The Oberriters Had An Idea: Make Bats In Baseball Town
Once upon a time, in a baseball mecca called Cooperstown, there were few bats to be found, and they were from exotic places like St. Louis and Dolgeville.
“In 1976, this was a traditional, American small-town Main Street,” remembers Don Oberriter, who with wife Sharon moved that year from Utica to Pioneer Alley, where they’d opened Obies Brot Und Bier, “a slightly German sandwich bar.”
As it happens, only four places in the village sold bats at all: the National Baseball Hall of Fame, F.R. Woods, Baseball Nostalgia and the Doubleday Batting Range.
The Oberriters – Don’s family had founded Obie’s Drive-In in Washington Mills, and grown it into the 18-7, full-service Obey’s Restaurant on Oneida Street – kept their new eatery as simple as possible. For one thing, there was no back kitchen, so they could chat with customers as they made sandwiches.
Over the years, this market-research-on-the-fly made an impression. Hundreds of times they’d heard the question, “Where can we buy a bat around here?”
And so the concept that became Cooperstown Bat Company was hatched, and it quickly grew.
Their neighbor in Fly Creek, Mike Shea, had a lathe, so during the winter leading up to the 1981 season, the couple created 200 bats, plenty, they thought, to get them through the summer.
The 30-inch bats for youngsters went for $8, the full-size 34-inch bat, for $15.
“They were gone by the middle of July,” said Don during a recent interview at Cooperstown Bat’s Fly Creek plant, raising his eyebrows.
From then on, the Oberriters never looked back. You get the impression they never had time to.
Until April, that is, when the couple sold the company to Tim Haney, their long-tenured graphic artist, his wife Connie, and Christopher and Jennifer Schroeder, partners in the Midwest.
As the couple, and their son Andrew, who joined the company after graduating from the University of Oregon in the mid-‘90s, reflected on their company’s history, one landmark event quickly piled on top of the next:
• In 1982, just one year after its founding, the bat company issued the Doubleday Field Bat, its first souvenir product. The bat bore a drawing of the revered field and facts about it, as well as the date of the first Hall of Fame Game.
• In 1983, production moved beyond Mike Shea’s lathe, and the company started ordering “blanks” and engraving them locally. (When the Oberriters started out, they hadn’t known that such a product was available.)
• In 1985, Cooperstown Bat began producing bats with Hall of Fame logos that fans would buy and take to the autograph sessions at the Hall that were then an Induction Weekend staple. (Only later would baseball retailers pay the game’s stars to sign and sell autographs at their establishments.) Before long, these bats – later sealed by Cooperstown Bat to ensure authenticity – were selling for as much as $3,000 on the “secondary market.”
• In 1988, Major League Baseball authorized Cooperstown Bat to produce its products under MLB license. By then, the company was already churning out 14,000 to 20,000 bats a year.
• In 1989, the Hall of Fame’s 50th, the company undertook three limited special-edition projects: 1,000 Doubleday Field bats, 500 50th anniversary façade bats, and 500 five-bat sets in a rack, one for each of the original inductees – Ruth, Cobb, Mathewson, Honus Wagner and Walter Johnson. The $750 sets sold out in three days.
As Andrew puts it, his parents thought they were running a restaurant business with a bat-making company on the side. They discovered they were running a bat-making company with a restaurant on the side.
The year before the 50th anniversary, the Oberriters sold Obies to Katherine Busse, who with husband Rich continues to operate a restaurant there, Pioneer Patio. About the same time, they built the plant on Route 28, although they maintain a storefront on Cooperstown’s Main Street.
In 1991, the company’s first phase was punctuated by a two-page spread in Sports Illustrated All-Star Issue.
“We had regional recognition,” said Sharon. “It gave us national recognition.”
Added Don, “We never caught up from there.”
Annual sales rose above 20,000.
The Hall of Fame anniversary also set off a furor of interest in baseball memorabilia, and Cooperstown Bat was swept along by the powerful “after market,” which simply hadn’t existed a decade before. The small shows for baseball collectors went big, shifting to venues like Atlantic City or Chicago, and featuring “lots of celebrities.”
About the same time, the stock-market dip of the late ‘80s – promoted by entities like the Franklin Mint – drove money into collectibles.
The Oberriters benefits from a concept Don calls “forced rarity.”
Not only were individual bats collectable, but there was value in developing a complete set.
“When we announced a new player,” he continued, “500 to 700 bats were already sold.”
Everything had been almost too good to be true. Every initiative had struck gold. So hits – a double whammy in 1995, the players’ strike and a national forgery scandal – were perhaps inevitable.
As it happened, Cooperstown Bat Company was pretty well positioned to weather both.
“Americans saw a difference between greedy kids” – the striking players – “and the tradition,” said Don.
“People were mad at the MLB,” added Sharon. “They weren’t mad at ‘baseball’.”
The company was also vaccinated against the rash of forgeries. Early on, the Oberriters had begun issuing “certificates of authenticity on their products,” well before the concept was widely practiced.
“We would not certify something was authentic unless we were there,” said Don, so the couple could have confidence in their products.
Positives counterbalanced the negatives.
In 1993, the Oberriters bought their first engraving machine, allowing custom-made bats.
“Decal-ing is a print run,” Don explained. “The engravers are an absolutely incredible tool.”
About that time, Tim Haney, then working at Toad Hall, walked in off the street and filled out an application. Self-taught, he pushed the new technology and its design versatility to the limit.
In 1995, Mike Schmidt and Richie Ashburn were inducted, drawing record crowds. In 1999, it was Nolan Ryan’s turn, and a new record was set. Big crowds, big bat sales.
And, overriding it all, was Cooperstown Dreams Park and the youth-tournament site’s huge growth, beginning in 1997.
The kids arrive on Fridays for a week of play. Over the weekend, one or two stop by Cooperstown Bat’s Main Street outlet and in no time have a customized bat. Monday, the rest of the team shows up.
“Dreams Park has stabilized the whole area,” said Sharon.
Finally, Cooperstown Bat went heavily into Internet sales in 2001, selling both collectable and custom-designed bats.
Time had gone on. Don’s 71; Sharon’s a few years younger.
“We weren’t doing this to be gobbled up by a big company,” Don said.
And so, a half-dozen years ago, casual conversations began with Tim. As time went on, the talks got more serious.
Connie, who was raised in Laurens, had spent six years in retail in Boston after graduating from SUNY Oneonta. Of course, Tim – he grew up in Fly Creek, attended the College of the Atlantic, then spent a year in South Africa before returning home – knew the business inside out. (The couple has two children, Sawyer, 12, and Carson, 9.)
And so the deal was hatched.
Tim’s business philosophy: “Steady as she goes.”
After decades of entrepreneurial striving, the Oberriters aren’t planning to do nothing. They still own the real estate associated with the company, so will be managing that.
For now – and for the first time – said Sharon, “I’m going to enjoy the summer here.”



Lions & Tigers & Bears, OH MY!
For centuries in eastern and central Europe, Jewish woodcarvers crafted gilded lions, crowns and eagles.
On migrating from the Old World to the New around the turn of the 20th century, they may have reflected, What’s a carver to do?
The answer was: carousels, which experienced peak popularity from the late 1800s until dampening caused by the arrival of the Great Depression.
The marriage of ancient skills and modern market demand brought fantastical creations – lions, yes, and tigers, horses, you name it – in all colors and gilts, churned out by such enterprises as M.C. Illions & Sons on, yes, Coney Island.
The results rival even the great Empire State Carousel, the result of a quarter-century of toils by dozens of modern-day master carvers from Bayside to Batavia that found a home at The Farmers’ Museum three years ago.
No, it can’t be, you say. Impossible. Well, judge for yourself.
“Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses: The Synagogue to the Carousel,” opens Saturday, May 24 – Memorial Day Weekend – at The Fenimore Art Museum, demonstrating how “the vigorous pull of the spiritual and the secular” resulted in a flowering of carousel art.
Then, you can cross West Lake Road, take a look at the Empire State Carousel, and make your own aesthetic judgments.
As the opening neared, Michelle Murdock, the Fenimore’s curator of exhibitions, was hammering nails and climbing ladders along with two assistants, Chris Rossi and Nisha Bansil, surrounded by a lively but frozen menagerie.
Taking a few moments to talk about the catch – “Gilded Lions” came here directly from the American Folk Art Museum in New York City – Michelle moved quickly to examples of ornate cut-paper “Decalogues” – the 10 Commandments – that would hang on the walls of European synagogues.
Many of the motifs – the animals, in particlar – were duplicated in wood carvings that similarly decorated the places of worship. You can see how the woodcarvers’ skills could be so easily adapted to the new trade.
The exhibit – 100 artworks, from the U.S., Eastern Europe and Israel – includes a photo of Charles’ Illions workshop,which turned out dozens of carousels, including the one still functioning in Central Park today.
Murdock said the Fenimore began conversations with the folk art museum a couple of years before the Empire State Carousel was put in place – it seemed like such a natural fit.
And if you want to see what Michelle hath wrought, this is your only chance. This is the last stop. The exhibit will be dismantled after the Sept. 1 closing and the artworks returned to their owners.




