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Classic Puts Smiles On 7,069 Fans’ Faces
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Saturday, June 20, 2009
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HoF Game Substitute Meets Wide Acclaim
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
 ‘A meaningless exhibition.” That’s what Philadelphia Daily News sportwriter Tom Mahon called the OLD Hall of Fame Game, which ended in 2007 after a 70-year run.
“Yesterday’s game,” Mahon wrote, referring to the NEW “Hall of Fame Classic” Sunday, June 21, in Doubleday Field, “... was far more entertaining.”
“This was a baseball game for the ages,” Canadian Press’ John Kekis gooed, “from 90-year-old Bob Feller to 11-year-old Zach D’Errici,” a boy from Schenectady who former Chicago White Sox Steve Lyons, playing shortstop, pulled out of the stands, put onto his shoulders and carried out to his station by second base.
The Albany Times Union headline: “A New Father’s Day Classic.”
The first tip, however, that the National Baseball Hall of Fame is onto something, was the crowd along Main Street during the pre-game parade: It was five, six, even – in front of the former Smalley’s movie house – seven rows deep with eager spectators.
Even Hall of Fame President Jeff Idelson, whose job – in part – is to praise the smooth but look for wrinkles, expressed satisfaction that, just perhaps, his team devised a recipe that turned lemons into lemonade.
“We achieved what our objective was,” he said in an interview a couple days after the final out, “a weekend of community activity tied to our mission, while also providing a good start to the summer in Cooperstown.”
The first Hall of Fame Classic featured five Hall of Famers – crowd-favorite Bob Feller, who at 90 is the third oldest athlete with a plaque in 25 Main, and the one with the longest tenure (47 years) – and 25 former Major Leaguers.
The players were divided into the Wagners (after Honus Wagner) and the Collinses (after Eddie Collins), and the former team did win, 5-4, although the score was beside the point.
The final count at Doubleday Field was 7,069, not the 10,000-capacity crowd achieved annually at the traditional Hall of Fame Game, but enough of a response to continue to develop the Classic concept.
The one problem, if it was one, was a problem of success: A line looped back and forth in front of Doubleday for free autographs, and hundreds were still in line – and groaned – when it was announced that the signings were done, even though the 45-minute session went well over an hour.
“For a town that is steeped in nostalgia,” said Idelson, “a weekend like this is a no brainer.”
Smiling faces were the order of the day, although the fans gave a variety of reasons for being here.
“I’m a baseball nut,” said Bill Ashton of Elmira. “I love baseball.”
Jim LeFevre and Joe Deucker from Halfmoon, waiting in the autograph line, said they had visited the Hall a few months ago, had become members and learned of the Classic that way. It seemed like a natural.
(Idelson said one of the Hall’s marketing strategies is to convert one-time visitors to members. The :”conversion rate,” he said, has been very promising, although for now membership has remained about 30,000.)
Dan Gregory of Burlington Flats used a word, “intergenerational,” which captured a sentiment that found common expression.
He was part of a three-generation group of attendees: wife Jackie and the Buelow family from Syracuse – the Gregorys’ daughter, son-in-law and their children.
Local businesspeople gave mixed, but mostly positive, reviews.
Ted Hargrove, proprietor of TJ’s & The Home Place Restaurant, who tracks his business week to week over years before, said patronage was about two-thirds of the same 2007 weekend.
“The weekend was good,” he said nonetheless. “Everybody enjoyed it ... I think it could grow bigger than the regular game.”
At the Riverwood gift store, Rick Gibbon, former Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce president, called Saturday “OK,” but “Sunday emptied out,” perhaps due to the combination of the Classic and the CCS high school graduation that afternoon on The Fenimore Art Museum’s lawn.
Similarly, Steve Okarski, proprietor of Howard Johnson’s in Hartwick Seminary, said his occupancy rate was up over the weekend before, but slightly down – 15 rooms – from the year before.
“We ran stronger last year, same weekend, than we did this year,” he said. “But that’s not to say the Hall of Fame Classic didn’t have a bump. We could have been down even more.”
One of the things that most energized Idelson, he said, was that “it was a love affair at both ends” – the players and the fans were glad to be here.
“I don’t think that was the case in the Hall of Fame Game,” where teams were scheduled to show up, like it or not.
The event, co-organized by the Hall of Fame and the Major League Players Alumni Association, meant the players showed up voluntarily, and they enjoyed the parade and being back in the limelight, even for an afternoon, the HoF president said.
The MLB had run the Hall of Fame Game, but the Hall being in the driver’s seat on this one allowed it to line up a sponsor, Ford Motor Co., a positive sign in an economy where such sponsorships are drying up, Idelson said.Labels: 06-26-09, Front Page, Hall of Fame Classic |
posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 2:29 PM   |
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Former Village Hall Leased By Cherry Valley Artworks
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By LAURA COX
CHERRY VALLEY
Three years in the making, Cherry Valley Artworks is moving into the former village hall, the circa 1820s landmark stone structure on Main Street that contains a former theater on the second floor.
“Our mission is to revitalize the community through the arts,” said Board President Patti Erway-Engel, of Cherry Valley, during a tour of the building Wednesday, June 24 – the keys had just been handed over.
With the signing of this contract, Artworks has not only found a headquarters, but they will also be helping to sustain a building that holds a lot of local history and to make it again a place for community gatherings.
Two rooms previously used for village offices in the front of the building will become multi-purpose space, said Erway-Engle.
The plan is to remove the current drop ceiling and reveal the old tin one underneath. Some of the walls in that space are “arbitrary” and may be removed to open up the space.
When complete, the space could be used for galleries, classes, offices and whatever else.
The second level is currently occupied by the American legion and will continue to be so.
The Star Theater is one of the most exciting aspects of the undertaking, Patti said.
Used for storage since the 1950s, it used to be the center of village life, said Artworks Director Jane Sapinsky: “It contained movies, life shows, music, dances and more. Everyone I’ve spoken to who lived here when it was operating has wonderful memories of the good times they shared with their neighbors.”
Artworks wants to bring this back, but a lot of work will have to go into it.
A new curtain system for the stage will have to be acquired and the old projection room updated with modern sound and lighting equipment.
A handicap ramp will be built to access the theater.Labels: 06-26-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 2:28 PM |
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Cooperstown and Around
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BOCES Hires CV-S’ Savin For Top Job
Nick Savin, Cherry Valley-Springfield Central school superintendent for the past six years, has accepted the top executive position at the Otsego Northern Catskills BOCES.
The BOCES board voted on Monday, June 22, to offer him the position, and he accepted.
Based in Stamford – Savin was previously the local school superintendent – BOCES provides cooperative programs to 10 school districts in Otsego and Delaware counties.
HISTORY MADE: The state Bar Association’s House of Delegates, meeting June 20, at The Otesaga, adopted a resolution supporting giving same-sex couples the right to marry.
MOVING FIELD: 22 people showed up Wednesday, June 17, at Village Hall to question plans to move Cooperstown Youth Baseball’s Beanie Ainslie Field to make way for the prospective Gateway project. No decision was made.
ENGLAND TRIP: The Cooperstown Rotary Club is looking for “four outstanding young professionals” for a month-long Group Study Exchange in northern England this September and October. Call Mike Jerome at (607) 547-2012 by July 5.
CONSERVATIVE NOD: Ed Keator, the Republican candidate for county treasurer, has also been endorsed by the Conservative Party.Labels: 06-26-09, Cooperstown and Around, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 2:28 PM |
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Coccoma Oversees All 644 Upstate Judges
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Sunday, June 14, 2009
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Year Into Job, Cooperstown Jurist Appointed To Job With Statewide Administrative Duties
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
You wouldn’t suspect this seeing him out for a run on Route 33 or riding with the Cooperstown Ambulance Squad.
But, arguably, Michael V. Coccoma has become the highest ranked jurist in Otsego County in more than 150 years, since U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Nelson of Cooperstown.
Not even a year into his new job – state Supreme Court judge in the Sixth Judicial District – Coccoma has been appointed deputy chief administrative judge for courts outside New York City, responsible for 664 judges from Long Island to Buffalo, 57 counties in all.
On the administrative side of the state’s justice system, he is ranked behind only Chief Administrative Judge Ann Pfau and her boss, Jonathan Lippman, the chief judge of the State of New York.
In an interview Monday, June 15, in his Cooperstown chambers – he was due at his Albany office the next morning, and the previous Wednesday had been in Buffalo and Thursday in Rochester – Coccoma called his new job “a challenging opportunity.”
In addition to continuing to serve on the bench – he had presided over a matrimonial case earlier that day – he will now be involved in personnel, facilities, security and policy decisions, and more, for half of 120,000 people in the state court system.
His goal, he said, is “to manage the courts so the public has access to courts and the redress of grievances.”
The opportunity arose when state Supreme Court Judge Jan Plumadore of Franklin County retired.
Pfau and Lippman initiated an interview process. Coccoma heard about it. It sounded interesting. He applied, was interviewed, and was selected May 27.
In announcing the appointment, Pfau said the judge is “widely recognized as an outstanding and extremely hard-working jurist who has made important contributions to the administration of justice in the Sixth Judicial District.”
While he has been an elected Supreme Court judge only since last November, Coccoma pointed out that he had been an acting Supreme Court judge since 2001, while he continued to serve as county and family court judge for Otsego County.Labels: 06-19-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 7:36 AM |
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$400,000 Question Still Lacks Answer
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Trustees Ask For End-Of-Year Data
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
So far, the promised $400,000 answer to the $400,000 question has yet to surface.
Village Treasurer Mary Ann Henderson gave her explanation of how that amount of money – about a third of the tax levy – showed up in the 11th hour of 2009-10 budget deliberations.
But for at least four of the trustees – the village board was meeting for the first time as a Long-Term Planning Committee Thursday, June 10 – the explanation only raised new questions.
Trustee Eric Hage said he and others thought the $400,000 was revenues that hadn’t been counted in, but now it seems that money came from savings, but no one’s sure where.
While it looks like $120,000 in revenues hadn’t been accounted for, Hage said, actually “the expense side is the big number – $330,000. Where are those savings coming from?”
At the village board’s monthly meeting Monday, June 15, he asked Deputy Mayor Jeff Katz,
chair of the Finance Committee, to provide a year-end budget reconciliation by next month’s meeting.
Those numbers, as of the end of the fiscal year, May 31, would show the final surplus, and allow trustees to go through the budget line by line to determine where money was and wasn’t spent.
Trustee Joe Booan – he and Trustees Hage, Willis Monie and Neil Weiller form an emerging majority – said he plans to meet with Henderson in the next few weeks to get a fuller understanding of how the budget is put together and tracked.
Principal of the Milford BOCES, Booan said he can show her the program the school uses, which spits out a satisfactory one-page budget snapshot.
“Should we be looking at software that gives us something easier to understand?” he asked.
In her briefing, Henderson said the final surplus for the year was $727,806, or $488,000 more than the $239,000 trustees thought they were working with in budget deliberations.
The treasurer usually updates budget figures at the beginning of each month, she said, and did so March 1, but then failed to do so until near the end of April, when the discrepancy surfaced.
Mayor Carol B. Waller and Katz have said they were not surprised when that happened.
“Carol and Jeff felt they had heard the numbers,” Booan said in an interview. “But I didn’t hear it, I don’t think Eric did. I don’t think the others (Monie and Weiller) did.”
For her part, the mayor, in response to a press query, said she was “busy with paperwork” and unable to discuss the matter.
“That information is there,”” Katz said of the current system, but added: “I think, moving forward, there might be – and probably will be – ways for the surplus number to be more highlighted in the monthly report.”
For now, he said the year-end reconciliation Hage reported should allow the trustees to determine where village finances stand.
In an interview, Hage said at first it was thought that uncounted money – a $100,000 county allocation, $56,000 in 2008 parking revenues, $100,000 in state CHIPS money for highway repair – had created the $400,000.
That money had come in in 2008-09, but had not been expected or budgeted.
However, he said, it turns out that only $120,000 of the $400,000 was such uncounted revenues – just the county money and the parking fees.
The latest surprise is that $330,000 was allocated and unspent, and what happened there will now have to be determined.Labels: 06-19-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 7:33 AM |
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Swine Flu Confirmed In 8 At CCS
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Plus 7 At Morris, 2 At OHS
By LAURA COX
COOPERSTOWN
At press time, it had been confirmed that eight Cooperstown Central School students had been stricken by the Swine Flu virus, and a ninth may be on the list by the time you read this.
That news followed CCS nurse Jane Hanson’s decision Monday, June 15, the last day of classes for the high and middle school, to send home a “couple of dozen” students with flu-like symptoms.
The Cooperstown outbreak followed the confirmation of seven cases at Morris Central School and two at Oneonta High School. Countywide, 18 cases had been reported; all but one were children and adolescents.
A letter sent home with students that day alerted families to the increase in absences and instructed parents to keep home any child with a fever of 100 or above and other flu symptoms – chills, headaches, sore throat, coughs – for seven days or 24 hours after symptoms subside, whichever is longer.
So many middle school students had been taken out of classes – about half, said Superintendent of Schools Mary Jo McPhail on Wednesday, June 17 – that middle school graduation was delayed from that evening until next Wednesday, the 24th.
High school graduation, set for 1:30 p.m. Sunday, June 21, will go on as scheduled. Any seniors exhibited symptoms being asked to refrain from attending and inviting those students to a small alternate ceremony at the July Board of Education meeting.
“Well, as you can expect, “ McPhail said, “something like this is not welcome at anytime – for children to be ill – but if it had to happen this was probably a better time in that it is the end of the school year.”
