By JIM KEVLIN

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COOPERSTOWN

When Dorothy Smith, a new bride, moved to her husband’s hometown in 1962 after she and Roger graduated from Georgia Tech, she made Louise Allen’s acquaintance.
On learning Dorothy enjoyed painting, Louise suggested, “Why don’t you come and paint with the group?”
The group was the Otsego School of Painting, founded in 1948 by Helga V. Edge; she had united painting clubs from Cherry Valley, West Winfield, West Edmeston and other communities. A dozen or so people would paint together every week or so at 22 Main, where the Cooperstown Art Association still is today.
As it happened, Dorothy Smith joined a group that was about to undergo major changes.
Within a year, it had become the Leatherstocking Brush & Palette Club, a permanent organization with bylaws and an annual art exhibition.
In 1968, Joe Canzeri, the “king of advance men,” aide to Nelson Rockefeller and past manager of The Otesaga, approached the club.
The village had been running a Labor Day Weekend arts and crafts show on the lawn of 22 Main for the past two years, but lacked any expertise to do so: Would the club members like to take it on?
And so it happened.
Dorothy Smith is the only still-active member who was in at the beginning of an event that marks its 42nd anniversary from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 30-31, on the grounds of the Clark Sports Center. (Due to crowding and safety concerns, the event – the Brush & Palette Club’s major fundraiser – was moved there from 22 Main a couple of decades ago.)
As long as Dorothy remembers, painting has been part of her life – and needlework. She quilts, embroiders, crewels, knits, crochets and sews as well.
“Back when,” growing up in Atlanta, she says, “I used to sew my own clothes.”
It runs in the family, to a point.
Her mother used to do pencil drawings. A relative – her maiden name is Vidosic – designed posters for the Sarajevo Olympics.
Among the Smiths’ children, Steven, 45, is a builder, a related trade. Randy, now 40, was an artist at one point. Marty, 36, never, but Laura Flint, 46, their eldest child who is in the process of moving to Plattsburgh with her family, has always done crafts and woodworking.
The long association with painting makes Dorothy very matter-of-fact about it: “When you want to paint, you paint.”
Examples of her work fill the walls of Spurbeck’s Market on Railroad Avenue, a store that has been in her husband’s family for a century.
There’s a certain satisfaction in just making something.
And in selling it.
“That’s a particular thrill, to know that someone will pay money for what you do,” she said.


COOPERSTOWN

When Sharon Matteson was a girl growing up in Hartwick, her mother Irene, every summer’s end, would brew up tomatoes into a spicy chili sauce.
“We would eat it all through the winter,” Sharon recalled the other day, “and dreaded opening the last jar in March. Because we knew there would be no more.”
A couple of years ago – as she neared the end of a 30-year teaching career; she retired from Milford Central School after 19 years – her husband, Brian Haight, “actually said, ‘You know, this is so good, you should share it with the world.’
“I, just joking, said, ‘Oh, when I retire.’”
As a little girl, Sharon had made the chili sauce – her family used it as a condiment on everything – for years. Now, she still had “my mom’s handwritten recipe.”
Why not?
She found herself a processor, Nelson Farms in Cazenovia, to prepare it and can it, and she was on her way.
While she lived near Goodyear Lake, Sharon saw wisdom in associating with Cooperstown and, thinking it through, came up with It’s A Hit Chili Sauce, to capture that baseball magic.
Only, she settled on “Cooperstown Itz A Hit,” although – as a former English teacher – messing with the spelling to come up with a peppy variation was painful.
When she was a girl, Sharon was active in 4H in Hartwick, so successfully active that, age 13, she appeared before a crowd of 3,000 people at the New York State Fair in Syracuse to demonstrate how to make a Swedish tea ring.
This year, Itz A Hit sauces – she’s added Xtra Zing and Ginger Peach to the original – were chosen by Pride of New York for The Market Place, a new concept – a store that features Empire State food products – at the state fair, which runs through Sept. 1.
She put in an application to be allowed to sample, but it’s competitive and she didn’t expect much.
Then, the phone rang.
She’d been chosen to talk about her sauce and provide samples.
One catch: “You have to have enough to serve 3,000 people.”
While, she made it.
Thursday, Aug. 27, she and husband Brian planned to be at the fair, wearning new caps and aprons, with a new banner and advertising literature.
“Cooperstown Itz A Hit,” she said, “is off to an exciting start.”

HYDE BAY

Some 250 partygoers danced the evening away Saturday, Aug. 16, at Hyde Hall’s third annual fundraising gala, “Full Moon Over Havana: Turn Up the Heat.”
Proceeds, appropriately, will underwrite a feasibility study to determine the best way to heat the National Historic Landmark.
The event was co-chaired by Jeanette Weldon and Mitch Owens and catered by Lucy Townsend. It featured fireworks, dancing to Jose Gonde’s 10-piece band, “Ola Fresca,” and, of course, cigars aplenty.
The evening’s honorees were state Sen. Jim Seward, R-Milford, and the late Rev. Canon George French, Christ Episcopal Church rector, and the late Robert S. Kingsley of Springfield.