GOP Has All-Otsego Fall Ticket
Absent a successful primary challenge, Republicans will be fielding an all-Otsego congressional ticket this fall.
Richard Hanna, who operated a Utica-area construction company before moving to the shores of Otsego Lake – a stone’s throw from Cooperstown – five years ago, has officially announced he will challenge U.S. Rep. Michael Arcuri, D-Utica, for the 24th District seat.
He joins Sandy Treadwell, who is challenging U.S. Rep. Kristen Gillibrand, D-Hudson, in the 20th District. Treadwell lives in Lake Place, but the former New York secretary of state is Jane Forbes Clark’s cousin, vice president of the Clark Foundation and well-acquainted with Otsego County issues.
Arcuri represents the county west of the Susquehanna; Gillibrand, east of the Susquehanna. Both are freshmen.
Both Hanna – one-time owner of the Westville Airport – and Treadwell have been endorsed by the Otsego County Republican Committee, but Treadwell may be challenged in a September primary by retired state trooper John Wallace from the Hudson Valley and/or Michael Rocque, a retired Army officer from Whitehall. Challengers must collect signatures and submit petitions by early July.
Both Republicans will be bucking a national trend: The recent loss of three long-standing GOP seats to Democrats is suggesting this will be a Democratic year.
Alan Chartock, the political observer and columnist, pointed out that Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno had crafted the 20th District to give a protege, John Sweeney, a safe seat. Gillibrand beat him in 2006.
Despite the 80,000-vote Republican advantage, “she’ll be alright,” Chartock said of Gillibrand, who can count on help from U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton.
As for Arcuri, Chartock said “he has proven himself very artful.” His background as Oneida County district attorney won’t hurt, he added: “That’s safety; that’s criminal justice.”




‘Ballparks’ Site Owners Have A Deal
From the heights of Mount Wiaontha – during Victorian times, it was a popular lookout for vacationers here – you can see the Adirondacks and beyond.
If “The Ballparks of Cooperstown” happens, players and their parents are going to have quite a view.
An owner of 200 acres to the east of this village that includes Wiaontha said she and her husband have an agreement of sale with “two gentlemen” and expect to close at the end of June.
Barbara and Thomas Reed of Sutton, Mass., have owned the land for about a decade and have built a small home and pole barn there, accessible from Ellard Road in the Town of Richfield.
Tom Reed, who is in his 70s, is an executive with Edward A. Fish Associates, a development company in Braintree, Mass., but the company is not involved in the purchase.
Two entrepreneurs, Jim Copetas and Doc Snyder of Glenview, Ill., held separate briefings in April with Richfield, Springfield and Warren town officials on plans for a Dreams-Park-like facility along Route 20 in the Town of Richfield.
The plans include miniature versions of Wrigley Field and Fenway Park, eight additional diamonds, dorms for the players and ownhomes for their parents, plus restaurants, a water park, a cinema and other attractions.
Negotiations are also under way to acquire Cooperstown Diamonds, a smaller youth-tournament facility a couple of miles east of the main site, for additional diamonds.
Copetas and Snyder, who told the officials they’ve contract with Cal Ripken’s ballpark-development company, have declined to be interviewed until the deal closes on the land.
The 200 acres is across Allen Lake Road from the Butternut Barn gift shop, and is wholly owned by the Reeds.
The site of an early village reservoir, the acreage includes some wetlands, some rolling meadows, then the steeper inclines leading up Mount Wiaontha.
A neighbor, Dick Wright, said he has heard the idea is to put the townhomes on the hillside to take advantage of the view.
Mrs. Reed said she and her husband, who worked through Alice Wellenstein, a broker with Springfield Realty, at first were under the impression the two potential buyers planned to build a single home.
“What happens to the land once you sell the land, I don’t know,” said Mrs. Reed. “And it’s more difficult to know when it’s in another state.”
The Reeds had originally planned to move to the Town of Richfield when the husband retired, but Tom Reed is stimulated by his work and keeps putting off that day, his wife said.




‘Red’ Bursey Is Slam Dunk For New CCS Hall of Fame
Everyone who ever played sports for Cooperstown Central School prior to 1970 was eligible.
So when CCS Middle School Principal Mike Cring issued a call for nominees, he expected a flood of response. And he got it.
Through the many worthy athletes, coaches and administrators Cring and his committee pored over, one name shone through: Lester “Red” Bursey, coach, administrator and civic leader, who served Cooperstown and its schools for more than 40 years, beginning in 1925.
“A lot of things that happened in our athletic community were because of him,” said Cring.
Bursey – the CCS gym is named
after him and two of his portraits hang
Plin the alcove there – may have been the slam dunk, but many other worthies have made it into the first class:
• Including Bursey, 11 individual athletes, coaches and administrators in all, ranging from Harry LaDuke, recently deceased, to Paul Lambert, who served on the selection committee.
• The 1934 boys basketball team, which lost its first game by one point, then won the next 19 to claim the Southern Tier Conference championship. Bursey call it “the best basketball team ever at Cooperstown.”
• The 1961 boys basketball team, which went 19-2 overall and undefeated in the league to bring home the first Center State Conference cup. Coached by Lambert, all its members are still alive and many are still around town, from Tim Feury and Don Wertheim to Mike LaCava.
• The 1963 boys basketball team. It went 22-1 overall, 16-0 in league play to bring home the second Center State Conference championship. Players included Dick Balcom, Ken Wertheim and Kernon Cross.
• Finally, there is the 1967 football team, which went 8-0, giving up the fewest amount of points up to that time; (the record was broken a few years later.) Gary Jennings, David Rath and Michael and Wayne Weir were among the 41 players that year.
Cring was struck by the fact that no women were included in the first class. But, of course, Title IX, requiring schools to provide the same athletic opportunities to boys and girls, wasn’t put in place until 1973.
The third year will recognize athletes of the 1980s. After that, nominations will be thrown wide open. People who may have been nominated this year can be nominated again at that time, the principal said.
The principal – he went through the Morristown Central School District on the St. Lawrence, which didn’t, but now does, have an HoF of its own – has been wanting to create the CCS Hall of Fame for the past decade.
In addition to Lambert, he was assisted in the selections by Rich Jantzi, the volleyball coach; Brenda Wedderspoon, field hockey; Jennifer Pindar, soccer and a high school history teacher, and Jay Baldo, the guidance counselor who also coaches football.

Labels: Archives

By JIM KEVLIN


EAST SPRINGFIELD

A second sizeable project has surfaced in the Town of Springfield within days of the first one.

Madison Square Garden Inc., which owns its namesake basketball arena, Radio City Music Hall, and
the New York Knicks and other pro sports teams, is preparing to purchase 1,000 acres between this hamlet
and Continental Road to the southwest to accommodate up to 75,000 fans annually at a three-day music and arts festival.

"Springfield is a great location due to its natural beauty and rolling farmland. The success of the festival
will depend on preserving those qualities of the setting," according to a project outline MSG’s Andrew
S. Lynn, vice president, planning and project development, attached to a cover letter to the Town of Springfield Planning Board.