Significantly fewer children were absent from the high school than the middle school and the students who have been confirmed to have H1N1 influenza – the official designation of the Swine Flu virus – are at home and not attending school.
At the direction of the county Department of Health, another letter was to be sent home with students on Thursday, June 18, informing families about the confirmed cases and listing precautions.
While this strain of flu is new and has been deemed a pandemic, Cynthia Moore, the county’s public health emergency preparedness coordinator, said the term pandemic refers to geography not severity.
“The illness to date has been mild and typical of what we see for influenza,” she said.
If sick, stay home from work or school, Moore said, to help contain the disease. Sick individuals can spread the disease for seven days and, since no one is immune to this new strain, she repeated the quarantine of seven days minimum 24 hours after symptoms subside, whichever is longer.
Any addition information will be posted at www.coopertowncs.org and www.otsegocounty.com or by calling (607) 547-4230.Labels: 06-19-09, Front Page, Swine Flu |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 7:32 AM |
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1st Gas Well To Be Drilled On Crumhorn
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Saturday, June 13, 2009
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Word was received this week that Gastem, the Montreal-based drilling company, has received a permit to drive a vertical natural-gas shaft on Crumhorn Mountin in the Town of Maryland.
Drilling opponents said they are fearful that, once the state revises its Environmental Impact Statement governing horizontal drilling – hydrofracing – such vertical wells can be easily converted.Labels: 06-19-09, Front Page, Natural Gas Drilling |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 7:35 AM |
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Nancy Angelia (Rezen) Erway 1944-2009
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Saturday, June 6, 2009
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‘(She) Always Makes You Feel Like You’re Very Special’
CHERRY VALLEY
 Whenever you ran into Nancy Erway, didn’t her grin make you feel like you were the one person in the world she was most interested in seeing at precisely that moment?
“Nancy always makes you feel like you’re very special, and like you’re the only person there,” said Barbara Sepp, Roseboom Historical Society president in 2007 at the time Nancy was presented with the society’s “Person Who Makes A Difference Award. “She gives you her full attention.”
Asked about this quality, Nancy replied, “I love people. I can give back love because they give so much to me.”
And so it is that many people who Nancy loved and loved her back will be gathering at 2 p.m. this Sunday, June 14, at the Old School gym in Cherry Valley, to remember their friend, Nancy Angelia (Rezen) Erway, whose five-year battle with cancer ended Friday, June 5, 2009, at her home in Middlefield.
Nancy, 65, was born Jan. 5, 1944 in Cooperstown, the daughter of J. Victor and D. Angelina (Knapp) Rezen, and lived in Otsego County all her life.
She began school in Middlefield’s two-room schoolhouse, graduated from Cherry Valley High School in 1961.
After receiving her R.N. from Orange County Community College, she worked at Bassett Hospital, then with the Otsego County Public Health Department. As a nurse/social worker, she helped develop the Otsego County Head Start program.
Nancy married Harold Erway in 1963 in Cooperstown. Besides raising three children of her own, she mentored several area teenagers and was a legal guardian for Betty Gross at Springbrook.
Nancy’s fascination with “pre used” and antique items was evidenced by her love of auctions, her famous annual lawn sales and her inventory of “junk” (her word) at various locations. About 25 years ago, she bought and revitalized the Western Frontier building in Cherry Valley, opening Nancy’s Old and New and renting out four apartments above.
Later she added Memories on Main Street, a 1950s Elvis-based eatery – “He had a great voice,” she told an interviewer once. “A million of us fell in love with him. I just stayed with it.” – which provided affordable used household items, good food and a sociable gathering place until six months ago.
As a long time member of the Cherry Valley school board, Nancy was a primary force of the building of the Cherry Valley-Springfield School in 1990. She was also on the board that set up the Cherry Valley Health Center and the Cherry Valley Youth Center.
As a member and president of the Cherry Valley Chamber of Commerce for 20-plus years, she was a leader in revitalizing the Village of Cherry Valley , bringing in music, art, festivities, business and local pride.
Nancy’s commitment to and extraordinary effort for the village was recognized by the dedication of a gazebo in her honor.
“Nancy helped and nurtured innumerable people, never judging, just advising,” said the obituary prepared by her family. “She was well known for her ready smile, her generous and caring ways, her acceptance of people’s unique personalities and her upbeat character – as well as her love for Elvis.
Survivors include her husband, Harold; children Victor and Janet Erway of Fly Creek, Patti and Troy Engel of Cherry Valley, Eric and Christine Erway of Roseboom; grandchildren Emeilya and Hailey Erway of Roseboom, and Carley and Conrad Erway of Fly Creek, and a sister, Susan Vicki Rezen of Leesburg, Fla.
Nancy was predeceased by an infant son.
Rev. Alan Miller will officiate at Sunday’s service. A celebration of Nancy’s life will follow until 6 p.m. at the Old School Cafe.
In lieu of flowers, contributions in Nancy’s memory may be made to the Nancy Erway Scholarship fund for a senior at Cherry Valley-Springfield School who is going into nursing. Checks should be made out to Harold Erway FBO Nancy Erway’s Scholarship Fund and sent to Box 201 , Cherry Valley, NY 13320.
Arrangements were entrusted to the Ottman Funeral Home.Labels: 06-12-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 7:21 AM |
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First Obama Stimulus Arrives
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Village of Richfield Springs Wins $5.4 Million For Sewer Repair
By JIM KEVLIN
RICHFIELD SPRINGS
The first piece of President Obama’s stimulus package has arrived in Otsego County.
The Village of Richfield Springs, struggling under a state-imposed development moratorium because of its failing sewage-treatment plant, received word a $5.4 million grant through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is headed its way to stem “I and I” – inflow and infiltration – and rewire and refurbish the 1972 plant on Bloomfield Drive, south of the village.
“Inflow and infiltration” is caused by cracks in the village’s century-plus-old clay sewers, resulting in more water flowing through the plant than it can handle.
“It’s a major plus,” said Village Mayor John Garbera.
“It’s excellent,” added Richfield Town Supervisor Wayne King. “It’s excellent for the lake, the town, the village, the whole community.”
Of the total, $4 million is an outright grant. Another $1.4 million is a 30-year, interest-free loan that would normally be a community’s share, paid up front.
“This project will mean clean water for residents and important infrastructure upgrades that will help attract businesses to Otsego County,” said state Sen. Jim Seward, who made the announcement. “Construction jobs associated with this project will also provide an immediate boost to the local economy.”
Garbera said Seward, state Rep. Bill Magee, D-Nelson, and Majority Leader Sheldon Silver had taken the village’s case directly to the Governor’s Office. In all, $130 million was distributed to 22 communities statewide in this round.
The construction moratorium, imposed under a “consent order” between the village and the state Department of Enviornmental Conservation, was problematic as recently as last year, when Ballparks of Cooperstown Inc., in partnership with Cal Ripken, was considering a Wrigley-Field-like facility for youth baseball tournaments just east of the village.
While Ballparks may have been shelved due the economy, nonetheless the village would have been unable to realize any revenues from additional sewer fees.
Carolyn Lewis, the county’s economic developer, said stick-with-it-ness accounts in part for the village’s success, so “it’s been on the radar” of the state Environmental Facilities Corp.
“It means they are able to upgrade their capacity and infrastructure without passing the cost on to the residents,” said Lewis, whose office had been looking to develop a small business park in the village’s vicinity. “And it allows any future expansion to go through without any regulatory issue.
“Obviously,” she concluded, “it makes any economic development initiative easier.”
Work will start next spring.Labels: 06-12-09, Front Page, Richfield Springs |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 7:17 AM |
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Where Did They Find This Guy?
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CCS Grad, Formerly With World Bank, Runs For Treasurer
By JIM KEVLIIN
COOPERSTOWN
It’s hasn’t been a good time lately for treasurers of public entities around here.
Republican Myrna Thayne has been embattled as Otsego County treasurer since a decimal-point slipup turned an anticipated 2.5 percent tax increase into 25 percent one.
Currently, the Village of Cooperstown is trying to figure out where $400,000 it didn’t know it had came from.
Then who walks in the door but Dan Crowell of Phoenix Mills by way of CCS, the London School of Economics and the World Bank.
What’s more, he’s an expert in Microsoft Dynamics, “Quickbooks on steroids.”
His software company, Total Impact Accounting, specializes in adapting the program for firms grossing between $10 million and $250 milllion.
AND, it’s the same program used in Otsego County, the same program that got Thayne into trouble. (The county simply failed to run a test on the newly installed system, Crowell explained.)
AND, he wants to run for county treasurer in this fall’s election.
AND, he had just gotten the endorsement of the Otsego County Democratic Committee to do so.
“I’m trying to add substance to the debate,” he said.
Could there be a better time for a Democrat to run for county treasurer?
Thayne, who has been sparring with the GOP powers that be on the county board, failed to gain the county Republican Committee’s nomination in May. Instead, the committee endorsed a CPA in her office, Ed Keator Jr. of West Oneonta, who has since resigned.
Likely, Thayne will challenge Keator in a September Republican primary for the $62,000 job, and could even run as an independent in November, splitting the Republican vote all the way.
Back to Crowell.
He graduated from Cooperstown Central School in 1994 and attended Gettysburg College, graduating close enough to the top of his class to win a Fulbright Scholarship to spend a year researching economic development in rural India. The next year, he was a research fellow with the Ford Foundation, again focusing on rural economies.
Then to the World Bank, in its International Finance Corp. Grassroots Business Initiative.
At Total Impact, his software “integrates traditional financial accounting with impact accounting, enabling enterprises to simultaneously track financial, environmental and social impact metrics.”
And he’s also involved with The Halden Group, which also drills down into finance and budgeting.
Along the way, he came home for a visit and met Dee Brigham of Cherry Valley, a teacher in Edmeston, and married her. They live in Phoenix Mills with their son Paul, 2.
Crowell’s plan, if elected, would be to restructure the county treasurer’s office in a way that would cost no more money, but would put the firepower where it’s needed.
The treasurer now has two deputies anyhow. Crowell would make one of them a CPA, “a county accountant ... to make sure the beans are counted and the records are accurate.” The other would be a budget officer, who, in effect, would help the county board through the budget process.
Crowell’s goal would be to provide the county representative with “five-year historicals” – showing the trends that got us to where we are – and “five year projects” – to anticipate what’s coming down the road.
And, he says, the county’s Microsoft Dynamics system is up to the task, if you know how to use it, and he does.
“There’s no extra cost to the county,” he said, “and no added of government.”
And there it is.Labels: 06-12-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 7:11 AM |
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COOPERSTOWN AND AROUND
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 Ron Philo’s black lab brought what his master assumes is a goose egg from the shores of Otsego Lake, carrying it gingerly in its teeth. Ron is an instructor at Leatherstocking Golf Course.
Cupcakes, Panel Will Help Mark HoF’s 70th Year
COOPERSTOWN
On the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s 70th birthday, Catherine Walker, Howard Talbot and Homer Osterhoudt of Cooperstown will reflect on how things have changed since the Hall’s inauguration on June 12, 1939.
“A Retrospective Look at the Hall of Fame” is planned at 3 p.m. Friday, June 12, in the Bullpen Theater. Visitors may also sign a 70th birthday card and feast on cupcakes in the Hall of Plaques at 4 p.m .
14th season: Cooperstown Dream’s Park opened for its 14th season on Saturday, June 6, with opening ceremonies. Lou Presutti III, the park’s owner, told the crowd at record 102 teams are registered to play in the youth-tournament venue in Hartwick Seminary.
PROM NIGHT: The CCS prom is Saturday evening, June 13, at the Cooperstown Country Club. Partygoers will be shuttled back and forth to Lake Front Park for rides on the Glimmerglass Queen. Project Prom will keep the Clark Sports Center open for the students throughout the night.
STATE OF COUNTY: The Otsego County Chamber has issued a “last call” for anyone interested in attending the State of the County Breakfast, featuring county Board Chair Jim Powers, at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, June 16, at the Holiday Inn Southside, Oneonta. Call 432-4500 for reservations.
UNDER THE STARS: Movies on the lawn of The Fenimore Art Museum begin at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 17, with “Roman Holiday,” with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn.Labels: 06-12-09, Cooperstown and Around, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 3:14 AM |
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Cooperstown and Around
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Thursday, May 28, 2009
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 STATE OF COUNTY: Jim Powers, chair of the Otsego County Board of Representatives, will keynote at the Otsego Chamber’s State of the County breakfast at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, June 16, at the Holiday Inn. $20. For reservations, call 432-4500.
DON’T MISS IT: It’s worth the short drive to Iroquois Farm, Route 33, this Sunday, June 7, for The Farmers’ Museum’s 13th Annual Benefit Horse Show, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. In addition to horsemanship, a patron’s lunch ($45 for adults, $10 children) begins at noon.
GOLF, DINE: Restaurateur Sam Ross has opened The Mount Wellington Grill this summer at the Otsego Golf Club at the lake’s north end, serving steaks to pasta Thursday through Sunday evenings, and Sunday brunch.
BARN RAZING: The village’s Historic Preservation & Architectural Review Board will consider a proposal to raze 10 Chestnut St., the former Smith Cooperstown Ford dealership, at 5 p.m. Tuesday, June 9, at 22 Main. JGB Properties is proposing a seven-home planned development there.
YOU CAN GO: Tickets are still available for the Crosby, Stills & Nash concert Friday, June 12, at Doubleday Field. For tickets, go to www.cooperstownchamber.org, or call (607) 547-9983.
