Laura Cox/The Freeman’s Journal & Richfield Springs NEWSPAPER
Ryan Hocker, 8, Boston, visits with Santa Claus after his arrival at his cottage in Pioneer Park. Ryan’s mom grew up in Cooperstown and they were back for the holiday.


CCS seniors Sarah Polus, left, and Elizabeth Szwejbka, sing Christmas carols.

Maya Hodgins, 7, Fly Creek, smiles for a picture with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Cooperstown Carnival Snowman.

The CCS band caught the spirit of the season.

COOPERSTOWN

Four-hundred people, including more than 100 lawmen from Otsego County and around the state, packed the county courthouse Tuesday evening, Dec. 1, to emphatically oppose cuts at the county jail and in road patrols.
The final budget hearing was to be followed Wednesday evening by approval of the 2009-10 budget.

SHOOTING ARREST: Lawrence C. Delaney, 68, Town of Middlefield, has been charged with third-degree assault in the shooting of Walter Rouse Jr. Nov. 24 off Roscoe Jones Road. Both were hunting.

COUNTERS SOUGHT: The Census Bureau is looking for 30 people to assist with “address validation” in Otsego County, beginning in April. $12.50, plus mileage. Call Orlo Burch, 293-6460.

BERLIN DIARY: To mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, this newspaper’s photographer, E. Lawrence Budro, has selected images of the German capital during the two years he spent there in the 1960s. They will appear in next week’s edition.

AMBITIOUS YOUTH: The CCS PTO is offering TREP$, a program for young entrepreneurs, to students in Grades 6-8, beginning Wednesday, Dec. 3. The program culminates in a TREP$ Marketplace, which will showcase the students’ business ventures, 10-noon Saturday, Feb. 6.

By JIM KEVLIN


ONEONTA

When Ryan Brooks thinks about the future, he thinks about the whole United States of America, and Canada, and beyond.
“It’s a dream that everybody has,” he said in an interview.
The third-generation operator of Brooks BBQ knows his company will get there, but not tomorrow.
“Baby steps,” is a term he uses. It’s a concept that brought his company this far, and he’s confident that should be the strategy going into the future.
In recent months, you may have noticed Brooks BBQ sauces getting a higher profile; the display rack at Cooperstown’s and other Great Americans, for instance.
A recently hired marketing consultant, Mark Joseph Kelly of Albany, piqued interest when he told a breakfast meeting of downtown businesspeople this fall of the company’s national – eventually – ambitions.
Oneonta – “Smoketown USA,” the ad campaign might have it – would continue to be the hub of an ever-expanding wheel.
Right now, Ryan Brooks said, the company is “a regional brand” that extends 200 miles in every direction.
Because of SUNY Oneonta, Hartwick College, and such national draws as the two local sports halls of fame, there’s some demand in every state, he said.
Beginning in the 1990s, the company’s Web site – brooksbbq.com – took the mail-order business (hand -filled quart bottles, beginning in 1988) to the next level.
Today, sauces are being shipped far and wide every day, and not just in the U.S.: as far as Japan and Australia.
The number of orders coming from the Gulf Coast – Tampa, Bradenton, St. Pete – makes it tempting to “stretch toward Florida” next, Brooks said.
“The thing is, if we go national, can we keep up with it?” he asked.
The first step was to assess the company’s strengths – Ryan can draw on a brain trust that includes his grandparents, company founders Griffin and Frances, and his parents and predecessors, John and Joan.
The conclusion: One restaurant – 1,500 dinners a night, at peak, plus 600 catering jobs a year – was as much as he and his wife and partner, Beth – both are hands-on – could handle.
“We wanted to focus on production and quality control,” but not be limited by that, Brooks said.
A first step was to rachet up production. Then, an assembly line in one of the back buildings could fill 1,200 bottles a day.
Now, a new production line, completed last year on the back of the Generations Gift Shop & Ice Cream Shop, behind the main restaurant, turns out 1,400 bottles an hour.
A parallel challenge was lining up distributors, who won’t handle just any product. Brooks considered it a coup that Lomac Associates of Syracuse and Sysco, the national food mega-distributor, took on the Brooks line.
And the Brooks line was expanded to five sauces, including teriyaki nad roasted garlice. “Wing sauces have really taken off,” he added. And there’s a sampler gift box. (A Rochester company had just ordered 215 to hand out as Christmas gifts.)
“We know this restaurant,” said Brooks. “But when it comes to getting the product out there – marketing it – this is something we didn’t know.”
Brooks is a regional landmark – talk to Ryan Brooks for long, and he begins telling stories about how customers love the place: One couple had their reception in the banquet hall, and come back every year on their anniversary.
But it was only when Kelly began his marketing survey that the company’s reach became evident: It is a regional tourist draw, and the Otsego County Tourism Office views it as such.
“How warm of a feeling does that give you?” Brooks asked.