The site, which has been criss-crossed by surveyors in the past two weeks, was one of three being considered by The Ballparks of Cooperstown, a Dreams-Park-like facility that would include mini-replicas of Wrigley Field and Fenway Park, as well as housing, restaurants and a waterpark. Since, however, that project has shifted its focus to sites east on Route 20 near Richfield Springs.

Other points in Lynn’s outline include:

• The property will continue on the tax rolls, and cover any costs incurred by the municipality.
• Construction will be limited to "those structures required for the event" and designed to "minimize visual impact."
• Of the 75,000 visitors, most would camp and remain on-site for the duration of the festival.

The outline compares what MSG has in mind to "other very successful music festivals" like Coachella in California, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Austin City Limits Festival, and Bonnaroo in Tennessee.

Contacted in New York City, Lynn said he wasn’t authorized to comment further about the plans, but – while the outline reports MSG produces more than 250 concerts annually – this would be the company’s first such venture.

Mary Clarke, town Planning Board chair, read Lynn’s letter, dated April 28, out loud at the board’s meeting Thursday, May 1, and the initial response was favorable.

"This sounds like a once in a lifetime opportunity," said Ken Ostrander, who was in the audience.

"It’s a huge project," said Henry Miller, the town’s building inspector, but he said building will be limited mostly to restrooms. Not even a permanent band shell is planned, he said.

Planning Board member Dave Staley said the project may not be covered by a development moratorium, even if the town board passes the moratorium at its Monday, May 12, monthly meeting, because of the way the law is written. As drafted, the moratorium would apply to subdivisions greater than 25 lots and commercial buildings greater than 100,000 square feet.

In an interview, Don Simpson, MSG’s senior vice president, business development, said, while matters are still in the early stages and nothing is firm, many upstate sites were inspected before the preference was narrowed to Springfield.

"We love it," he said, "the whole rolling hills aspect, the outdoors expanse of nature. It’s just a beautiful place."

MSG got interested in the music-festival idea because, while these kinds of venues have been popping up across the country, "there is not at this time a large festival in the northeastern United States."

He declined to say what kind of music the festival would feature, whether folk or rock or whatever.

MSG hopes to have the first festival in summer 2010, but Simpson emphasized there are hurdles to be overcome.

He expressed hopes of a productive relationship with the municipality and with neighbhors in general. He noted the projects must receive a SEQR permit.

He seconded Henry Miller’s impression that the year-’round impact will be minimal.

"Certainly, we are going to bring on site for the three-day festival the structures we require," Simpson said. "But they’ll be set up and taken down.

"At the end of the day, you’re going to drive by the site and it’s going to look no different than it did at the start."

But Town Clerk Jeannette Armstrong was among those urging caution: "It’s a Garden of Eden up here. Before you know it, we aren’t going to have it anymore."

Nolan Ryan Taps Petrosky For VP Of Texas Rangers

Cooperstown’s loss has become Dallas’ gain. Dale Petroskey, who resigned as president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum in March, has joined the Texas Rangers as executive vice president of marketing, community development and government relations.

The team’s new president, Hall-of-Famer Nolan Ryan, said he is “thrilled” Petroskey is on “our front office team.” Petroskey began work Thursday, May 1, in Dallas, where his older daughter, Kathleen, is a sophomore at Southern Methodist University.

“He’s had a broad and impressive career at world-class institutions," Ryan said. "From those experiences, he has a big-picture view of the world, lots of friends inside baseball and in other fields throughout the country, and understands what it takes to achieve quality.

"I’ve seen his passion for baseball. He has a natural way of getting other people excited about the game."

A native of Michigan, Petroskey was an aide on Capitol Hill, then an assistant communications director in the Reagan White House, then a senior executive at National Geographic before coming to Cooperstown.

"The ultimate goal of (Rangers’ owner) Tom Hicks and Nolan Ryan is to create the best franchise in baseball in every way," he said. "And I’m honored they’ve asked me to be part of their team to help accomplish that.

"I’m looking forward to working with my new colleagues on the staff, and meeting the fans."

Petroskey said he and wife Ann are "delighted" to be moving to Dallas, which will occur after younger daughter Clare, 17, graduates from Cooperstown Central High School at the end of June.

Clare will be attending the College of Charleston in the fall. Son Frank, 19, is finishing his freshman year at the University of Vermont.

Ryan said his administration’s goal will be to create a World Series contender "year after year, and to bring home a World Series trophy as soon as possible.

"A key piece of that puzzle is to bring the Rangers to a wider and more receptive audience, and create a family-like bond with the fans. We know Dale will be able to help lead us in that direction."

Petroskey said he and Ann "think the world of Nolan and Ruth Ryan, and we’re thrilled to be here with them."

However, he spoke wistfully about Cooperstown, his home for almost a decade.

"What’s we’re going to miss most is all our dear friends," he said. "We’ve had a wonderful nine years."

The Hall of Fame has named Jeff Idelson, Petroskey’s vice president of communications and education, to succeed him.

Grapefruit Didn't Cut It; So Charlie Got A Cactus

It’s been bothering Charlie Vascellaro since spring training 2007, when he got Sammy Sosa’s autograph on a grapefruit.

The Major League teams that do their spring training in Arizona play in the Cactus League, not the Grapefruit League.

Charlie had the grapefruit freeze-dried and brought it back to Cooperstown this past February, where you can see it in Andy Vilacky’s Safe at Home Ball Park Collectibles, 91 Main St.

But it continued to bother him: Not grapefruit, cactus!

In March, Vascellaro – a Baltimore-based freelance writer who frequently visits Cooperstown – found himself back in Arizona, again covering spring training.

This time, he vowed, he’d get it right.

Thinking it through, it occurred to him no ballplayer would simply grab a piece of cactus.

So took a piece of the Pricklypear variety, cut off the spikes and sanded it smooth.

Out at the Brewers’ stadium in Mayville, Ariz., who did Charlie encounter but Milwaukee first-baseman and phenom Prince Fielder, last season’s National League home-run leader?

Mission accomplished: Prince took it, signed it and gave it back.

As Charlie recounted the story the other day, the now-souvenir was being freeze-dried at Floral Keepsakes in Scottsdale.

Charlie will be back in town in mid-May, and you should be able to see the cactus next to the grapefruit down at Vilacky’s.

Ag Chief Back From Cuba, Ideal Land For NY Milk, Honey

Find the oldest tractor still in use in Otsego County. It’ll be newer than the newest tractor in use in Cuba.

"Mostly, they use oxen," state Agriculture Commissioner Patrick Hooker, who lives outside Richfield Springs, reported the other day.

Hooker had just returned to Albany from leading the state’s first-ever agricultural delegation to the island nation that’s been at odds with the U.S. for almost five decades now.

There’s plenty of agriculture in Cuba – mangoes, kiwis, bananas, some dairy – although heat-generating dairy cows don’t thrive in the tropics, he said.

But they don’t have a lot of what Upstate New York does.

"They are very interested in apples," said the ag chief, whose namesake mountain – Hooker Mountain, near Westville – was settled by his ancestors. "Forest products – they need telephone poles, railroad ties, pallets."

The highpoint of the trip, though, was a "Pride of New York" dinner the 17-farmer delegation hosted for top officials of Alimport, Cuba’s agency for acquiring foreign goods.

The main course was New York beef tenderloin, marinated, with whipped potatoes and a Schoharie Valley onion-and-vegetable soup. For dessert, New York-style apple-caramel cheesecake and wine ice cream.

Hooker was tipped off to Cuba’s possibilities a couple of years ago by a friend, Michael Scuse, the State of Delaware secretary of agriculture, who had just returned from there.

Delaware grows chickens and grain, Scuse told him, and there’s plenty of that on Cuba. New York – with its apples, timber, cabbage and farm-related consumer products – had just what the Cubans need, Hooker was told.

The commissioner hooked up with Kirby Jones, a former CBS correspondent who interviewed Fidel Castro in 1973 on Cuba’s trading possibilities.

Returning home after the broadcast, Jones’ phone rang off the hook – businessmen wanting to know about opportunities – and he soon found himself in the consulting business; since then, he’s made more than 250 trips there.

"Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, North and South Dakota, Kansas – Cuba buys a tremendous amount of grains and soybeans," Jones said from Alamar Associates, his Baltimore-based consulting firm.

"But you can’t compare Kansas to New York," he continued. "You don’t have Kansas wine. You don’t have Kansas canned fruit. You don’t have Kansas cheese."

New York has all of those, he said.

Hooker, whose wife, Karen Huxtable, is Bassett Healthcare communications director, said 25 states have sent delegations to Cuba in the past seven years, so he believe New York had to explore the prospects.

But he didn’t know what to expect.

"I sure was relieved by how nice and how friendly everybody was, the man on the street as well as the government official," he said. "It was a relief. You go down there and you don’t know: How would we be received? We were received wonderfully."

Through hosting the dinner and Kirby Jones’ introductions, Hooker’s delegation was able to meet Raul de la Nuez, Cuba’s minister of trade; Josefina Vidal Ferreiro, de la Nuez’s deputy, and Alimport CEO Pedro Alvarez, among others.

"I took pains to make sure they understood we weren’t there from New York City," he said, "to lay out for the Cuban media and the government what a tiny land mass New York City is compared with the rest of the state."

Visiting a supermarket, Hooker was perplexed to see dairy products from Germany that could just as well come from the Butternuts Valley.

He noted that, while U.S. businesses have been straining under this country’s long-standing trade embargo against Cuba, dozens of countries have generated trade relationships worth billions.

"They’re not giving us charity," the commissioner said, "but we have a comparative advantage in a lot of products."

Due to Cuba’s proximity, freight rates alone are a plus, he said.

As it happened, Hooker said, the timing wasn’t the best. "We weren’t there with a contract for potatoes or cabbage when we don’t know what the harvest will be like."

However, the New Yorkers were invited back in November to Cuba’s "huge international trade show," and more concrete results may come out of that.

The first step was establishing a relationship, and Hooker believes that’s happened.

"We all learned is that there is an incredible opportunity for us," he said. "With 9 million residents, 2 million tourists, tourism growing, 90 miles from Florida – it makes an awful lot of sense for us to be there."

Labels: Archives

By JIM KEVLIN


COOPERSTOWN

With concerns raised anew about fertilizers used to keep the Leatherstocking Golf Course green and weed free, the village trustees have turned to Dr. Ted Peters, whose decades-long efforts to protect Otsego Lake’s waters won him the OCCA’s 2006 Conservationist of the Year Award.
The trustees asked Peters, a physician and Bassett Healthcare researcher since the 1950s, to examine concerns raised at their monthly meeting Monday, April 21, by activist Michael Whaling – he is also leading the charge to ban snowmobiles from the Village of Sharon Springs – Andy Mason of the Delaware-Otsego Audubon Society, and others.
Peters – he is a charter member of the village’s Watershed Supervisory Committee, and a consultant to the village’s water and sewer commissioners – said Tuesday Mayor Carol B. Waller had not been too specific when she asked him to look into the new concerns, but he is willing to do what he can.
At the meeting the night before, Mason presented the trustees with a list of pesticides and herbicides applied to the golf course, obtained from the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
The two renewed concerns that chemicals from the golf course are contaminating – or might contaminate – the nearby lake, with Whaling saying non-chemical organic applications are the wave of the future.
“The Otesaga” – the golf course is associated with the adjacent resort – “has the opportunity now to get ahead of this movement by announcing that, for 2008, the Leatherstocking Golf Course will be totally organic in its maintenance,” he said.
“The Clark family has traditionally supported the preservation of Otsego Lake and the headwaters of the Susquehanna River. This adjustment would be consistent with that distinguished history.”
The following afternoon at a press briefing in his office, Otesaga General Manager John Irvin said the hotel has traditionally been “a good steward of our environment,” and has sought to apply best practices in its maintenance of the golf course.
LGC Director Dan Spooner said “everything we do is approved by the DEC.”
And Bernie Banas, the greens’ superintendent, said he has attended the DEC-mandated training course every year for the past 15: “We are doing everything humanly possible to minimize the risk.”
A greater risk, said Banas, comes from homeowners around the lake who, lacking his expertise, fertilize their lawns a lot more heavily.
Irvin had also invited Peters to the briefing, and he reported testing Blackbird Bay and the intake to the village water plant, near Fairy Spring, in May 2001 – for a baseline – and again in August of that year. The tests found nothing, he said.
The DEC has been requiring The Otesaga to test the lake water in April every three years. Whaling quoted DEC Pathologist Wade Stone as saying, “That’s a great time to test for pesticides if you don’t want to find any.”
But Irvin said the DEC requires the tests to be done in April, and the golf course is simply following instructions.
The day after the briefing, Whaling expressed “great respect” for Peters and said he’s glad the 2001 tests found nothing: “That’s good, because we need to stop using them before it’s too late and it’s in our drinking water.”
Whaling said Stone has agreed to join him and Mason in a press conference in the near future to further dramatize their concerns.




By JIM KEVLIN


COOPERSTOWN

In 1989, there were two PR assistant director jobs available in Major League Baseball, one with the Yankees, the other with the Orioles.
Jeff Idelson applied for both, interviewed, and was told a guy from Detroit was first in line for each job and he was second.
The guy took the Baltimore job, and Jeff joined New York shortly after New Year’s Day of 1999.
A short time later he was at a party, as was George Steinbrenner. Jeff introduced himself.
“Mr. Steinbrenner put his hands on my shoulders,” said Idelson, holding out both his hands, palms in, “and said, ‘You’re the young man from Detroit.’”
No, explained the new hire, he was the young man from Boston.
“I have three words of advice for you,” The Boss continued. “Rent, don’t buy.”
Some welcome.
Listening to Jeff Idelson – he was interviewed in the bleachers at Doubleday Field while a game was under way on the diamond below – you conclude he hasn’t gotten too many gifts in his 22 years in the business of baseball.
Except perhaps from the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum board of directors, which Tuesday, April 15, appointed him president of the National Pastime’s Mecca.
He’s thrilled to have the job, but he didn’t expect to get it on being named acting president after Dale Petroskey’s resignation three weeks before after a nine-year run.
Idelson’s had a life-long love affair with the game but, as the bard has it, the course of true love doesn’t always run smooth. Every successful relationship takes a lot of hard work. And, Idelson might say, why shouldn’t it, particularly in heatedly competitive professional baseball?
“I started as much on the bottom floor as you can get, maybe below the bottom floor,” he said. “But that always goes on in any field that’s incredibly competitive.”
Jeff’s association with the game began well before it was a career.
His dad, Beldon, a physician/teacher at Boston University Medical Center, was an avid Red Sox fan like his father before him. So was his mother, Roberta, a sociology researcher who, now retired, still has season tickets to Fenway Park, as she has for 22 years.
Not just his parents, but his mother’s parents and father’s mother – they lived in the neighborhood as Jeff was growing up – plus his sister Sarah and brother Matt, were “huge Red Sox fans.
“We talked about baseball all the time.”
The young Jeff would sit with his grandfather, parked in the driveway during family picnics, listening to Red Sox games on the car radio.
He would score as many games as he could, lying in bed, listening to broadcasts.
From 1969 on, he attended every opening day at Fenway.
Every June 22, his birthday, he could be found in the bleachers with his dad and three or four buddies.
At 15, he began vending popcorn at the ballpark, and worked his way up to soda and hotdogs in the three years before he went off to Connecticut College in New London, Conn., a short Amtrak ride from Boston’s famed ballpark.
His high school – Newton North – had 3,000 students in three grades, 50 percent more people than in all Cooperstown.
So, on graduation, Jeff had sought out a small liberal arts college, and took full advantage of it. He deejayed for three years at the college radio station, interned at the public information office, and brought baseball to campus as a club sport.
He shifted from English to international economics, spent a semester at the London School of Economics.
But, on graduating, he followed his heart, besting 20 applicants to win a part-time PR internship with his beloved Red Sox’ organization – $125 per month – and launching three years of waiting on tables and eating macaroni and cheese as he sought to break into the business fulltime.
After the first two years – he had been handling Red Sox broadcasts to 110 stations – he sold his car and moved home, but had set aside enough to spend six months in Colorado skiing as he tried to figure out what to do next.
It was there, at a youth hostel in Breckenridge, that he met his future wife Erika, a Chicago native then studying at the University of Houston. They married five years later. (The couple has two children, Aaron, 12, and Nicole, 8.)
“1988 was it,” Idelson said of his fledgling baseball career. “It was either going to work or it wasn’t.”
And so the chance to go to New York was a career maker – and five years there created the executive you see today.
George Steinbrenner lived up to his reputation.
“He demanded perfection, which is impossible,” said Idelson. “But it puts you in the mindset of always doing the best you can every day.”
Steinbrenner had contacts everywhere who would call him if they saw anything significant in their local papers. In those days before the Internet, that presented a challenge to a public relations department.
Steinbrenner would get a tip and immediately call Jeff to make sure he was on top of the story. That caused Idelson to develop a network of his own, “to be out in front on things.”
He remembers one such case with satisfaction. Steinbrenner and Mike Pagliarulo, a promising third baseman, had been feuding, and one day the ballplayer “popped off” to the Bergen Record. Idelson’s system worked, and he was tipped off early.
When Steinbrenner called – Idelson knew why – he was able to jump in first, telling his boss, “You might want to check out the Bergen Record,” then outlining what he was doing in damage control.
Smooth.
Steinbrenner had had a lot of press, good and bad, by then, and Idelson thinks he didn’t much care about it one way or another. “What he was doing was teaching me a life lesson.”
He recalled the sign on Steinbrenner’s desk – it’s still there, he discovered during a visit to New York a few months ago: “Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.”
“It’s hard to fault a guy who wants to win,” said Idelson. “Nobody in baseball wants to win more than him.”
After five grueling years, Idelson spent a transition year as assistant vice president and senior press officer for World Cup USA 1994, joining the Hall of Fame that fall as public relations director.
In 1999, he was elevated to vice president of communications, with “and education” added later as the HoF programs for school kids grew to today, where 15 million students are served annually.
By all accounts, he worked amicably with Petroskey and was often the public face of the Hall, whether fielding questions about steroids, or Curt Schilling’s bloody sock, or memorabilia from Barry Bonds’ record-breaking game, or the Hall of Fame Game cancellation.
He’s been out of town about seven days a month, and estimates he’ll be away about the same amount now, only he’ll be dealing face to face with titans of the baseball business, instead of the baseball field.
How will he handle it? Philosophically.
“I believe you should control what you can control, and don’t dwell on what you can’t control,” he said.
He pauses. Then there’s an echo of Steinbrenner: “Don’t get me wrong. A lot of what you do everyday you can control.”