A DAY EARLY: To avoid the conflict with the concert, the CAA will have its next opening Thursday, June 11.Labels: 06-05-09, Cooperstown and Around, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 6:56 AM |
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In Tight Times, MacLeod Finds Handel Inspires
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By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
In the 1720s, Handel was in London, writing expensive-to-stage operas in Italian, when the economy went south.
Contributions and ticket sales began to dry up.
So, strapped, Handel switched to oratorios, which didn’t have to be fully staged, and he wrote them in English, accessible to a wider audience.
Michael MacLeod, Glimmerglass Opera general and artistic director, takes comfort in that and, more generally, with the genre’s 400-year struggle for financial viability.
He’s also taken lessons from his fellow strugglers over the centuries.
Take Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas,” one of four operas Glimmerglass is putting on this summer in its two-weeks-shorter, but only-slightly less-compact season – 38 performances vs. the usual 42-43.
It was originally put on in a girls’ school in London. So the plan is to present a “concert dramatization,” much like the original performance must have been. (This year is the 350th anniversary of Purcell’s birth.)
“I’m not doing a diluted ‘Dido,’” said MacLeod in an interview in his corner office at the far back of the opera’s headquarters the other day. “I’m doing it as it was originally conceived.”
However it is or isn’t staged, director Jonathan Miller “will make it dramatic by directing the singers.”
The three other operas are: Verdi’s “La Traviata,” always a crowd pleaser; Rossini’s “La Cenerentola,” a retelling of the Cinderella story, and Menotti’s “The Consul.”
This is not an easy time for opera companies, with the continuing recesssion and the market down 40 percent.
“Personal wealth has plummeted,” explained MacLeod, and that caused a dip in both contributions to the annual fund and the commitment to buy tickets.
Plus, the value of the endowment, intended as a secure port in financial storms, and the related revenues have dropped significantly, he said.
Still, MacLeod is implementing a $6.3 million budget, down just 8 percent from $6.9 million the year before, (although he’s been spending his days struggling with the 2010 projections.)
And construction will begin in September, as planned and paid with a state grant, on a new rehearsal building.
“We run a very responsible financial ship,” said the director. “And rather than fall into an abyss of debt, we would rather attack it head-on at an early stage and redress the financial balance.”
A scholar of opera as well as an administrator, MacLeod seems to relish returning to its more Spartan roots, or at least applying the virtue of positive thinking to necessity.Labels: 06-05-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 6:55 AM |
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Soccer HoF’s Challenge: Make Ends Meet, Expand Soccer’s Reach in U.S.
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Ullman Must Make Ends Meet, Expand Soccer’s Reach in U.S.
By JIM KEVLIN
 Jonathan Ullman was a museum guy, not a soccer guy, when he came to the National Soccer Hall of Fame as vice president and director of development.
But he must have made that transition in the hurry.
For after only 18 months at the Oneonta soccer mecca, he is president and COO.
“It wasn’t until I became part of this organization that I received a deep appreciation for this game,” he said the other day in an interview in his new office, where nothing yet was hanging from the picture hooks that dotted the bare walls.
Can 3.5 billion people who play it be wrong?
“It’s a very special game,” he continued. “If you are exposed to it on a regular basis, you really come to appreciate the tremendous athleticism it requires.”
And, while he didn’t play soccer while growing up in Randolph, N.J., he scored twice – more than anyone – at a Hall of Fame staff pickup game last summer.
His new job, however – the Hall’s board of directors named him to the position at a May 16-17 meeting in New York City – doesn’t require him to kick a ball into a goal.
To use a football – not futbol – analogy, his job is to move the ball down the field toward the goal. The goal: To raise the fortunes of the world’s most popular sport in the world’s most powerful nation which, generally, has been more enamored with baseball and the gridiron.
When asked about his goal for the Hall of Fame, he doesn’t respond in terms of the physical building, or Oneonta, but of the sport itself.
“We want to get to the point where the greatest achievers in the field of soccer are known and celebrated by people throughout the United States,” he said.
When soccer is wildly successful, the Hall of Fame will have achieved its mandate.
“You can’t even accomplish it in one single geographic location,” he added.
As noted, Jonathan Ullman was raised in New Jersey in the New York Metropolitan Area’s outer suburbs.
He went to Rutgers, studied neurobiology, and graduated in 1992 intending, after a year or two hiatus, to either get a Ph.D. in neurobiology or go on to med school.
Fatefully, his dad sent him a newspaper clipping, a come-up story on the prospective opening of the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City.
On his office wall – or soon to be on his office wall – is the framed letter from 1992, offering him a part-time job at the princely sum of $6.25 an hour.
He keeps it handy as a reminder of how one thing can lead to another. He ended up working at the Liberty Science Center, in positions of increasing responsibility, for the next 14 years.
“What it symbolizes to other staff members” – and to Ullman – “is: There is opportunity, if you work hard and care about what you do.”
He might not put it this way, but the recent grad found the science center to be pretty cool. He realized that early on when he found himself trying out a scanning electron microscope.
One day, he’d do something related to geology. The next day, something about human health.
Where a neurobiology doctorate or a medical degree would have focused him even more narrowly, at the science center “you could really dabble in all sorts of disciplines.”
As he moved up the management ladder, “what really started to captivate me was management leadership, organizational issues,” particularly how to meld varied staffers into a like mindset in pursuit of an organizational goal, while allowing their individuality and sense of ownership to flourish.
He went back to Rutgers parttime and earned an MBA.
Ullman had gone through the original Liberty Science Center startup, and in 2007 he went through a second, $109 million expansion. He could have stayed, perhaps for the rest of his career. Instead, he was recruited by Steve Baumann, his predecessor at the Soccer Hall of Fame’s helm.
The Liberty Science Center had a $30 million budget; the Hall’s is $1 million. The science center attracts 1.2 million visitors a year; locally, 55,000 people visit the Hall’s campus annually, but only 20,000 go into the Hall itself. The center had more than 150 staffers (until 37 were laid off in February, due to the economic downturn); the Hall has 10 fulltime, and another dozen seasonal workers in the summer.
“This organization is challenged to make its revenue meet its expenses,” said Ullman.
There are some sponsors, most notably the State of New York and the Century Council, an anti-drunk-driving advocacy foundation based in Arlington, Va., that sees soccer as one way to promote healthy lifestyles among young people.
But more are needed.
Ullman praises the “enormous efforts and generosity of people in this county” for the Hall of Fame’s progress to date, but he recognizes that, for the Hall to thrive, he must reach beyond the county line, perhaps to national sponsors, certainly by upgrading soccerhall.org, perhaps by travelling exhibits – as the Cooperstown Hall has done with “Baseball as America,” its travelling exhibit.
The challenges, clearly, are many.
Meanwhile, however, the Hall’s young president – he is this side of 40 – is enjoying Otsego County’s rural lifestyle after the stresses of his congested home state.
He and wife Joanne, who recently completed her master’s in labor relations through Farleigh Dickinson University, have a home in the Fly Creek Valley and a growing family: Aaron, 7, Sage, 5, and Amalia, 1.
The topic of young people and soccer kept resurfacing in his discussion of the Hall and the sport. It promotes good health. It fosters good values.
“Kids are playing in numbers unlike any other sport,” Ullman pointed out. And given its world-wide scope, they are mastering what the Hall of Fame president terms “almost a common language.”
Fawcett, Agoos Will Be Inducted This Year
Five-time MLS Champion Jeff Agoos and two-time World Champion Joy Fawcett will be inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame at ceremonies Sunday, Aug. 2, in Oneonta.
Agoos, currently the sporting director of MLS club New York Red Bulls, played 134 times for the U.S. Men’s National Team, the second most in the team’s history. His national team career included participation in two World Cups (1998 and 2002) and the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Fawcett won two FIFA Women’s World Cups (1991 and 1999) and two Olympic Gold Medals (Atlanta 1996 and Athens 2004) in a career of epic proportions. Her 239 international matches played is fourth in U.S. Women’s National Team history, surpassed only by the currently active Kristine Lilly and Hall of Famers Julie Foudy and Mia Hamm (Class of 2007).
In her remarkable 15-year national team career, she received just two yellow cards and was never red carded.Labels: 06-05-09, Front Page, Soccer Hall of Fame |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 6:54 AM |
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Fire Chief Says Otsego Lake Plan Creates Hazard
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By JIM KEVLIN
FLY CREEK
Many of the same arguments were revisited.
The four-lot Walker subdivision on the side of steep Browdy Mountain would cause erosion.
The silt traps – to be maintained by a prospective homeowners’ association – would inevitably fail, eventually, causing runoff into Otsego Lake.
The steep driveway is inaccessible to emergency vehicles.
That brought a new piece of testimony.
An e-mail from Paul Bedworth, the new chief of the Cooperstown Volunteer Fire Department, was introduced, stating:
“I drove up the road just after we” – he and Marilyn Bradshaw, a neighbor who opposes the subdivision – “spoke. I find that it would be very difficult to fight a fire there. If my home were on that road, I would be very concerned.”
He continued: “There is nowhere for vehicles to pass or turn around. But being a private road, most of the regulations do not apply. I would like to see a turn-around at the end of the road large enough for fire vehicles. Everything else we can deal with.”
Bradshaw – her sister, Carol Akin, who co-owns a camp on Route 80 near Five Mile Point – said she had approached Bedworth Sunday, May 31, during the monthly breakfast at the fire house on Chestnut Street.
The former chief, Brian Clancy, had not opposed the subdivision, she said, but she thought she would try again. (Bedworth had been installed as new fire chief Wednesday, May 27.)
The Bedworth e-mail surfaced in the course of public comment at what is likely to be the Town of Otsego Planning Board’s final public hearing on the project, which has been going through the regulatory process for 17 months.
Ned Walker, who owns a home on the mountain, is proposing to subdivide his property into four lots, selling off the other three for homes.
Not all the comment from the crowd of 40 in the Otsego Town Hall here Tuesday, June 2, was negative.
Walker’s neighbor on the mountain, Anne O’Connell, spoke in favor of the project, as did Doug Walker of Cooperstown, Ned’s brother.
A contingent from the Town of Stark, Shirley Mower and the Phetterplaces, who have expressed anger at Cooperstown-based efforts to block wind turbines there, supported it, too.
Bill Michaels, the town board member, handed out a list of driveways now in use he said were as steep as Walker’s.
At the Planning Board meeting in May, representatives from organizations that seek to protect Otsego Lake – Bill Harmon of the SUNY Biological Field Station, Win McIntyre of the Watershed Supervisory Committee and Robin Krawitz from Otsego 2000 – expressed their concerns.
This month, a letter from Jane Forbes Clark was read making similar arguments, and concluding, “We also are concerned about the damage this project and others like it will have to the aesthetic value of this irreplaceable, natural resource.” (Shirley Mower lumped that opposition together as “a close knit group with control on its mind.”)
But again, in the public comment and board discussion that followed, it appears the fate of the subdivision depends on the steep access road.
Although Planning Board members Joe Galati and John Phillips voted against further delay, the board called a special meeting – the final meeting, perhaps – for 7:30 p.m. Monday, June 15, after chairman Paul Lord suggested it would take a minimum of 90 minutes to go through the town’s Zoning Code and determine which provisions apply in this case.
Some discussion surrounded the “Donovan specs” for roads, state regulations that were not in effect locally when Walker original built his driveway, but have since been incorporated into town guidelines.
Further, there are provisions of subdivision regulations that apply to the road.
For his part, Walker said he can meet all provisions but one: “Grade is the only one.”
If that’s the case, the Planning Board would have to approve a waiver to allow the project to go forward.Labels: 06-05-09, Fly Creek, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 6:51 AM |
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COOPERSTOWN AND AROUND
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Saturday, May 23, 2009
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Baseball Dip Worries MLB, WSJ Reports
Following the lowest-rated World Series in history, Major League Baseball is worried by a 4 percent dip in attendance and a 9 percent dip in Fox Saturday Baseball, the sport’s game of the week, the Wall Street Journal reports.
More interest in the NBA and NHL playoffs are blamed, but “additional revelations of steroid use certainly haven’t helped,” the newspaper said.
$400,000 ANSWER: The village trustees’ first Long Range Planning Committee meeting, where they are expecting an explanation of where $400,000 came from in the 11th hour of budget deliberations, has been scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday, June 11, at 22 Main.
HORSE SHOW: Pre-registration is next Wednesday, June 3, for The Farmers’ Museum 13th Annual Benefit Horse Show, to be held the following Sunday at the River Road Showgrounds on Route 33 south of the village. Information, call 607) 547-1452.
MUSIC MINUTES: Roberta Rowland-Raybold, Christ Episcopal Church organist and choirmaster, is planning “Music Minutes” at 12 noon Saturdays until Labor Day.
MORE FIDDLIN’: The Middlefield Historical Association is planning a fiddlers school again this summer, beginning June 22. Interested? Call Katie Boardman at (607) 547-9300.Labels: 05-29-09, Cooperstown and Around, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:28 PM |
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4 New Stores Open, And None Of Them Sells Baseball Cards
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By LAURA COX
COOPERSTOWN
In the past couple of weeks, four new shops have opened downtown.
And, heavens, none of them sell baseball memorabilia.
“I want to help make Cooperstown a destination not all about baseball, but where everyone in the family can have a good time,” said Renee LaFond, who has opened a “tweens” boutique, Blue Sky, at 46 Pioneer St.
Jillian Bos opened an upscale-apparel consignment shop, Frugal Fashionista, at 209 Main St., Brenda Berstler found her already successful Internet business – Savor NY – a home at 171 Main St. And last but not least, Rich Busse opened the doors to his new ladies’ accessories and gift shop, Silver Fox, across Pioneer Street from his Christmas Store.
