Archive | May112007 Archive | May112007 Archive | May252007 Archive | June 22, 2007 | July 13 2007 | Sept05 2007 | Sept 7th 2007 | Aug 31st 2007 | Local Law Parking | October 26, 2007 | Nov. 2 2007 | Nov. 16, 2007 | Glimmerglass Oct 5,2007 | Nov 16., 2007 | November 30 2007 | Nov. 30, 2007 | Dec. 07, 2007 | Dec. 14, 2007 | Dec. 21, 2007 | Dec. 28, 2007 | Jan. 11, 2008 | Jan. 18, 2008 | Jan. 25, 2008 | Feb 1, 2008 | Feb. 8, 2008 | Feb. 22, 2008 | GlimmerGlass Feb. 15, 2008 | Sports Feb. 15, 2008 | Feb.28, 2008 | March 7, 2008 | March 14, 2008 | GlimmerGlass March 14, 2008 | March 21, 2008 | March 28, 2008 | April 4, 2008 | April 11, 2008 | April 18, 2008 | April 25, 2008 | May 9, 2008 | May 2, 2008 | May 23, 2008 | | Our Services | Contact Us | Great Links | Return Home | Classified Ads | News Archive | Cooperstown Homes | Calendar -Best Bets | Letters to the Editor | |
||
 |
 |