COOPERSTOWN

The Friends of the Parks has raised three-quarters of the $38,000 needed to create the village’s first public playground.
With further donations anticipated and saving cost through volunteer labor, the Friends are planning to install the playground equipment June 6-7 at Badger Park behind the Great American, formerly Village Gardens.
According to John Odell, a member of the Friends’ board, Kid City, behind Cooperstown Elementary School, is the only public playground, and pre-school children are barred from playing there most of the day.
This playground, he said, will accommodate pre-schoolers at any time, and also has equipment to keep their older siblings occupied if mom or dad happens to bring them along.
This is the first step in a Friends master plan, Odell said. The next phase? “Think Rink.”
To contribute or volunteer, call Odell or Jessie Ravage, the Friends chairman.



CHERRY VALLEY

Now it can be told.
Gabe Schechter of Cherry Valley, under a gag order for two months, is finally free to talk about the “great experience” after the two Jeopardy! episodes he competed in were aired Friday, April 18, and Monday, April 21.
Schechter, a researcher at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, won $19,600 the first night and came in third the second night, receiving an additional consolation prize of $1,000.
“It’s a lot faster and a lot tougher than it appears on television,” he said.
That first night, Schechter’s friends and well-wishers at the Hall of Fame had a party for him at the Grandstand Theater – more than 100 people were there – and they all watched the competition together on the big screen. Gabe sat in the front row with his wife Linda and their grandson, Eric, 10, who was visiting from Mechanicsville.
When their hero got one right, the crowd cheered.
Arriving home, his neighbor congratulated him. The Doubleday Cafe tuned its TVs to Jeopardy! both nights.
And he received calls of congratulations from hither and yon, including one from an elderly gent in Tennessee who he speaks to once a year on baseball related matters; it was aired there at 1:30 p.m. Friday afternoon, so he got a jump on the rest of Gabe’s fans.
The episodes were taped in early March at the Sony Studio in Culver City, Calif. – the former MGM Studios. (It had been planned in February, but host Alex Trebek suffered a heart attack.)
Schechter had taken the online test two years ago now. Passing that, he went to New York City for five hours of additional testing before finally being selected.
Sure, knowledge has something to do with success on Jeopardy!, but it has more to do with the buzzer and timing.
As Trebek is reading the question – or rather, Jeopardy! fans, the answer – it appears on a screen in front of the three contestants.
The contestants read the answer-like question, and know whether they have the question-like answer or not by the time Alex finishes reading.
“You’re doing a lot of things at the same time,” Schechter said.
Two lights flash on either side of the screen where the question/answer is, and only then are the contestants’ buzzers activated.
“The second game,” said Schechter, “I was just out of synch, just a split second slower than the others.”
He even missed the baseball exchange: This team plays in Arlington, Texas. (Question-like answer: What are the Texas Rangers?)
The games go by in a flash.
At the first break the first evening, Gabe was surprised to find he was ahead. He didn’t think he had responded to enough of the question/answers. That was the case, he learned later, but the ones he answered were the $1,000 ones.
“It was a great time, a lot of fun, a great experience,” he said, even though the period between the taping and the airing, when he couldn’t talk about it, was “dreamlike.”
The Jeopardy! staff treats the contestants with great consideration, he said, and rather then dog-eat-dog, “the contestants form a fraternal bond. We were all in this together.”





HARTWICK SEMINARY

The Tom Tom GPS system is erroneously directing drivers who use it into a Hartwick bog, according to Cooperstown Fire Chief Jim Tallman.
Tallman’s department was called to stand by at the Hartwick fire station when a woman who had interviewed for a nursing job at Bassett Hospital followed Tom Tom’s directions west from Hartwick Seminary on Goey Pond Road, purportedly to reach Route 205.
The road, however, is impassable at this time of year. Tallman said he was told four cars had gotten stuck there recently.