This may seem an unusual time to open a store, all acknowledged, but it was a risk they were willing to take.
Bos has a background in fashion and is excited to open a store where anyone can afford to buy gently worn designer clothing – sometime never worn, tags still intact – or to carry a genuine Coach pocketbook.
“If not now, when?”
Since May 7, she has already sold over 700 items and is preparing for her next round of buying. Her customers? The everyday working folks, the curious and wealthy, anyone who wants to find something beautiful at an equally beautiful cost.
“It’s a community-minded store and it’s priced that way,” said Bos, who is being assisted by Cindy Seward.
LaFond, saw a need for a niche market store aimed at the tweens who have grown out of the toys and clothing in her Little Bo’tique but are still too young for other boutiques.
The store which unofficially opened on Memorial Day includes clothing, jewelry, bags, decorative items, the “fun and edgy” types of things girls age 8 and up enjoy.
“Kids of this age are starting to walk around without their parents. I want this to be a place where they can come and find things they like and can afford to buy with their own babysitting money or allowance without asking their parents first,” said LaFond.
She plans to stay open at least 10 months of the year and offer workshops for girls on topics like beading, something to keep people coming in the winter months. Bos would like to stay open year ’round.
Rich Busse, also spoke about building up retail on Pioneer Street and making it a street to shop, instead of just pass by. His new shop, Silver Fox, opened on May 15 and offers women’s jewelry, Stephanie Dawn handbags, humorous cards and Root candles.
A factor in opening another business – he runs Pioneer Patio, All-American Café and Christmas Around The Corner – was to provide real-life business experience for his daughters Carly and, more particularly, Kristen, an accounting major SUNY Albany.Labels: 05-29-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:26 PM |
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Assisted Living OK In Otsego
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Town’s Zoning Revisions Underscore New Thinking About Needs Of Retirees
By JIM KEVLIN
FLY CREEK
The assisted-living concept was pioneered in the 1960s in Newtown Square, west of Philadelphia.
The idea: You can retire, move in to a condo or garden apartment in a leafy community, and live as you will.
If you get sick, there’s an affiliated hospital that will care for you. Out of danger, you may spend a week or two in the nursing home right at the community, an easy visit for spouse and friends.
Recovered, you move back into your living quarters. You can cook your own food, or dine in a central dining hall.
The financing is settled upfront, so you don’t have to worry about those particularly treacherous last months of life.
The idea spread across the country in the 40 years
since, to every nook and cranny, except the one we
happen to live in.
There’s no assisted-living facility in northern Otsego County – although Robynwood, Hampshire House and, more recently, the Plains at Parish Homestead have been developed in Oneonta.
Everywhere you look, though, there are indications that may change.
Most concretely, the Town of Otsego has revised its zoning to allow a substantial adult-housing project, subject to the same regulation as, say, that girls-softball tournament park that had been proposed on Route 205.
“While the restrictions are substantial, the code at least does allow someone to come in with a potential project in any zone for some type of adult housing,” said Bill Michaels, the town board member who has been championing a flexible approach since 2006.
Adult housing has been allowed in commercial zones, he explained, but the town’s commercial zones are too small to accommodate any.
At the town board’s further direction, the Planning Board is exploring the concept of planned-unit development, which might be adaptable for an assisted-living community, Michaels said.
A more sophisticated approach to retirement housing regularly surfaces in discussions in Cooperstown.
Steve Mahlum, the former town board member and contractor, explored a project at one time. Richard Blabey, a village Planning Board member, has suggested an assisted-living community, fully taxable, as economic development.
Barbara Ann Heegan had been an advocate while volunteer coordinator at Bassett Healthcare, and her interest caused her to join the Plains at Parish organization.
Karen Sullivan, senior planner in the Otsego County Planning Department, pointed out that in the two instances that assisted-living projects are coming to fruition, it was because of local advocacy.
In Oneonta, Gordon B. Roberts, the now-retired insurance man, had been lobbying for an assisted-living development since 1972. He helped Plains at Parish wend its way through local regulations.
In Unadilla, the village board promoted the idea, and the 23-unit Clifton Street project is due to break ground in a few weeks.
Sullivan has been spearheading her Planning Department’s housing study – it is due for completion in early July – and has found the lack of alternatives is keeping elderly people in their homes longer than they can maintain them.
Patrick Tobin is president of Living Communities, which manages Plains at Parish, and vice president of Christa Development of Rochester, which built it.
In an interview, he said “we looked at Cooperstown as an opportunity,” visiting Woodside Hall and examining land on the west side of Otsego Lake.
For now, he said, “we don’t want to compete with our own community,” as Plains at Parish is still in development.
However, he praised Gordon Roberts’ role in making the Oneonta project happen, and said he would respond positively to a similar approach from northern Otsego County.
Essential to any project, he said, would be municipal water and sewerage, which would suggest that, if a development located in the Town of Otsego, it would require collaboration with the Village of Cooperstown.
Willing muncipalities, Tobin said, “would certainly move us more quickly toward that day.”Labels: 05-29-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:24 PM |
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HoF Connects Low-Tech Game, High-Tech Curriculum
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Friday, May 22, 2009
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By JIM KEVLIN
RICHFIELD SPRINGS
‘When I walk into the school today, I leave my world. It’s like going to another planet.”
Jim Hill calls that the Ferris Buehler model.
The student’s world is TV, DVDs, video games, cellphones, Youtube. Twitter, whatever that is.
The other planet was textbooks, chalk, reading, the kind of things we traditionally associate with school.
What if, instead of fighting cellphones or Facebook or the Web, Jim Hill asked himself, teachers could use these tools to help students learn?
What if, instead teaching boring stuff – however youngsters may define it – schools taught whatever kids are intensely interested it?
Hill, Richfield Spring Central School District technology coordinator, and his boss, Superintendent of Schools Bob Barraco, had been asking themselves these questions for a while.
The electronic tools were at hand – in pretty much every young hand, in fact.
“That’s the world they’re in,” said Hill in an interview in the bright, high-ceilinged fully wired wing at the high school, completed just a half-decade ago. “You can fight them; or you can join them.”
OK, Barraco and Hill concluded, we’ll join them. But the content?
With the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum just 15 minutes down the road, the answer came to Jim Hill naturally. (He lives on Pink Street, outside Cooperstown, and has been involved in HoF educational initiatives for more than a decade.)
Last summer, Richfield Springs Central School hosted its first professional e-development seminar in its whiz-band high-tech facility, where teachers from across the state – Long Island to Buffalo – learned to teach lessons using all those electronic gadgets that today’s students understand completely but are Greek to the rest of us.
The Hall of Fame provided the audio, the video, digital content, everything the teachers would need. That first-year theme was “The Pride and the Passion,” the Hall’s exhibit on the Negro Leagues.
One teacher, for instance, combined the data at hand with Google Earth to created a Negro League “virtual road trip.” The idea was that, as students hop-scotched from city to city, they would learn geography, as well as longitude and latitude.
The sky’s the limit, said Anna Wade, the Hall of Fame’s director of education and Hill’s point of contact. (Other member’s of Hill’s team include a representative from Apple Computers – the school has 1.55 students per computer; the place bristles with screens – and the futurist from Herkimer County BOCES.)
Baseball can teach, not just geography, but social studies, math, science, women’s history, labor relations, you name it, Wade said.
“We have 16 different educational lessons – modules – created over the past 10 year,” she continued. “It’s a huge variety of resources people can use in the classroom.”
For this summer’s program, Jim Hill chose art in baseball as the theme, and Anna Wade can tick off the intersects with the Hall of Fame’s collections. from fine art – Norman Rockwell’s “The Umpires” – to movies – “League of Their Own” and “The Natural” – to dance, theater, broadcasting.
“They can hear Branch Rickey explaining why he hired Jackie Robinson,” Wade said.
All the partners want something, which makes the partnership vibrant.
RSCS wants to train its teachers to experiment with new ways of learning. Apple sees Hill’s initiative as a way to sell computers, big time. The Hall, by introducing teachers, and they their students, to the wonders of 25 Main, are building a customer base.
Jim Hill, who is 50-something, has a foot in the past as well as the future.
“I love this stuff,” he said, “but it’s not everything to me.”
Not so with his charges. It is everything – or most everything to them – and the while the nation as a whole dithers, is education losing its constituency – its constituents?
“In Korea, the entire population has high-speed access.” He asks: “Why can’t we do that here?”Labels: 05-29-09, Baseball Hall of Fame, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:57 PM |
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Cooperstown and Around
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 The Cooperstown Graduate Program is “the jewel” of SUNY Oneonta, President Nancy Kleniewski told 17 graduates during commencement exercises Saturday, May 16, at The Fenimore Art Museum.
REWARD OFFERED: NBT Bank is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person who robbed its Edmeston branch at 9:10 a.m. Tuesday, May 19. Call (607) 226-0509. All information is confidential.
CHANGE AT HALL: Jonathan D. Ullman of Fly Creek has been named President & COO of the National Soccer Hall of Fame in Oneonta when the board of directors met Saturday, May 16, in New York City. He replaces Steve Baumann of Cooperstown, who resigned after 21 months.
RELAY COMING: The 11th annual Cooperstown Relay for Life’s opening ceremonyi is 6 p.m. Friday, May 29, at the Westville Airport. Cancer survivor Bob Hage will speak. Cancer survivors will then take the first lap. The fundraiser continues overnight.
THEY’RE OFF: 47th Annual General Clinton Canoe Regatta embarks from Cooperstown’s Lake Front Park at 6 a.m.
DON’T FORGET: Cooperstown’s Memorial Day Parade steps off at 11 a.m. Monday, May 25, from the Cooper Grounds to the Soldier & Sailors Monument in front of the county building.
STARS VISIT: Hall of Famers Juan Marichal and Orlando Cepeda will be at the National Baseball Hall of Fame at 11 a.m. Saturday, May 23, to cut the ribbon on “Viva, Baseball,” celebrating the Hispanic influence in the game.Labels: 05-22-09, Cooperstown and Around, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 9:12 AM |
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Trustees Agree On Ball Team Proposal
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COOPERSTOWN
And that’s the ball game ... or pretty much so.
The village trustees have approved a “proposal” and asked the owner of Cooperstown’s prospective minor league baseball team to make final changes and come back with a contract that would bring a New York Collegiate Baseball League franchise to Doubleday Field, beginning in June 2010.
“We’re very close to having a deal,” said the owner, Tom Hickey of Fly Creek. Key points include:
• The franchise commits to pay $10,000 a year for a five-year contract, double the original $5,000 proposed. $500 per playoff game.
• Beer sales, ending at the end of the seventh inning. The franchise will pay for a police officer to keep an eye on things. A family-seating section will be designated..
• Food, with the franchise permitted to establish concessions within the Doubleday Field grounds and to send vendors into the stands.
• Entertainment, music, an announcer and prize give-aways, but only until 8:45 p.m.Labels: 05-22-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:23 AM |
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‘America’s Rome’ Highlight Of Fenimore Season
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COOPERSTOWN
 More than 100 works by celebrated Hudson River School artists celebrating “America’s Rome” are hanging at The Fenimore Art Museum, awaiting the Saturday, May 23, Memorial Day Weekend opening.
Meanwhile, though, you can welcome in the first-of-its-kind exhibit with a little fun: cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, dancing to the pop sounds of Italy and “Rome inspired” activities. Italian-style fashion – think designer shoes – are encouraged. Admission is $12 per person, $20 per couple at the door, including tours, 9 p.m.
to midnight.
Subtitled “Artists in the Eternal City, 1800-1900,” the exhibit that will open more sedately the next morning is the centerpiece of this year’s NYSHA-museum offerings, featuring such artists as Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, Childe Hassam, George Inness, Thomas Hicks and Jasper Francis Cropsey.
The centerpiece is Sanford Gifford’s “Tivoli,” on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Inspired by William L. Vance, whose two-volume book of the same title reinterpreted the influence of Italy in 19th century American painting, the exhibit was prepared by Paul D’Ambrosio, NYSHA chief curator and vice president.
Ranging the Upstate wilds, “they wanted a landscape that had historical associations,” explained D’Ambrosio in an earlier interview. “Ruins sparked the imagination.”
At The Farmer’s Museum, “Wild Times! A New York Animal Road Trip,” also opens Saturday.Labels: 05-22-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:20 AM |
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Water Flows, Turning Turbines, Creating Light. It’s That Simple
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Chuck Hage, Sustainability Committee Propose Hydro Project for Susquehanna
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
The attraction of hydropower is its apparent simplicity.
Water pours down hill, turns a turbine, creates a spark – electricity, lots of it.
Evaporation brings water back to Otsego Lake, and the process starts all over again.
Yes, Otsego Lake.
Chuck Hage, the R&D executive who retired from Kodak in Rochester in 1991 to pursue other careers and interests from a Cooperstown base, has been intrigued about what that simple cycle might do for Cooperstown for the past two years now since reading about a self-sustaining village in South America.
Why not Cooperstown? he reasoned, and he was off.
If you know Chuck Hage, he’s nothing if not thorough.
When he was named to the village’s new Sustainability Committee last fall, he presented a densely researched 11-page report on his findings to date.
Monday, May 18, acknowledging he’s gone as far as he can – it’s now up the village trustees to decide whether to go forward – he reported to the village board as follows:
• Total upfront costs of an installed system are $300,000
• Funding sources would pay $100,000 of that.
• The system would generate $63,000 a year, translating into a three-year payback.