Lori Solensten and her daughter Lia, Milford, check out Nancy Angerer’s wreath from The Clay Cafe in the Adorn-A-Door Wreath Auction at the Cooperstown Art Association Saturday, Nov. 28.

Kristin Minasi and Michael Senchyshyn have announced their engagement and forthcoming marriage.
Kristine is the daughter of Raymond and Beth Minasi of Washingtonville. She is a graduate of Washingtonville High School and Binghamton University. She received a master’s in occupational therapy from Sage Graduate School in 2008, and is employed art Elderwood Health Care at Birchwood in Liverpool as an Occupational Therapist.
Michael is the son of Joe and Donna Senchyshyn of Cooperstown. He graduated from Cooperstown Central School, and received a bachelor’s in computer and systems engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2006. Michael is employed at SRC in North Syracuse as a digital design engineer. A fall 2010 wedding is planned.

Lou and Brigitte Priem of Cooperstown announce the marriage of their daughter, Arica, to Christopher Ulrich of Norton, Ohio.
The ceremony was Nov. 14, in Montego Bay, Jamaica.
Arica is attending the University of Akron’s School of Business and is a sergeant in the Ohio National Guard. She will be deployed to Afganistan in the spring of 2010.
Christopher is a graduate of Walsh University and employed by Carter Lumber.
The newlyweds are residing in Sheffield Lake, Ohio.

Marilyn Wilhelm from the Norwich Garden Club decorates a tree on one of the “12 Days Of Christmas” themes at The Fenimore Art Museum.

Bob Loucks still looms large in Cherry Valley, years after his son-in-law, Tom Garretson, succeeded him as town supervisor.
And so it will be in the Town of Springfield, where Tom Armstrong, who like Loucks has led his town board for decades, is retiring with the new year.
After years of challenges to Armstrong, Bill Elsey, a level-headed and capable town councilman, edged ahead of the incumbent in the Nov. 3 elections.
And so an era ends, but Tom Armstrong will loom large in its history.
•
The outcome is not a rejection of the legendary figure himself, as much as a reflection of how his town has changed.
In the past three years, the scenic community has been buffeted by three major development projects.
First, a downstate businessmen’s motorcycle club sought to install a track near the Herkimer line. Then, Chicago investors proposed a mini-Fenway and mini-Wrigley youth baseball-tournament park on the Springfield-Richfield line.
Finally, Madison Square Garden Entertainment took out options on much of the acreage between East Lake and Continental roads for a huge music festival.
The first plan was rejected, but the other two were put on the back burner by the recession, ready to come back to a boil when the economy rebounds.
•
The proposal revealed fissures between yesteryear’s live-and-let-live attitude toward development and a new and growing population, drawn by Springfield’s rural nature.
This new constituency wants to keep the town that way, or at least have some control over how the community grows.
Cooperstown Dreams Park has shown how big money and big plans from outside Otsego County can change things quickly in a mostly negative way.
Garretson learned his community wanted town government to play a more protective role, and he reacted.
Bill Elsey is cut from the same stamp, and it’s not inconsistent to welcome a new approach while appreciating Tom Armstrong’s long career in public service.

To the Editor:
Every year The Zone Community Center does a project called Christmas Love, where we place Christmas trees in local businesses with ornaments that have a less-fortunate child’s information on it so community members can help give these families a good Christmas.
The gifts are distributed as part of the Richfield Springs Lioness’s Santa Anonymous Program, which provides food and clothing for the families as well. The teens and after-school program have been helping to make the ornaments, write the information on them and set up the trees.
We would like to invite the community to participate. We have set up Christmas trees at NBT Bank and Kinney Drugs where you will find ornaments with the gender, age and a gift item that the child might like.
We encourage anyone who would like to help out as an individual or as a group to choose a name off of one of the trees, purchase and wrap a gift for the child you choose and return the present, with the original ornament attached, under the tree where you choose the name.
The presents will then be collected and distributed in time for Christmas. We know that times are difficult for everyone this year but we want to thank everyone in advance for any help you can offer to help us share the Christmas spirit.
If you have any questions, please feel free to call us at (315) 858-3200. And on behalf of The Zone, I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

AMY WYANT
Director, The Zone
Richfield Springs

FRANKFORT – Laraine M. Empie, 64, of Millers Grove Road, passed away unexpectedly Saturday, Nov. 28, 2009, in Little Falls Hospital.
She was born on June 8, 1945, in Cooperstown, daughter of the late Russell and Esther Gray Manley. She was raised in Springfield Center and was a graduate of Springfield High School and had continued her education at Herkimer County Community College.
On Oct. 10, 1964 she married Richard L. Empie. They have made their home in Frankfort since 1965.
In addition to her husband, survivors include one son Richard L. Empie Jr. of Herkimer and his long time partner Colleen Loefler, a daughter Lorena Marra and her husband James of Binghamton, a brother Neil Manley of Springfield Center, and two grandchildren.