Labels: Archives

By JIM KEVLIN


COOPERSTOWN

Surprises in the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum’s highest management ranks continued in recent days when, in forgoing plans for a national search, the Board of Directors named a 14-year HoF veteran as the 69-year-old institution’s sixth president.
Jeff Idelson, 43, vice president for communications and education since 1999 and acting president since Dale Petroskey’s sudden resignation on Tuesday, March 25, was elevated to the presidency on Tuesday, April 15. The decision was announced the following day.
In making the announcement, HoF Chairman Jane Forbes Clark said Idelson has served “with great success and passion” since arriving in 1994, and anticipates he will continue to do so in the top job “for many years to come.”
Idelson said overseeing the extension of “70 years of success will be a great challenge that I’m very excited about continuing. The Hall of Fame is a national treasure.” At a press briefing Wednesday afternoon, he recalled having “goose bumps” at his first Hall of Fame Induction, when Phil Rizzuto was entered into the Hall. He’s expecting a similarly emotional reaction this summer when he will be on the rostrum for the first time when “Goose” Gossage is inducted.
Idelson emphasized that overseeing the institution’s “continuing evolution” is central to his approach. Added Jane Clark, “status quo is something this museum has never been.”
Since he’s been in senior management for 10 years, Idelson said, he knows the people and the issues, and should be able to get up to speed relatively quickly.
Echoing Petroskey, he characterized himself as “a team player, a good listener and a part of the collective whole.”
On specific issues, he appeared resigned to allowing the Hall of Fame Game to expire with the June 16 Doubleday Field matchup between the Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres, but said he is working with state Sen. Jim Seward, R-Milford, to come up with an “event of magnitude” to replace it.
On finances, Jane Clark and Idelson appeared to be retreating from the contention that profitability had been part of the reason for Petroskey’s departure.
In an earlier interview, Miss Clark said the institution ran in the red in 2006, but now she said, “2006 may not have been our best year, but we were very strong in all the other years.”
Idelson pointed out that the 2007 membership increase from 20,000 to 31,000 shows the HoF’s underlying strength, and he said few museums can depend on the financial shot in the arm the Hall receives on Induction Weekend and, in the past few years anyhow, the Hall of Fame Game.
And he spoke of the Hall’s “gold-plated reputation that many corporations and individuals want to be connected with.” (A few days before, AT&T announced it would be providing $150,000 for a second year to help underwrite the Hall’s educational programs. See Page 2.)
As president, Idelson assumes a position first held by Stephen C. Clark Sr., the Hall of Fame’s founder and Jane Clark’s grandfather.
A West Newton, Mass., native, Idelson graduated from Connecticut College in 1986 with a degree in international economics, then spent three years in the Boston Red Sox’ public relations department. His duties included producing home games for the 110-station Red Sox Radio Network.
He joined the New York Yankees in 1989, serving as director of public relations and publicity during George Steinbrenner’s hiatus from the game. Before joining the Hall, he was assistant vice president and senior press officer for World Cup USA 1994.
Among his honors, he received the MLB’s Robert O. Fishel Award for Public Relations Excellence in 1994, and the 2006 Leadership and Service Award from Ithaca College’s Department of Sports Management and Media.
At the press briefing, Idelson – he and wife Erika have two children in Cooperstown schools, Aaron, 12, and Nicole, 8 – said in recent years there’s been “a concentrated effort” to give the Hall “a stronger place in the community,” and he intends to continue that pursuit.


By JIM KEVLIN


COOPERSTOWN

‘America’s Most Perfect Village is becoming rough around the edges,” Mayor Carol B. Waller said in delivering her 2008 State of the Village Speech to the Cooperstown Rotary Club Tuesday, April 15.
With the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Bassett Healthcare and the other attractions, a million people a year visit this community of 1,900 souls.
“All those footprints and tire tracks take a toll on our streets and sidewalks,” the mayor told 100 people packed into the front half of the main dining room of The Otesaga. “We have areas of the village that haven’t seen any repairs to sidewalks in 30 years.
“This impact to our infrastructure is important and expensive,” she continued. “We have a waste-water treatment plant that was built in 1967 and designed to used for 20 years. And we are now in our 41st year.”
But this was no speech of surrender. Quite the opposite.
With no help forthcoming from the County of Otsego, which reaps great revenue from the Cooperstown-fueled sales tax and bed tax but gives little back, Waller renewed her call to take the village’s case to Albany The mayor declared her 2025 Planning Commission, named at the village trustees’ reorganization meeting the week before, will go full speed ahead in an effort to convert the Village of Cooperstown into the City of Cooperstown.
A City of Cooperstown could levy its own sales tax, its own bed tax, its own entertainment tax – $1 a head on the 350,000 a year who go through the Hall of Fame turnstile, for instance.
The mayor’s husband, Bill, is chairing the 2025 Commission, and he said he is assembling a team – a lawyer, a financial expert, a lobbyist, businesspeople – to press the city-making campaign, and that this will be the first item on the commission’s agenda.
In spadework done so far, he said, has only dramatized the inequity between New York State’s cities and villages.
The Village of Hempstead on Long Island, for instance, has 51,000 citizens. The City of Tonawanda, outside Buffalo, has 16,000. And yet the city receives 10 times more aid than the village.
He recognizes the obstacles – the state has no financial incentive to create more cities, and thus have to expand its pool of aid – but believes the challenge facing Cooperstown, and the revered position it holds in American life, make it a special case.
Much of the mayor’s speech was praiseful – of John Cankar, who has kept the beleaguered sewer plant in tip-top condition, of Sewer Committee chairman Ted Peters, of the staff at village hall – but she kept coming back to the deterioration.
And people from elsewhere are unaware and astonished by the state of affairs, she said, reporting a recent meeting she had with Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in Oneonta.
“Senator Schumer was amazed that we, the main attraction, we, the shining jewel in the crown of the region, don’t get any tax income from all we do.”
If Cooperstown gets help, she said, “we may actually keep away the day that our sewer and water, our infrastructure, our streets and sidewalks are so bad that the visitors start to notice, are appalled and tell their fiends how bad Cooperstown has become.
“The infrastructure could crumble so much that businesses are affected, homeowners don’t want to do improvements or can’t and see the downward slide about to begin.
“The impact to this area would be terrible. If the region’s main attraction became run down, rough around the edges, it simply would not be Cooperstown anymore.
“While I say this cannot happen, I must remind everyone of areas that were overdeveloped out of control, lost their attraction, lost their way.”
Last fall’s study by Notre Dame architectural students observed the beginning of what Waller fears, she said.
When the report came in and she read parts of it, she told the gathering, “It was like a dagger in my heart.”
William Styron, Ralph Ellison, Anne Sexton and, now, Dana Spiotta.
The National Book Award finalist – for “Eat The Document,” her second novel, published in 2006 – will leave Cherry Valley this September for 10 months at the American Academy in Rome which, since 1896, has been giving fellowships to writers, architects and scholars to do their particular thing in the ancient center of arts and culture while interacting with other stimulating personalities and minds.
“We are going to come back,” Dana said emphatically the other day when the news got out about the fellowship. (She had gone down to New York City Thursday, April 10, for the official orientation.) “We consider Cherry Valley home.”
She and husband Clem Coleman operate the Rose & Kettle on Lancaster Street, and they plan to close the restaurant when this summer season is over and reopen it in time for the 2009 summer season.
For Dana, who spent a year in school in Italy when she was 12, this means “more writing time for me,” but also an opportunity to view American society from “a different perspective.”
Clem, who spent his junior year while at Temple at the Tyler School of the Arts in Rome, is likewise looking forward to the return. He and Dana last paid a visit to the Italian capital before buying the Rose & Kettle and moving to Otsego County from New York City eight years ago.
The idea is to put daughter Agnes, 4, in pre-school there in hopes she’ll be fluent in Italian by the time the family returns. (“She’ll be translating for me,” said her mother.)
The Rome Prize – specifically, Spiotta is receiving the Joseph Brodsky prize through the Drue Heinz Trust – range up to $24,000 and are awarded after a national competition.
The Rome academy – founded in 1894 and chartered by Congress in 1905 – selects two fellows from various disciplines, but the two literature prize winners are selected by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Annually, 30 fellowships in all are awarded.
Dana is working on a novel that, as is her practice, she declines to discuss until it is complete. (Her husband, Clem, had expressed some concern to her about gun catalogues coming to her in the mail, only later learning it was research for “Eat the Document,” based on a Kathy-Boudin-like scenario.)
The other literature prize winner next year will be Brad Kessler, who will be doing the final edit on his fourth novel, “The Goat Diaries,” and starting a new novel.