• The system lasts an estimated quarter-century.
“Do you like the proposition?” he asked the assembled trustees.
“I don’t see any negatives,” he said Wednesday morning, May 20, pacing the banks of the Susquehanna River at the Mill Street bridge, where the village maintains a dam to control Otsego Lake’s level. “I don’t see a show stopper.”
The average “head” – the amount the water drops – at the 70-foot dam averages 7 feet, ranging up to 10 feet in the spring. That translates into 100 million gallons a day at Mill Street.
“That’s a lot of potential energy that’s not being used,” he said.
Since reading that first article, Hage has been exploring options from around the world.
An Australian company looked promising. A developer on the Battenkill that flows through Manchester, N.H., had some intriguing ideas.
Hage finally settled on Mavel Inc., a century-old Czech company now based in Boston, because – among other things – its system requires virtually no construction.
First, Mavel installs a stand that would straddle the existing dam, anchored on each side. Then, it would place its water-tight turbine on top of the stand. Presto. Job done.
“There would be no modification of the dam, except for the catwalk,” Hage said. “You sacrifice some power, but it saves a lot on installation. And it’s not at all harmful to the environment.”
The company’s president, Jeanne Hilsinger, took a personal interest in the Cooperstown site, and she and her father toured it last Thanksgiving.
There would be several ways for the village to go if it decided to pursue the H-option, but Hage was intrigued by the “turnkey” approach of Waterline Industries, based in New Hampshire.
Waterline would arrange the financing, handle the engineering, put the management in place.
So what could this plant do?
Hage estimates that, at maximum efficiency, the flow would produce 790 kilowatt hours of electricity. So he cut that in half.
Say about 400 kilowatt hours were produced, that would be sufficient to power the village’s nearby sewer and water plants.
The village pays NYSEG $155,000 a year right now, so it could reduce that bill by about 40 percent.
“It might save up to half of that,” he concluded.Labels: 05-22-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:19 AM |
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2nd Mountain Lion Reported Near Lake
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DEC Says It May Be Freed Pet
By JIM KEVLIN
 A big cat was reported again a few days after a first sighting, and a DEC spokesman said it’s possible a former pet cougar may be ranging the west side of Otsego Lake.
“There is that possibility,” according to Maureen Wren, spokesperson for the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
She also said the animal could have been a fisher cat or a bobcat, but she repeated the DEC policy that no native eastern cougars – the last verified sighting in New York State was in 1894 – are living in the state’s wilds.
Bradley Goodyear Smith reports she and another person spotted the cat at about 4:40 p.m. Friday in a field across Route 80 from her residence, Cary Meade.
At first, she thought it might be a deer, but it turned its leonine face in her direction, as if trying to decide what to do, before loping away, waving its tail.
Mrs. Smith estimated the cat weighed about 120 pounds.
Cary Meade is 2-3 miles northwest off Tanner Hill Road, Pierstown, where Chris and Christine Vuolo of the Fly Creek Valley reported seeing a big cat on Tuesday, May 12.
Vuolo, a retired police officer from Long Island, said parents of young children should be alert to the possibility.
The DEC’s expert on cougars, Scott Van Arsdale in the Stamford office, wasn’t immediately available for comment, but wrote what his bosses consider the definitive piece on the animal. It appeared in The Conservationist magazine a year ago February.
The DEC has received hundreds of reports of mountain-lion sightings, but the only confirmed ones – through hair, tracks or scat – have been former pets.
Pet cougars, imported illegally from South America, can be cute kittens, but grow into strong, aggressive 120-pound animals that require a lot of expensive fresh meat.
At that point, Van Arsdale concluded, they either escape or are let loose by their rattled owners.
Such was the case in 1995, when multiple sightings were reported in the Oneonta area.Labels: 05-22-09, Big Cat, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:10 AM |
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‘Dr. Gretzky’ Hailed At Med School Fete
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Friday, May 15, 2009
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Henry Weil Praised As Program Launched By Bassett, Columbia
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
Wayne Gretzky wasn’t the biggest or fastest hockey player around.
Looking at him skill by skill, he shouldn’t have become “The Great One,” scoring more goals by far than anyone else.
“My secret,” he says, “is I know where the puck is going to be.”
Lee Goldman, Columbia University Medical Center dean, told that story to a crowd in The Otesaga’s main ballroom Monday, May 11, that had gathered to celebrate Columbia’s partnership with Bassett Healthcare in creating a medical school locally for last-year students.
His point was that the medical-school concept looks ahead, beyond today’s shortage of doctors in rural areas, to create a demand for rural practices.
It turns out he was setting up Dr. Henry F. Weil, who came up with the medical-school idea and continued to nudge it forward against all objections and hurdles – a Wayne Gretzky, M.D., if you will, someone who saw the problem coming and came up with a possible solution.
In introducing Henry Weil to the gathering, Bill Streck, Bassett Healthcare president & CEO, referred to the other famous Gretzky aphorism: “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”
The Columbia-Bassett program “is his idea,” Streck said of Weil. “Someone must have an idea and believe in that idea and pursue it in the face of doubt, and doubt, and doubt.”
It was then Henry Weil’s turn. He called the medical-school “an idea superimposed on a work of art,” the Bassett concept as it has developed since 1920s, when his great uncle, Dr. Henry S.F. Cooper Sr., and other young physicians at Presbyterian Hospital in New York City convinced Stephen C. Clark Sr. to reopen shuttered Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital.
Four members of the Columbia-Bassett class were in the audience, including Jamie Bordley, a fifth-generation physician and grandson of James Bordley III, who Stephen Clark recruited from Johns Hopkins in 1947 to head Bassett.
Annually, 10-14 “top-ranking” students from Columbia Medical School with a pre-disposition to practice in a rural setting will be assigned to spend their last 15 months at Bassett, treating patients over time in differing aspects of medical practice. Most of the work will be in Cooperstown, but they will be assigned to satellites in Bassett’s nine-county region as well.
Unlike most medical schools, the students will work closely with individual doctors over time. “They are going to get to know what it’s like to be them,” said Weil, who after Hamilton College went to the Columbia medical school, then did his internship and residency at Bassett before practicing here.
(Two years ago, he was credited with introducing EMR – electronic medical record, combining and computerizing patients records – well ahead of the nation.)
Part of the recruitment effort will be to seek out pre-med students at Hamilton, Colgate, Cornell and other top schools in the region to make sure they are aware of the opportunity.
Living in Otsego County is much more economical than New York City, so that can be an enticement. Further, the Scriven Foundation, the local-education arm of the Clark Foundation, has dedicated a significant amount to writing down the tuition.
The idea is that the students will come to like the Bassett system and Upstate New York, and decide to stay here.
State Health Commissioner Richard Daines, who was on a rostrum that also included U.S. Rep. Mike Arcuri, D-24, and Thomas Morris, chair of the Bassett trustees, made it explicit in a press briefing that followed.
“Why are you here?” he reported asking young physicians he meets in his travels around the state. The answers: “I grew up here. I trained here. I married someone from here.”
“It’s an unusual physician who starts practice in some place they’ve never lived before,” Goldman added.
Referring back to “the shots you don’t take,” Streck said it won’t be clear for eight or so years whether the new approach will work, and it will be 30 years before the region will be fully benefitting from the success.Labels: 05-15-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 7:32 PM |
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Idelson: ‘Perspective Of Time’ Will Sort Out Steroids Scandal
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By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
In his first address to the National Press Club, Jeff Idelson said the National Baseball Hall of Fame is unlikely to devote an exhibit to the steroids scandal within the walls of 25 Main until time allows it to be put in perspective.
“We won’t shy away from the topic,” said the Hall of Fame president, “but it’s not going to be anytime soon.”
He likened the situation to the decades-long lag before the integration of the Negro Leagues into Major League Baseball in the 1940s was fully reflected in the Cooperstown displays, but that’s only possible with “the perspective of time.”
Visiting the Hall today, “you see very clearly and poignantly how baseball in a lot of ways was ahead of the curve,” he said. “Fifteen years before Martin Luther King’s march, baseball was integrated.”
Idelson appeared before the press corps in the Nation’s Capital less than a week after the latest steroids outbreak: MLB Commissioner Bud Selig suspended L.A. Dodgers star Mannie Ramirez for 50 games due to use of disallowed substances, costing the player $15 million, a third of his $45 million salary.
Predictably, a fair number of the questions fielded by Idelson’s host and the emcee, USA Today reporter Donna Leinwand -- they were e-mailed in from all over the world, she said -- dealt with steroids.
“Major League Baseball has stepped up and done a great job as of late with the steroid controversy,” Idelson replied to the first question. “They have now THE toughest policy in all of professional sports. So you have to give them credit.”
He pointed out that not just the MLB, but the players’ union has a role in developing policies with teeth.
“The past is the past,” he continued. “At this point you have to look forward, and the game is getting much, much better in terms of ridding steroids from the game ... Every time something comes out about steroids, baseball’s just that much closer to getting it behind them.”
Despite suspect slugger Mark McGwire’s poor balloting the year Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn were inducted, Idelson said “no one who’s tested positive is on the ballot yet. Their careers are still going on. They are still being defined.”
The five-year waiting period, plus 15 years on the ballot, also allows the “perspective of time” to come into play.
“With the perspective of time, and with the rules being pretty clear, I think the tools are there for the writers to vote with their conscience,” he said.
What’s his opinion, he was asked. Should steroids-tainted stars be allowed in the Hall?
“That’s the 64-million dollar question,” he replied. “We’re very comfortable with our rules,” which call for the Baseball Writers Association of America to judge nominees on “character, integrity, sportsmanship and contributions to the teams for whom they played.”
He said, “Whomever they choose to elect, we’ll honor at the Hall of Fame.”Labels: 05-15-09, Baseball Hall of Fame, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 7:23 PM |
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Washington Button Found In Dead Tree
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 OTEGO
A button inscribed with “Long Live the President” surrounded by 13 linked states was discovered recently when a dead tree was being removed in Burlington.
The “George Washington Inaugural Button” ended up with Hesse Galleries here, which is auctioning it off Saturday, June 6.
Hesse reports the button is “well-patinated from being in the ground,” but that the inscriptions are clearly legible. The item is detailed in “George Washington Inaugural Buttons and Medalets, 1789-1793,” by J. Harold Cobb.Labels: 05-15-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 7:19 PM |
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Mountain Lion Seen In County
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PIERSTOWN
Chris and Christine Vuolo got a shock on driving home from their 5-year-old son’s T-ball game Tuesday, May 12.
Heading west on Armstrong Road about a half-mile this side of Tanner Hill Road, their car startled a mountain lion, which then dashed away over an open field.
Chris, a retired police officer from Long Island with 20/20 vision, estimated the cat weighed at least 150 pounds, since the family dog weighs 100 and “he dwarfed my dog. It was as big as a small deer.”
The couple, who moved to Otsego County last July, checked out mountain lion photos on the Internet as soon as they arrived home in the Fly Creek Valley, and that confirmed their suspicions.
Vuolo raised the alert, saying that parents in the area should be aware a big cat is on the prowl.Labels: 05-15-09, Big Cat, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 7:18 PM |
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Cooperstown and Around
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BUDGET VOTES: The polls will be open 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Tuesday, May 19, for school-budget votes in Cooperstown, Cherry Valley, Milford and Richfield Springs central school districts. School board contests in Milford and Richfield Springs will be decided.
NO ANSWER YET: The village trustees’ first long-range planning meeting, where the sudden appearance of $400,000 in surplus was to be explained, hasn’t yet been rescheduled after it was cancelled. The trustees plan to discuss it at their monthly meeting Monday, May 18.
LONG READ: A “marathon read” of Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer” begins at 10 a.m. Saturday, May 16, at the Bright Hill Center in Treadwell, as part of the BIG READ. Volunteers will read the book until it’s done. Admission free.
ARCURI HONORED: The National Burglar and Fire Alarm Association has named U.S. Rep. Mike Arcuri, D-24, its “Legislator of the Year.”
HELP ON WAY: The United Way is alerting food banks that additional allocations have been received through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, $15,271 for Delaware County and $19,680 for Otsego. Applications are due by Tuesday, May 19. To get one, call 432-8006.Labels: 05-15-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 7:25 AM |
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Bassett Doing Orthopedics At Fox Hospital
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Saturday, May 2, 2009
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ONEONTA
And so, after decades of A.O. Fox Hospital insisting on stubborn independence, it’s begun.
On Wednesday, May 6, Bassett Healthcare orthopedic surgeons began seeing Fox patients once a week at the Foxcare Center off Route 7, east of Oneonta.
This is the first concrete step to result from discussions between the two hospitals that began in October to explore sharing services.
In March, the Fox board of trustees gave the go-ahead to intensify the discussions toward shared services.
Bassett’s chief of surgery, Dr. Steven Heneghan, said he anticipates Bassett orthopedic surgeons will be operating on patients at Foxcare as necessary.
Dr. Carlton Rule, Fox’s executive vice president, said talks are continuing on collaborations on cardiac care and cancer treatment.
Among the Bassett physicians seeing patients at Foxcare are James Elting and Michael Diaz, who both live in Oneonta. Dr. Jonathan Richman, Bassett’s chief of orthopedics, will also practice there.
Heneghan called it “an important step forward” and noted others will follow.Labels: 05-08-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 10:51 PM |
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Trustee Asks Mayor To Explain $400,000
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By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
Village trustees need a full explanation of why $400,000 – a quarter of the tax levy – appeared out of nowhere in the 11th hour of deliberations on Cooperstown’s $5 million 2009-10 budget, according to newly elected Trustee Joe Booan.