COOPERSTOWN

The Otesaga opens Tuesday, April 22, for its 99th year, but General Manager John Irvin and his executive team are already looking ahead a year – to the revered resort’s 100th birthday in 2009.
“We may be the only hotel – if not, one of a handful – open for 100 years and still under the original ownership,” said Irvin.
He holds up a copy of the newsletter from The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. It dates to 1887, but look, the Woodfill family has owned it only since 1933, a mere 75 years.
The Otesaga, built by Edward S. and Sterling C. Clark, is owned today by Jane Forbes Clark, granddaughter of Stephen C. Clark, younger brother to Edward and Sterling.
Irvin began brainstorming with his managers last fall on how to appropriately mark the upcoming landmark in hoteling history – “no idea is bad,” he told them – and they came up with an enticing menu.
Discussion quickly centered around an anniversary weekend a year from now, and the idea will be to harken back to the original opening to the degree possible.
The chefs are researching menus; that weekend, they will only be preparing dishes that would have been in vogue a century ago.
The hotel band will only play songs that were current in 1909.
The bar will serve only the most popular cocktails of that day.
But here’s the clincher: That weekend, The Otesaga will honor the rates on any bill presented from any year of the hotel’s history, Irvin said.
That’s going to be a real bargain for some people.
Irvin reached across his desk to publicity material from 1957: the Full American Plan – food and lodging – cost $14 a day. With a lake view, $20.
“We have guests who have been coming here for 30, 35 years,” said the general manager, so there’s no doubt will be many who will be able to capitalize on the offer, which is the intent. “These guests are like family.”
The Otesaga’s New York City public relations firm, Nancy J. Friedman Public Relations, which specializes in luxury hotels, is developing a plan to get the word out. We should start seeing stories about the upcoming anniversary pop up in the national press in the months ahead.
Be assured this is not the full extent of the celebration.
Irvin and his staff, in consultation with the owner, are still hatching ideas.
A New York champagne has been ordered in special bottles etched with a specially designed logo. The hotel’s California vineyard will be using labels with the special logo.
(Naturally, all stationery and printed matter will be reprinted with the anniversary insignia as well.)
The New York Press Association, the 600-weekly professional organization, was the first organization to hold a conference at The Otesaga. And it is planning its fall conference in 2009 on the shores of Glimmerglass.
While much has changed in the world at large, much has not inside The Otesaga.
Irvin reaches across to the resort’s twice-yearly newsletter to guests. The cover is two juxtaposed photos of the ballroom; the two versions, 10 decades apart, are almost identical.
But some things have changed, for the better.
Since Jane Clark took over in the mid-’90s, tens of millions have been spent bringing what had been a bit of an aging lady up to date.
All the rooms were redone. There is air-conditioning throughout. The latest in safety features – sprinklers, alarms and the like – are in place throughout.
You may remember a few years back when the hotel was enclosed in plastic: The building was being stripped down to bare wood for the first time since its completion.
The same, only better.

Labels: Archives

By JIM KEVLIN


COOPERSTOWN

Tensions between Mayor Carol B. Waller and Village Justice Enid Hinkes burst to the surface during the village board’s reorganizational meeting Wednesday evening, April 9.
The mayor ordered the justice from the village board room and, when Hinkes stood her ground, directed Police Chief Diana Nicols to remove her.
“I don’t want to call the officer to escort you out,” the chief said gingerly as she stood between Hinkes and the village board and edged her toward the hall.
The issue of the evening was the reappointment of Acting Village Justice Henry Fernandez.
The mayor included Fernandez’ name on a lengthy list of appointments to trustees’ committees that was quickly recited, then unanimously approved by the trustees without any opportunity for discussion.
Hinkes, who was among the handful of audience members, apparently had hoped to have her say before the vote, but when she stood up Waller cut her off.
Waller said the matter was better discussed in executive session, but Hinkes insisted on being heard.
When the justice failed to respond to the mayor’s directive, Waller ordered Nicols to intervene.
Both elected officials were flushed and clearly rattled by the confrontation.
Questioned in her adjoining office, Hinkes said she has been involved in the selection of the previous acting justice, James Kelly, who died in January, and the two had maintained an amicable working relationship.
She said she had prepared and distributed a memo on the situation to the mayor and village trustees before the meeting, and had expected to have the opportunity to discuss the appointment before the vote.
Asked about the episode later that evening, Fernandez, an attorney, said, “I’m very disappointed in Justice Hinkes’ behavior.”
“I’m very, very supportive of the mayor and village trustees and what they are trying to accomplish,” which he said was “an efficient and cooperative relationship” between the justice court, the village and the police department.
“This is not about me,” he said. He referred any further questions to Mayor Waller or Village Attorney John Lambert.
The mayor and the village justice have been at odds for some time now, a dynamic that last broke into the open two years ago, when the village requested a state audit of the justice accounts.
Hinkes, a Democrat, has twice defeated Republican candidates, first Ronald Streek in 2003, then Gary Kuch in 2006.
After the reorganizational meeting was completed, the mayor spoke briefly before the board went into executive session to discuss the matter.
Village policy renewed that very evening required such matters to be discussed in private, she said.
The police chief and Public Works Superintendent Brian Clancy remained in the executive session, but Hinkes was required to remain in the hall.


By JIM KEVLIN


COOPERSTOWN

‘They say it’s a thankless job,” said Paul Kuhn a few days after his term as village trustee expired. “It’s not.”
Nine people will criticize you, but the 10th will expressed thanks for a step taken with the goal of creating a better community.
“That’s what keeps you going,” he said.
For a few days, it was the first time in 12 years that Kuhn was not serving in a village post. For most of that time, they were influential ones. After just two years on the Planning Board, he was elevated to chairman. In 2001, he was elected to a three-year term on the village board, and immediately assumed a central role, and was reelected three years later.
By the time he decided to step aside, he was chairing virtually all the trustees’ most significant committees: Police, Watershed, Streets & Buildings, Finance and Justice Court.
As it turned out, his retirement turned to be only a 55-hour hiatus. His replacement, Neil Weiller, was sworn in at 12 noon Monday, April 7; Wednesday evening, Mayor Carol B. Waller appointed Kuhn to continue to chair the Watershed Committee, which is entering its final phase in ensuring septic systems on several hundred camps are not leaking into Otsego Lake.
Still, compared to Kuhn’s central role on two key issues in his last year as trustee – loading zones and paid parking, which he considers central to his legacy – that final chairmanship represents a relatively quiet bridge back into private life, a bridge paved with praise.
Compared to the many trustees he has seen come and go over the years, former Mayor Wendell Tripp said Kuhn “was one of the trustees who contributed most to the ongoing life of the village.” Tripp said he appointed Kuhn to the Planning Board in 1995 because of his knowledge, intelligence and impartiality.
Village GOP Chair Bill Waller – it took him twice to convince Kuhn to run for trustee – said “the community is in the very forefront of his mind.” Kuhn’s love of the village, his work ethic and skills developed in a 30-year business career – he was an executive with Cigna, the Philadelphia-based insurance concern – made him an attractive candidate, Waller said.
Jeff Foster, proprietor of Legends Are Forever who jousted with Kuhn on a number of downtown issues, said he discovered in recent months that the village trustee was, in fact, listening to varied inputs and adjusting to take them into account.
“I’m sad to see him go,” Foster said. “Even though I didn’t always agree with him, I liked him.”
Now past 70, Kuhn’s relationship with Cooperstown goes back to when, at age 7, his father and mother, teachers in Long Island during the winter, took counseling jobs at Camp Chenango, one of six private camps operating on Otsego Lake in the 1940s. (Only one remains.)
“This wonderful lake. The fresh air. The beautiful hillsides. It’s a place you just fall head over heels in love with,” he said during an interview in the lobby of The Otesaga after a recent Rotary Club meeting. (He is assuming the presidency of the local Rotary this summer.)
He graduated from Chaminade High School, run by the Marianist fathers in Glen Cove, then from Villanova, Class of 1960, with a mechanical engineering degree.
He spent three years in Army Intelligence, then joined Cigna, applying his engineering knowledge to ensuring the insurability of construction projects. He raised three children in the Philadelphia suburbs, but never forgot Glimmerglass’ lure.
In the 1980s, married to Mary Margaret, the couple began weekending at The Inn at Cooperstown about the time Mike Jerome assumed ownership. In fact, the Kuhns were Jerome’s first repeat customers.
After one “nice long weekend” in the fall, as they were packing the car to go home, Mary Margaret said, “Wouldn’t it be nice if, some day, we didn’t have to go home?”
That tilted the balance, and the Kuhns began to house-hunt, an effort limited by Mrs. Kuhn’s insistence that they buy only a brick or mortar home.
One evening they were at The Peppermill. Only one other table was occupied, and fellow patron Mabel Atwell engaged them in conversation.
“You’ve been spending too much time on the Northeast Extension,” she said after hearing their story. “Why don’t you move here?”
They explained the brick or mortar requirement, and she replied, “You haven’t looked at my house.”
After dinner, the Kuhns drove by 51 Chestnut. It was brick. They were hooked. (Since, they have meticulously restored the historic detailing of the brick Victorian home.)
Moving here, Paul soon found himself drawn into volunteer work at St. Mary’s “Our Lady of The Lake” parish and Bassett Hospital, and making brooms at The Farmers’ Museum.
No sooner had the couple settled in than work began on Cooperstown Dreams Park in Hartwick Seminary. Kuhn said he got an early inkling of what was to come when he was awakened by 50 people milling around outside his window in the middle of the night; it turned out to be a contingent of Dreams Park parents from Kentucky waiting for a pizza delivery.
As it happens, one of the early issues Kuhn struggled with on the Planning Board was the evolution of B&Bs in the wake of Dreams Park’s growth: He helped craft regulations, controversial with some, that required owners to live in their B&B, and setting safety standards and parking requirements.
On the village board, he believes his two greatest contributions were made in the last year, as chairman of the Police Committee, his favorite chairmanship.
First, concerned that the 50 trucks and semis that delivered to Main Street weekly were double-parking and endangering public safety, he developed new loading zones – in front of the CVS and on Pioneer Street. Then, after observing their use, the time limits were adjusted so the spaces could be used for general parking in the off hours.
“It was not a popular measure in the minds of everyone, but it was in the minds of many,” he said, adding emphatically and characteristically, “It was something that had to be done.”
Second was paid parking, which his Police Committee proposed for the Doubleday Field parking lot and Main and Pioneer streets. Despite public resistance that peaked at a packed, 300-citizen meeting at CCS’ Sterling Auditorium in November, Kuhn – along with Trustees Jeff Katz, Grace Kull, Lynn Mebust – adopted the law that authorizes the village trustees to implement paid parking. A scaled-back pilot project is now in the works for the Doubleday lot.
“You have a place (Cooperstown) that is being used a lot more than was anticipated,” he said. “...The wear and tear on just about everything that is in the village is scarey.”
If the full $600,000 anticipated from the full paid-parking plan is realized, he said, it would “pay for a large bond” – $5 million was anticipated – “to fix this village.”
Kuhn picks up on that theme in looking ahead: Finances are the biggest challenge facing the village.
He said “relationships” – between the village and the Town of Otsego, the county and the state – have to be reexamined. For instance, he said, the village shoulders the funding of the Village Library of Cooperstown with little help of surrounding towns, even though townsfolk are significant users of the library; likewise, the fire department.
Matters can’t continue as they have, he said.
“If the political environment is such that we can’t be a city” – a measure Bill Waller and a committee are exploring – “then we need to get some help from the county. Or we have to get some relief from Albany.”
Perhaps the General Assembly can authorize Cooperstown to enact its own bed tax, perhaps an entertainment tax that would allow a $1 levy on Hall of Fame tickets.
His conclusion: “Without this, the goose that lays the golden eggs is going to get tarnished.”
Looking ahead – in addition to his continuing Watershed Committee duties – he plans to continue his downtown walking-tour business – you can see him most summer days dressed as Judge William Cooper must have. He is a eucharistic minister for St. Mary’s, administering communion once a week to Bassett Hospital patients.
And he will continue his volunteering at The Farmers’ Museum – you may run into him portraying the innkeeper at the Bump Tavern.