And he has asked Mayor Carol B. Waller for such an accounting next time the village board meets.
“In my business, we watch every penny,” Booan – he is principal of the Milford BOCES – said in an interview Wednesday, May 6. “And we know every day what our unencumbered balance is – the money we haven’t spent.”
Mayor Carol B. Waller said earlier that day that she was uncertain what had happened since “there were so many people asking for so many scenarios” during the budget debate.
The budget documents provided to the trustees estimated a $211,697 surplus on May 31, the end of the 2008-09 budget year, and a $239,802 surplus at the end of the 2009-10 year. Trustees worried about the state of village roads had sought to shift $139,000 of that prospective surplus for that purpose, but also worried that would leave the village with only $100,000 in surplus.
Then, at the final budget meeting Wednesday, April 29, Village Treasurer Mary Ann Henderson reported that there was actually $400,000 more in the surplus than she had anticipated, a total of $624,000.
“I asked her to go over the surplus and go over the explanation for the next trustees’ meeting,” Waller said.
The plan was to do so Thursday, May 7, at what was expected to be the first of semi-monthly long-range planning meetings, but two of the trustees couldn’t attend – Eric Hage’s mother, Ursula, was celebrating her 70th birthday; Willis Monie Jr. was headed to South Carolina for a cousin’s wedding – so that session had to be delayed.
Village Clerk Teri Barown was trying to find a convenient time to re-schedule the long-range planning session, but had been unable to do so by press time.
In an interview, also on Wednesday, Henderson said she periodically updates a state “Schedule 5” form, which details the village’s surplus, but had not done so since January. When she did so a few days before the April 29 meeting, she discovered the $400,000 shift.
“Between then and May, the program was not updated,” said the treasurer. “It’s something I should have done.”
Part of that shift, Henderson said, was caused by the $100,000 allocation received from the Otsego County Board of Representatives. The state’s CHIPS money – for Consolidated Highway Improvement Program – turned out to be $147,000 more than budgeted, she added.
However, she said she was still unclear on where the rest of the money may have come from.
Trustee Neil Weiller, who along with Booan, Hage and Monie have emerged as the new majority bloc on the village board, said the trustees “want verification” of what dependable numbers actually are.
“The public and trustees are due a full explanation,” said Weiller, who was trained as an accountant.
He said what has happened reflected concerns he and Hage had expressed at village board meetings for the past year. Booan and Monie were only elected in mid-March.
For his part, Deputy Mayor Jeff Katz, who is allied with Waller and Trustee Lynne Mebust, said “the surplus is always changing.”
He said a $700,000 surplus was mentioned in passing two days before the revelation at that final budget hearing, so he was not surprised when it turned out to be the case.Labels: 05-08-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 10:47 PM |
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DEC Signs Off On Plan For Hillside
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Friday, May 1, 2009
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By LAURA COX
FLY CREEK
A full but subdued room of 40 people learned Tuesday, May 5, that the state Department of Environmental Conservation – the letter was dated Friday, May 1 – has signed off on a storm-water management plan for a three-house subdivision on the side of steep Browdy Mountain alongside Otsego Lake, just south of Five Mile Point.
Developer Ned Walker, who owns one home on the 16 acres in question and hopes to add three more, told the Town of Otsego Planning Board meeting here that – in addition to DEC signing off – he has a study in hand that’s concluded there will be no visual impact from the plan, and a letter from the fire chief saying the road to the property is safe.
Walker said his erosion-control plan is to divert runoff into a basin, filter out any silt and then move the water to the natural stream drainage down the hill. The silt would stay on his property, the developer said, and a homeowners’ association would maintain the system.
Opponents, however, bolstered by support from the Otsego County Conservation Association, Otsego 2000, the SUNY Biological Field Station, and even Jane Forbes Clark, who owns much of the undeveloped east side of the lake, were unconvinced.
“I urge the board to be cautious when looking at developments, and to plan for them, not respond to them,” said OCCA President Martha Clarvoe.
Six people spoke in support of the project, and nine against it.
The proponents said clusters of houses like the one Walker proposes are actually relatively beneficial to the environment, and they praised the time Walker has put into developing his plan.
Opponents questioned possible impacts on views from the lake, on Cooperstown’s water supply, and on a road that is already narrow and of steep grade.
After the public input period, the Planning Board deliberated and declared the application complete, pending a sample draft of deeds on the lots, which Walker said he would have prepared by May 15 and reviewed by Town Attorney James Ferrari.
A final public hearing is planned Tuesday, June 2.
In conclusion, Planning Board chair Paul Lord advised the board to review the requirements for roads, in particular, because approving the Walker application would involve a waiver on the driveway, if it were to be used for more than a single private residence.Labels: 05-08-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 10:53 PM |
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Arguably As Great As The Best, Hank Aaron Memorialized Here
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By BRUCE MARKUSEN
COOPERSTOWN
In trying to answer the question, “Who is the greatest living ballplayer?” only a few men even enter the discussion.
Willie Mays comes to mind, as does his controversial godson, Barry Bonds. Fans mindful of the game’s history may want to include Stan Musial in the conversation. A few bold contemporary fans might throw Albert Pujols into the fray.
The other man who deserves to be mentioned in this discussion actually visited Cooperstown Saturday, April 25: Hank Aaron, the game’s former home-run king and current RBI champion, came to Cooperstown to participate in the opening of a sparkling new Hall of Fame exhibit that details the life and career of the man known as “The Hammer.”
When asked what it meant to join Babe Ruth as the only men to have entire rooms dedicated to them at the Hall, Aaron did not supply a politically correct answer. “It means I’m supposed to be on the same platform,” Aaron, 75, told reporters. “I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished.”
Given Aaron’s career achievements, it’s difficult to argue with The Hammer.
Aaron was not the most colorful of ballplayers – he didn’t hit tape measure home runs and he didn’t run out from under his cap – but he was a workmanlike superstar. He was a true five-tool player who did it all, hitting for average, stealing bases, making plays in the outfield, throwing out runners, and, of course, hitting with extreme power.
Aaron’s accomplishments become even more impressive in the face of the shackles placed on him early in life. He grew up as part of a poor family in Mobile, Ala. “As a black kid, we didn’t have that many things to do. You either had sports or you could become a schoolteacher.”
During a Negro Leagues stint with the old Indianapolis Clowns, Aaron caught the eyes of the Boston Braves, who signed him and eventually sent him to Jacksonville of the South Atlantic League.
Aaron made history by becoming part of a contingent that broke the league’s longstanding color barrier. “We had three black players on that team. I had a very good year. I led the league in everything but hotel accommodations.”
Not only did Aaron and his two black teammates have to stay in separate hotels and eat in different restaurants; they had to endure uncivil behavior at the games. “The problem we had was with spectators. We had a rough time in the South. It got ridiculous.
“At some ballparks, we could not dress in the clubhouse. If you went 0-for-4, the fans would throw bananas at us. We used to talk about how silly people can really be when all we wanted to do was play ball. (What) made me succeed more was how hateful they were.”
Such abusive and outward racism subsided when Aaron received his first call to play for the Braves, who had moved from Boston to Milwaukee. “Milwaukee was a great city,” Aaron said unequivocally. “If not for Milwaukee, I didn’t know if I’d be a ballplayer. I give [those fans] all the credit.”
When the Braves moved to Atlanta in 1966, Aaron moved with them, staying there long enough to hit his record-breaking 715th home run. After that historic 1974 season, the Braves sent him back to Milwaukee—by now the home of the Brewers. Aaron played two seasons with the Brewers as a DH, before opting to retire at the end of the 1976 season.
Just like it was time for the Hall of Fame to create an exhibit in his honor. The exhibit is well done aesthetically, with a collage of Aaron photos as visitors first enter, followed by four distinct sections that chronicle The Hammer’s youth, his minor league days, his halcyon major league career, and the work he’s done with his “Chasing the Dream” foundation.
Thirty five years after succeeding Ruth as home run king, Aaron and The Babe now stand alone – with rooms all to themselves – right here in Cooperstown.
COOPERSTOWN
Hank Aaron’s 755 home runs should continue to be recognized as the all-time record, Bill Bartholomay, owner of the Braves during much of “The Hammer’s” career, said in an interview today after the National Baseball Hall of Fame opened an exhibit in the slugger’s honor.
“As far as I’m concerned, he’s the all-time home-run leader,” said Bartholomay, who cut the ribbon on the exhibit along with Aaron, his wife Billie, and HoF President Jeff Idelson.
“He did it without any cloud or deception,” said the team owner. “It speaks for itself.”
Aaron hit his record 755 home runs on July 20, 1976, and that record went unchallenged for more than 30 years until Aug 7, 2007, when Barry Bonds hit his 756th home run. However, Bonds was dogged for years coming up to that mark, and since, by allegations he used steroids.
For Bartholomay, his most memorable moment of Aaron’s career was April 12, 1966, the opening game in Atlanta.Labels: 05-01-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 9:08 PM |
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Confidential Data Leaked On Trustee
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COOPERSTOWN
You may read it here first, folks, but you’re not the first to know about it:
Village Trustee Neil Weiller, who is also chairman of the Village Library of Cooperstown Board of Trustees, doesn’t have a library card.
That information – under state law, it’s supposed to be confidential – was spread around during the just-completed village budget deliberations, where Weiller proposed shifting funds from library-personnel raises to the book budget.
Weiller declined to talk about the leak, but Library Director David Kent said he ran across the information while looking up Weiller’s library records in search of a telephone number.
“I don’t know who I told it to,” said Kent, when asked with whom he may have shared the information.
It was unclear whether the word getting around was simply an inadvertent
mistake, or whether the intention was to embarrass and perhaps deter Weiller at a key point in a public controversy.
Asked about how the information circulated, Mayor Carol B. Waller, who has jousted vigorously with Weiller during budget deliberations, said, “You’re the first one to tell me about it.”
Asked about it, Deputy Mayor Jeff Katz said, “I don’t know what Neil’s status is.”
David J. Karre, director of the Four County Library System that includes the Cooperstown library, said state law – specifically, Section 4509 of the state’s Civil Practice Law & Rules – prohibits library records of any kind from being made public.
He quoted the section which said, in effect, all of a citizen’s interactions with public, school or university libraries “shall be confidential and shall not be disclosed” except as required for “the proper operation of such library” or in response to subpoenas.
Karre said he’s is unsure what penalties are associated with circumventing these rules, but he said conceivably someone could consult an attorney if he or she feels his or her rights have been violated.
Karen Katz, president of the Friends of the Library, said she had been told about Weiller’s library card, but not by Dave Kent. “I’ve never seen anything to suggest Neil is anything but supportive of the library,” she said.Labels: 05-01-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 9:06 PM |
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Should Otsego Lake’s Hillsides Be Developed?
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Marred Views, Worries About Runoff Slow Approvals
By LAURA COX
FIVE MILE POINT
The file on a three-home development proposed for Browdy Mountain Road is four inches thick, but it’s unclear how the matter will be resolved.
At issue is whether construction should be allowed on the mountainside that stretches up the west side of Otsego Lake, across the water from the east side, which has been largely preserved by easements granted by the Clark family.
Camp owners along the lake shore below the proposed subdivision are concerned about erosion and runoff into the lake. The Otsego County Conservation Association has supported that view.
Even Jane Forbes Clark has written the Town of Otsego Planning Board voicing concern about the aesthetic and environmental impacts on James Fenimore Cooper’s Glimmerglass.
Ned Walker, who has a home on the property, has been seeking approval to subdivide his property into four lots – three new ones and the one where his house is situated – since Jan.
8, 2008, but it’s unclear how soon he may get a yes or no.
The latest public hearing on the issue is at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 5, at the Otsego town hall in Fly Creek, where residents will again have a chance to express their views on the proposal.
In an interview, Walker provided a four-page time line detailing all the steps he’s gone through with the Planning Board and the state Department of Environmental Conservation. In addition to town approval, Walker also is awaiting DEC’s review of his storm water management plan.
He described the process as “unusually detailed, but maybe properly so,” saying it has “taken quite a while.”
So far, Walker said, he has let the record speak for itself. At this hearing, however, he plans to share the time line and detail all he has done to meet requirements.
He said he has chosen not to respond to letters to the editor that have been published along the way, because everyone has a right to their own opinion, just as he has a right to go about his planning.
Paul Lord, Planning Board chair, indicated the four-inch packet of information on the subdivision is available for viewing at town hall for anyone who wants to see it.
Some concerns that have been raised by neighbors and community members over the past year have included the safety of the access road because of its steep grade and narrowness, the destruction of the mountainside view from the lake, an increased amount of contaminants and silt entering the lake and other ecological impacts.
OCCA Executive Director Erik Miller said his organization is most concerned about the runoff issue, and he has offered the organization’s assistance to the town in performing an natural resource survey.
Miller said the OCCA is waiting for DEC’s final review to be complete before weighing in.
When asked if he knew the status of the DEC’s decision, Lord said he had contacted the reviewing officer the other day and was told she was occupied with a higher priority matter and would get to the Walker proposal soon thereafter. Lord said he is confident they will review it in a timely manner.
Of the town process, Lord said, “We’re continuing to work through the info received on the Walker proposed subdivision and the public hearing will hopefully provide us with more information.”
While there appears to be a few board members willing to vote on the matter after next week’s meeting, Lord said there are a couple of things to review with the board and board attorney and he believes there may be at least one more public hearing before a vote.Labels: 05-01-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 9:05 PM |
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Trustees Find $400,000, Lift Freeze On Salaries
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By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
As Roseanne Rosannadanna used to say, “Oh! Never mind!”