COOPERSTOWN

In response to lawmakers’ concerns about the Hall of Fame Game cancellation, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig has sent a "form-letter response" that savethefamegame.com creator Kristian Connolly has labelled "appalling."
Connolly, a Cooperstown native now working in Washington, D.C., obtained copies of the letters sent to U.S. Reps. Michael Arcuri and Maurice Hinchey and U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton. Conceivably, similar letters may have been sent to U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, state Sen. Jim Seward, R-Milford, and other politicians who expressed concern at the MLB move.
"Commissioner Selig’s identical, form-letter response to members of Congress is stunning in its refusal to directly address the lawmakers’ concerns, and in the way it sweeps the central issue under the rug in favor of self-congratulating or hollow statements,” Connolly declared.
“It’s insulting to the senators and representatives that have expressed their desire to see the tradition continue, and insulting to baseball fans across the globe.
“The commissioner’s obvious disregard for his responsibility as the steward of America’s national pastime – not national industry – is appalling, as is his clear lack of caring about the sport’s fans – unless it involves how they can increase the bottom line. For all intents and purposes, Commissioner Selig should have used the word ‘customers’ rather than ‘fans’ or ‘visitors’ in his response, since it is unmistakable from his words that he views those of us who care about baseball – its past, present and future – only as sources of revenue.
“Furthermore, I am in complete and utter disbelief that the commissioner of baseball believes that people need to be made ‘more aware of the Hall of Fame and its importance.’ As someone who grew up in Cooperstown and has traveled all over the country and met many different people – baseball fans and otherwise – I feel confident that there is not a single village in America that is more well known than Cooperstown, and baseball and the Hall of Fame are the main reasons why. For some, Cooperstown and the Hall of Fame are symbols. For others, they’re a goal. For others still, they’re the centerpiece of debate. And for many, Cooperstown and the Hall of Fame are destinations held in such high esteem that people spend months, years, or even a lifetime dreaming about and planning for a trip to visit them.”



COOPERSTOWN

It may be an all-Cooperstown race for Otsego County judge this November to fill the vacancy created by Judge Michael V. Coccoma’s election to the state Supreme Court last November.
Village Attorney John Lambert, 39, outstripped four other lawyers in winning the county Republican Committee’s endorsement on Monday, April 7. Richard Harlem, an Oneonta lawyer, received 51 votes to Lambert’s 57, and that could result in a GOP primary in September.
Meanwhile, Cooperstown’s Jill Ghaleb, 43, who has been practicing family law primarily, has been interviewed by the Democratic County Committee.







By JIM KEVLIN


COOPERSTOWN

When Charles Turi landed in Dubai in January after a 13-hour flight, his son Richard was waiting for him.
As they – counting Cici, Richie’s wife, who had accompanied her father-in-law from New York – flew on to Doha, the capital of Qatar, the son painted a grim picture of what awaited them.
Sand, tents, a primitive lifestyle.
“Rich was always a comedian,” said Charlie, who most of us recognize as that 80-something gentleman who, wearing a Yankees cap, can be seen most summer days sitting on a bench in Pioneer Park.
Yes, there were camels, but what followed were three months living in the lap of luxury in one of the world’s richest nations.
The senior Turi got his first inkling of what was to come when limo picked them up at Doha International Airport. When the limo pulled up to a luxury hotel, he figured his son’s humorous streak was at play.
“This is where we’re living,” the son told his dad.
His father – he has four other sons and two daughters – knew that Richie, who is 54, an architect with a Cornell degree and decades of experience in New York, was a key architect in Qatar’s development plans – he’s working right now on building housing in the desert for 45,000 people.
But, like most people who haven’t seen it, Charlie had a hard time visualizing what’s going on.
For the tiny emirate, recognizing its vast oil reserves will soon be on the wane, is implementing a $15 billion Tourism Master Plan.
The International Herald Tribune calls it “an aggressive construction and marketing strategy intended to launch the nation onto the world stage. Unveiled with fanfare in 2004, the scheme aims to build and attract top hotels; to create museums and theme parks; and to vastly expand the national airline. Its goal is to triple annual tourist arrivals, to 1.4 million, by 2008.”
Read anything about Doha these days, and it includes many superlatives. Charlie was amazed by the hotels that commanded thousands of dollars a night for their rooms, the construction cranes everywhere, and the swank – and affordable – shopping malls. “I got myself a whole new wardrobe for $200,” he said. Cigarettes, almost $50 a carton here, were $11 a carton there.
However, it was the warmth of the people he met that impressed him most.
One night – “we were out to dinner about every other night” – Richie, Cici and Charlie arrived early at the high-end Ramada for dinner. They sat in the lobby, sipping coffee, when the head waiter came over and told them another guest had overheard them speaking English and wanted them to join him.
Come to find out, the man was owner of one of Qatar’s biggest trucking firms. Since Charles Turi had experience in the trucking business around metropolitan New York, the two found they had plenty to talk about.
A duo – a pianist and violinist – were playing in the corner. His host asked Charlie to name his favorite song: Edith Piaf’s “La Vie En Rose.” Soon, the duo were performing it to Charlie’s complete satisfaction. And every time he revisited the Ramada to confer