After a week of storm and stress, where a split village board Monday, April 27, eliminated a 2 percent raise for village employees to divert money to street repairs, the trustees found themselves by mid-week somewhere close to where they started from, only better.
At what was expected to be a routine meeting Wednesday morning, April 29, simply to affirm the tax rate, Village Treasurer Mary Ann Henderson reported she had discovered the anticipated surplus wasn’t $239,000, but actually $624,000.
The dumbfounded trustees then added the 2 percent raises back in, shifted an extra $100,000 from the surplus to the street-repair fund, and cut the tax-rate increase from 4.47 percent to 3 percent.
Thus ended a tumultuous an when a new bloc emerged on the village board at what many thought would be a routine meeting Wednesday, April 22, to pass the proposed $5 million 2009-10 village budget.
Instead, Trustees Joe Booan, Eric Hage and Neil Weiller argued that the budget, while reducing not a single item related to personnel costs (57 percent of the budget), failed to provide any funding at all to repair rutted and potholed streets between Irish Hill and Brooklyn Avenue.
Without the three votes – a fourth trustee, Willis Monie Jr., abstained – the village board was unable to adopt the budget, despite 3 1/2 hours of sometimes bitter and accusatory debate and argumentation.
When the trustees met again the evening of April 27, the three trustees, plus Monie, adopted an amended budget that froze all village workers’ salaries, as well as longevity increases.
The new majority acted on a laundry list presented by Weiller that also added a $25 surcharge on parking permits in the Chestnut Street lots and eliminated a $2,000 expenditure for mulch.
While the meeting was calmer than the one before, it was not without its recriminations.
“What’s more important,” Mayor Carol B. Waller asked her colleagues at one point, “employees or streets?”
However, Hage said, “there needs to be some shared sacrifice here” during the economic slump. He pointed out that all jobs were being preserved and no one was being asked to take a pay cut.
Said Deputy Mayor Jeff Katz, “Let’s be honest about how limited the options are.” Going forward, he said, the trustees have the choice of cutting expenses or raising revenues through paid parking.
Trustee Lynne Mebust joined Waller and Katz in voting “nay” on the reduced budget.
When the trustees gathered Wednesday, April 29, the plan simply was to vote to finalize the tax rate based on the adjustments of two days before.
Instead, Henderson dropped the bombshell.
The night before, she said, she had discovered that the anticipated surplus would actually be $400,000 more than she had calculated. That allowed enough of a cushion for all the trustees to get what they wanted.Labels: 05-01-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 9:04 PM |
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Richfield Rail Bed Acquired
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2 Entrepreneurs Consider Options For 18.5 Mile Route
By JIM KEVLIN
RICHFIELD SPRINGS
 Two entrepreneurs have acquired the old 18.5-mile Richfield Springs railroad branch from Cooperstown’s Delaware Otsego Corp.
The Town of Richfield men, Ben Gotfried, who was previously involved in the railroad industry, and Ron Sadlon, a dairy farmer and Gotfried’s neighbor, closed on the property April 20.
The men are exploring recreational uses for the 66-foot wide strip – walking and snowmobiling – but also the possibility of enticing a narrow-guage railroad company to set up an excursion line.
The newly acquired rail bed – the tracks were torn up in 1995 – begins to the west of Route 28 just south of the Village of Richfield Springs, skirts the southwestern end of the village and proceeds to South Columbia, East Winfield, West Winfield and, finally, Bridgewater, where it ends at Mapledale Road.
North of Mapledale Road, the Central New York, the DO subsidiary, continues to operate freight trains today and, conceivably could be hooked into by the new enterprise.
“We’re just starting our outreach now,” Gotfried said the other day as he walked along the rail bed toward Second Arch, a stone span over Mink Creek.
The partners are calling their enterprise Utica, Chenango & Susquehanna Valley LLC.
They are organizing a tour of the property June 15, and have invited the state Department of Transportation, Herkimer and Oneida county economic development officials, and Parts & Trails New York.
Gotfried envisions the rail bed as a possible means to promote tourism in northern Otsego County. He has a slide of the former terminus at Lake Street in Richfield Springs and suggests that, revived, it could serve as a powerful magnet for visitors.Labels: 05-08-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 6:05 AM |
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Cooperstown and Around
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 Initiative’s Aim: Recruiting MDs To Rural Towns
COOPERSTOWN
State Health Commissioner Richard Daines will be in Cooperstown Monday, May 11, to detail a new Columbia-Bassett partnership to attract physicians to rural practices.
U.S. Rep. Mike Arcuri, D-24, Bassett President & CEO Bill Streck and representatives of Columbia University Medical Center will speak at a 1 p.m. press conference at The Otesaga.
Bassett has been implementing a program whereby physicians-in-training spend their last year of medical school at the Cooperstown medical center.
SUMMER COMING: The Cooperstown Farmers’ Market opens for its 19th season 8 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, May 9, in Pioneer Alley.
BIKE TO WORK: Nancy Potter of Cooperstown was the first registrant for Otsego County’s Bike To Work Day, organized by the OCCA. She and Jim Hill will bike to Richfield Springs Central School May 13. Register at www.occainfo.org, or call 547-4020.
NINE HOMES: Helderberg Realty is planning a nine-lot housing development on 67 acres south of the hamlet of Hartwick at Routes 205 and 45.
PARK PRESENTATION: CGP students are planning a presentation on Cooperstown’s parks at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 14, at 22 Main.Labels: 05-08-09, Cooperstown and Around, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 5:53 AM |
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Cooperstown and Around
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Thursday, April 16, 2009
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Lightning Hits SteepleAt 1st Pres
COOPERSTOWN
During the wild thunder and lightning storms Tuesday, April 21, lightning struck the steeple at First Presbyterian Church at 9:15 p.m.
A committee meeting was under way in the sanctuary next door, and the Cooperstown Fire Department was summoned quickly to the scene.
Electrician Kevin Preston conducted a subsequent review, and the scene was declared all clear by 11 p.m., according to Katie Boardman, church elder.
LOTS OF CLAMS: Lamont Engineers has told the village’s Zebra Mussel Committee that is will cost between $150,000 and $300,000 to protect the municipal water system from the multiplying mollusks.
TWO RAPES? Mayor Carol B. Waller let on the other day that two rapes are under investigation in the village. Police Chief Diana Nichols said both cases contain complications, making it unlikely either will actually go to prosecution.
HISTORY HOPEFULS: More than 425 middle and high school students from across the state will descend on the New York State Historical Association and The Farmers’ Museum Friday, May 1, for History Day competition.Labels: 04-24-09, Cooperstown and Around, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 9:56 PM |
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Four Trustees Challenge Mayor
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New Bloc Asserts Budget Ignores Deteriorating Streets
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
A new bloc has emerged on the village board.
Newly elected Trustees Joe Booan and Willis Monie Jr. joined with incumbents Eric Hage and Neil Weiller Wednesday, April 22, to block Mayor Carol B. Waller’s effort to ramrod through the $5 million 2009-10 budget, saying it included almost no money for street repairs.
“Every street between Irish Hill and Brooklyn Avenue is going to be ignored again,” said Hage during the rancorous meeting that lasted from 8:30 a.m. to 12 noon, while 20 village employees filled the seats.
Booan, over the objections of Mayor Carol B. Waller and Trustees Jeff Katz and Lynne Mebust, was able to carry the day, requiring Public Works Superintendent Brian Clancy to return to the session – to be reconvened Monday, April 28, at 7 p.m. – with a list of street priorities.
The new bloc was also concerned that, with 57 percent of the village’s budget going to personnel, 2 percent raises and a 4.47 percent increase in the tax levy, not a single reduction is being made in salaries, staffing levels, hours, overtime, or any other people-related budget lines.
“Are you saying our streets are more important than our employees?” said Waller.
Before the budget is adopted – the deadline is April 30 – the trustees have options: reducing the work week, cutting back hours, and so on, said Hage. After the deadline, the only option is jobs cuts, he said.
At several points, the meeting became heated.
At one point, Katz challenged Hage: “That’s just bulls–-. That’s just straight out bulls–-.” He added a few moments later, “I think you’re lying about that.”
At another point, Mebust was on the verge of tears.
When the mayor recognized Hage, then Weiller, in particular, she constantly interrupted when they tried to express their points.
At one point, she went after a surprised county Rep. Jim Johnson, R-Fly Creek, when he suggested the trustees might be wise not to count on the $100,000 from the county board until it is actually allocated. Plus, he said, adjustments in Workers’ Comp may add another $30,000 to village costs.
“You’re starting $120,000, $130,000 in the hole,” he advised.
That cause Waller to take a dig or two at Johnson, asking him what county Treasurer Myrna Thayne is making ($63,000) compared to Village Treasurer Mary Ann Henderson ($40,000).
“The county treasurer oversees a $116 million budget,” said Johnson. “I don’t think that’s fair.”
He said other public entities are looking into attrition, consolidation and shared services.
At another point, Booan pointed out his budget – he is Milford BOCES principal – is coming in at 1 percent, the CCS budget is at 1.9 percent and most school districts are coming in under 3 percent.
“Without firing anybody?” asked the mayor.
“Yes, we had layoffs,” said Booan.Labels: 04-24-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 9:51 PM |
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Ex-Publisher Bernhardt: Shut Down The Mercury
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We’re Not Seeking Fight, Just To Serve Community, New Publisher Responds
Editor’s Note: Since the Richfield Springs Newspaper only has one reporter – Editor & Publisher Jim Kevlin – he had to both report and be interviewed for this article. In the interest of full disclosure, the editor who wrote this note is also Jim Kevlin.
RICHFIELD SPRINGS
An attorney for Jay Bernhardt, the publisher who suspended publication of “The Mercury” Thursday, April 9, has directed the publisher who is seeking to maintain The Richfield Springs Mercury, which has served this community since 1867, to “cease and desist.”
The lawyer, Virginia A. Hoveman of the Syracuse firm Green • Seifter, wrote in an April 21 letter that continued use of the name, Richfield Springs Mercury, “constitutes a willful violation of the trademark rights and additional common law rights. The statutory penalties for such willful infringement include rights to claim attorneys fees and costs.”
Editor & Publisher Jim Kevlin, who reinstated the combined edition of The Freeman’s Journal & Richfield Springs Mercury Friday, April 17, said his interest is in serving the Richfield Springs area – readers and advertisers – and thereby strengthening both publications and the communities they serve.
“I’m surprised,” said Kevlin after receiving the letter. “I know Jay loves the Mercury. I thought he would be glad to see someone pick up the torch. I was looking forward to his advice and support.”
Kevlin said The Freeman’s Journal owns the name, not Bernhardt, but that a protracted legal argument serves no one: For the time being, the publication will bear the generic name, Richfield Springs Newspaper.
“Rather than fight with Jay,” he said, “we thought it might be fun to hold a ‘name your newspaper’ contest – maybe with a $200 prize to the winning entry. Watch next week’s paper for details.”
Contacted Wednesday, April 22, at his winter home in Florida for comment, Bernhardt said, “I have an important call on the other line,” and that he would call back, but no call was received.
After the first edition of the combined Journal/Mercury hit the stands, Jason Bernhardt, associate publisher of “The Mercury,” sent Kevlin an e-mail, CC’d to associates in Richfield Springs, calling him “a liar and a thief.”
Wednesday, April 22, father and son e-mailed a joint statement titled, “Don’t Be Deceived,” to advertisers and subscribers.
“Kevlin – or anyone else – has every right to publish a newspaper in Richfield Springs, but he doesn’t have the right to publish under our name or make false claims that we support it. It’s deceitful and it should make potential readers and advertisers wonder what else he’s capable of deceiving them about,” the statement said.
At least, said Kevlin, the Bernhardts recognize they “don’t own the First Amendment in Richfield Springs. Yes, we do have a right to publish a newspaper to serve the community and we intend to do so.
“‘Deceitful’ and ‘deceiving’ are strong words, and I’m surprised they are being bandied about so indiscriminately,” he said.
The name, Richfield Springs Mercury, was chosen by its founding editor, Henry L. Brown, who in 1867 declared, “It now appears to be decided that the rapid growth of Richfield Springs is a sure guarantee of the success and permanency of a weekly newspaper.” (Mercury was the Roman god of commerce.)
The newspaper was in continuous publication until 1972, when it closed and Fred Lee, then owner of The Freeman’s Journal, bought the mailing list, name and other remaining assets.
For several years, The Freeman’s Journal continued to run the flag, “Richfield Springs Mercury,” inside the newspaper on a page dedicated to Richfield Springs news.
In 2003, when Jay Bernhardt revived the Richfield Springs Mercury as an independent entity, he paid the then-owners of The Freeman’s Journal, Michael Moffatt and Lin Vincent, $1,000 a year for rights to the name.
After two payments, Bernhardt decided Moffatt and Vincent did not own the name, and he suspended payments and on April 11, 2006, filed for registered-trademark status with the U.S. Patent & Trademarks Office.
On Aug. 13, 2008, Bernhardt filed a small claim in Cooperstown Village Court against Otsego Templeton Inc., Moffatt and Vincent’s company, seeking to regain the $2,000. The papers were incorrectly served on Iron String Press, current Freeman’s Journal owner, so the case was dismissed.
At the time, however, M.J. Kevlin, Freeman’s Journal business manager, checked with the New York Department of State and discovered no one had a certificate of assumed name on “Richfield Springs Mercury.” For $85, she reclaimed the name on behalf of The Freeman’s Journal.
“I understand that Jay continued to pursue his argument with Otsego Templeton and eventually lost,” said Jim Kevlin, “which is why ‘Richfield Springs’ was removed from the newspaper’s flag – and its Web site – the last few months it was published by the Bernhardts’ company.
“Given the history and conflicting claims,” he continued, “The Freeman’s Journal claim is longstanding and as good – better – than any of the others.”
The point, he added, is that The Freeman’s Journal is intending to actually publish a newspaper – cover the news and serve advertisers – and no one else is.
However, Kevlin went on, “last time I spoke with Jay, he mentioned that his JGB Enterprises grosses $60 million on a given year, and doubled that last year by building a desalination plant for Iraq. The last thing I want to do is get into a fight with Jay Bernhardt.”
For at least the next three weeks, he said, the combined publication – The Freeman’s Journal & Richfield Springs Newspaper – will continue to be mailed to 2,089 households and businesses, all the mailing addresses in the Richfield Springs and Jordanville zip codes.
“This is a big opportunity for advertisers to maximize the impact of their messages,” he said. “Let’s embrace the ‘Mercury’ tradition, whatever we call it.”
For readers and citizens at large, he continued, the newspaper will promote community life, recognize accomplishments, connect people and foster debate.
“We’re here to serve you,” Kevlin said. “If you have news to report or advice to share, I’ll see you around town. Or just pick up the phone. You’ll find I’ll be glad to hear from you.”
Call him at (607) 547-6103.Labels: 04-24-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 9:39 PM |
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Something’s Happening, And It May Be Very Big
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Ioxus Trailblazing Here, As Did Fairchild Aviation, IBM
By JIM KEVLIN
 In 1889, Oneonta’s Harlow E. Bundy patented the “International Time Recorder.” It grew into IBM.
At the end of World War I, Oneonta’s young Sherman Fairchild figured out the mystery of aerial surveillance and grew that idea and others into huge Fairchild Aviation.
On May 1, 2009, Michael Pentaris’ staff at 118 Winney Hill Road is due to begin manufacturing something that must have been as obscure as an “International Time Recorder” was 120 years ago: “electric double-layer capacitors (EDLC) and modules using EDLCs.”
You may know this company as of offshoot of Custom Electronics Inc., founded in 1963 by Peter Dokuchitz, who at 81 is still chairman of the board.
You may know it as REDI (Renewable Energy Development Inc.), which has been heralded as possibly creating 185 jobs over the next five years, in a recession yet.
As of the other day, however, the operation in low-slung, unassuming buildings across the road from the former Ames Plaza on the west end is known as Ioxus, an ancient Greek word associated with “power,” coined by Chad Hall, the company’s chief operating officer.
A capacitor is what takes a power source and applies it: For instance, power is stored in a camera flash; you push the shutter button, the capacitor turns that power into the flash, explained NYSERDA spokesman Ray Hull.
By doing so, however, the capacitor draws down the power source. Ioxus’ product – marketed under the brand Redicaps – will use the power without degrading the source, according to Pentaris.
Eureka.
Redicaps – they look like regular batteries with plugs sticking out the top – will be used to extend the life of things like flashlights.
But think down the road: Adapted and enlarged, Ioxus’ double-capacitors, theoretically, could allow electric cars to run, not quite forever, but for an extended time, Pentaris said.
Think about the National Power Grid. Demand and supply spike and plummet over a typical 24-hour cycle. Ioxus’ double-capacitors, huge ones, could conceivably even out those peaks and valleys.
NYSERDA – the New York State Energy Research & Development Agency – is particularly interested in what the Redicaps concept means for evening out wind and solar power, where production fluctuates in the breeze, said Hull.
That’s why NYSERDA gave Ioxus $1.6 million last week, and has funded it with other incentives over the past few years.
“The technology shows great promise,” according to the press release announcing the latest loan, “because it stores much more electrical energy than traditional capacitors, therefore making it attractive for use in combination with batteries, solar cells and other power sources.”
Pentaris said Ioxus expects to have 30-35 employes by the end of this year. “If things go well, we could create a lot of jobs,” he added the other day during an interview at Ioxus’ headquarters.
A building is under construction in back of the current one for Phase 2 – it’s hush-hush, and Pentaris can’t talk about it with any specificity. A third building is rising behind that, for Phase 3.
In addition to Pentaris, who is president & CEO of both Ioxus and Custom Electronics – it is located on 87 Browne St. , but has distributorships all over the world – and COO Hall, the third key player is Thor Eilertsen, chief technical officer. (Thor, coincidentally, is the Norse god of thunder.)
The president & CEO pours praise on both of the key players, both Oneontans and engineers.
Eilertsen, who had worked for Bendix in Sidney and Astrocom in the Town of Oneonta, is “brilliant” in his ability to “think out of the box,” Pentaris said.
His boss acknowledges, “I hired him on instinct. I liked his brain. I liked the way he thought. We were proven right.”
The other was Hall, who “showed a lot of ambition and drive”
Touring the plant is a bit like walking through the Death Star (or, for the benefit of an earlier generation, the Starship Enterprise) – everything is pristine, glass, glowing ivory paint, stainless steel knobs.
Chad Hall explains that activated carbon is used to form an unspecified slurry, which is then treated and injected into the battery casing, but the details are proprietary. There’s a dry room, where humidity is .08 percent, where the treatment extends the product’s longevity.
During the tour, the manufacturing staff was testing the final product to make sure standards were met.
As soon as the testing is complete – any day now – Ioxus’ Redicaps will go forth to meet a brave new world.
HOMETOWN PROFILE: ‘Horatio Alger’ Pentaris
By JIM KEVLIN
When Mikhail Pentaris was a boy on Cyprus, his family was so poor he didn’t know that some families actually sat down to dinner.
“My mother would make me a slice of toast, put butter on it and say, ‘Here you go’,” said Pentaris, who was raised in the port city of Larnaca in a tiny house with his parents, two sisters, a brother and an uncle.
His mother’s kitchen was in a shipping crate in the back yard.
That’s a long time ago, 40-plus years, and a long way from where Michael Pentaris, 50, is today, as president & CEO of Custom Electronics Inc., and its subsidiary, Ioxus.
In recent days, Ioxus received a $1.6 million NYSERDA loan that will finance production of the company’s futuristic electric double-layer capacitors which, if they live up to their promise, could revolutionize power generation and transmission as we know it.
Poor, yes, but young Mikhail and his siblings were bright kids and their mother, Joanna, recognized it, and was able to obtain scholarships to Larnaca’s American Academy through high school. (“I found it fascinating that I could speak a foreign language,” he said.)
After a stint in the Cyrus national guard – he was astonished that he, “a poor kid,” was chosen to attend officers’ training, Mike, afraid of heights, nonetheless was washing windows on multi-story buildings for a living when he received word he had been accepted at Brescia College in Owensboro, Kent.
Things just accelerated from there.
He fell in love with his future wife, Therese, a student from Elmira, and when she moved back to SUNY Binghamton a couple of years in, Mike followed.
When he was awarded his bachelor’s in accounting, she went back to school for her master’s. When she was done, Mikhail Pentaris, raised in poverty on a faraway island, received a SUNY Binghamtom MBA.
Horatio Alger lives.
Things continued to break his way, even when they didn’t seem to. For instance, he didn’t pass his CPA.
“That was the best thing that DIDN’T happen to me,” he says today. “I’m just not a behind-the-scenes kind of guy.”
He went to Boston looking for an accounting job, where he met “a lot of declines and disappointments,” when he was offered a job back in central New York and found himself at D.M. Graham Laboratories in Hobart.
Graham happend to be going through a trouble spot, and Pentaris discovered he thrives in challenging times.
The young man was assigned to lay off 25 percent of the workforce and position the company for the next stage of growth. That eventually led to Graham’s sale to Mallinckrodt Inc. of Chicago: Graham made capsules; Mallinckrodt made the Acetaminophen that went into the capsule.
The combined company was eventually sold to Tyco International, and Pentaris stayed on a couple of years. But it was too big for the hands-on manager, who was recruited away six years ago by Custom Electronics Inc. President, CEO and founder, Peter Duchovitz.
“The first thing he told me: ‘There’s no money to cover payroll’,” recalled Pentaris. He was back in his element. He succeeded – he credits Wilber Bank Senior VP Jeff Lord with getting the company over the hurdle.
And, a year later, Duchovitz, who remained and remains chairman of the board, elevated his protege to president & CEO.
Meanwhile, he and Therese – she is a teacher at Oneonta Middle School – were raising five children, Joanna (after her dad’s mother), now 26 and working for Fidelity in Boston; Alexia, 23, in pharmacy school; Mikhail, 21, who’s at Hartwick College, and Dimitros, 14, and Antonio, 11, both in Oneonta schools.
The fortunate son maintained his ties to his homeland, where his brother and sisters have retired from banking and retail. He bought a penthouse apartment in Larnaca, where he can see his boyhood haunts from a different perspective, and visits a couple of times a year.
Things had clicked.
“What I like about Pete,” said Pentaris of his mentor at Custom, “is that he trusted me a lot. That means a lot to me.”
That trust turned out to be well-placed.
“I tried to move expenses out without hurting the ‘infrastructure,’ the knowledge and skills we would need to grow,” said Pentaris. “We replaced 2-3 people, setting up for the future ... We tried to accommodate everything we did to prepare for the future.”
And so, with Ioxus planning to start up its manufacturing line May 1, the future has arrived.
“I was poor. I didn’t have anything. It was a dream,” said Mike Pentaris. “I was a dreamer.”
And so the dream came true.Labels: 04-24-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 9:36 PM |
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Journal, Mercury Reunite
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Friday, April 10, 2009
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We Seek To Continue Vision That Inspired Publisher Bernhardt
Dear Readers,
When Jay Bernhardt was a boy on his family farm, he would hurry home Thursday evenings, and his dad and mom and brothers and sisters would sit around the kitchen table poring over The Richfield Springs Mercury.
Gary Smith had hit a home run. Mary Jones had made the Dean’s List. George Miller had been promoted to vice president of a prestigious advertising agency in New York City. And, yes, The Mercury recorded the passing scene, of babies born, of couples united, of revered neighbors moving on to a better world.
The cavalcade of life.
Graduating from Richfield Springs Central School in the 1960s, Jay Bernhardt went to Syracuse and proved his mettle in sales, which, in the newspaper business, we know – toiling in the trenches day to day as we do – is the too-little-appreciated engine of capitalism and free enterprise.
By 1979, Mr. Bernhardt had established his own wide-ranging plumbing-supply distributorship. By the early ’80s, he had wended his way through the arcane avenues of Pentagon bidding and cracked the code. His fortune was made.
Today, his JGB Enterprises is known across the nation and the globe – in 2007, the company assembled a $60 million desalination plant in Iraq essential to our troops’ wellbeing and a stable nation, if it is to follow.
But he never forgot his hometown, the landmark clock, the imposing business blocks, beautiful blue Canadarago Lake, the long and glowing summer twilights, his friends and his experiences growing up in the farming center and resort community.
And he never forgot The Richfield Springs Mercury.
And so he came home, and rediscovered his old friends, and built a getaway on Canadarago, and invested mightily in the hometown he loved and loves. It’s hard to look anywhere in Richfield Springs and not see where Mr. Bernhardt’s touch has contributed to the revival of his beloved birthplace.
And in 2003 he resuscitated The Richfield Springs Mercury, which, no longer viable to its then-owner, had been absorbed by The Freeman’s Journal in 1972.
Last week, Mr. Bernhardt announced that, due to the national economic challenge, which is being felt at every level, The Mercury is no longer tenable as an independent entity.
With this week’s edition, The Freeman’s Journal picks up the torch and reassumes its partnership with a respected competitor, with deep appreciation of the contribution and accomplishment of its interim proprietor.
By combining production departments, by taking advantage of new technologies, by adding another 2,500 to the Mercury’s 1,000 circulation – using the 2.5 multiplier that’s the industry standard, creating a 10,000-reader pool – our hope and expectation is that we can create a vehicle that will fully serve, not only readers, but advertisers who likewise recognize the value a well-accepted and widely read local newspaper has in promoting the general welfare. There’s simply no substitute amid the billions of fragmented bits and bytes of today’s media world.
To help assure seamless continuity, Mercury photographer Larry Budro has agreed to continue on the combined publication. And Mercury column Bruce Watson will continue to write his popular column as well. Tom Heitz’s history also continues.
If our hopes are realized – and we are confident they will be – The Mercury, which dates back a century and a half to 1867, in its collaboration with The Freeman’s Journal, will be a continuing credit to Jay Bernhardt’s energy and vision.
We look forward to Mr. Bernhardt’s encouragement and support as the combined newspapers strive to create a new understanding and amity around The Lakes and as enterprise that can assist businesses of all types – to the south, the north, east and west alike – to thrive in a larger, ever more prospering community.
Welcome, Mercury readers. And, Jay Bernhardt, thank you.Labels: 04-17-09, Front Page, Letter From The Publisher, Richfield Springs Mercury |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 6:44 PM |
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50 Gather To Brew Up ‘Tea Party’ Tax Protest
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Wide-Ranging Complaints, Distrust Expressed At Rally
By JIM KEVLIN
MILFORD
 The evening was cool, but the rhetoric was hot.
“If I fail in my small business, no one’s going to bail me out,” Tim Schorer, a truck driver from Hartwick, told 50 people gathered in Wilber Park’s pavilion here Wednesday evening, April 15, a local manifestation of hundreds of Tax Day “Tea Parties” that occurred nationwide that day.
The company that had contracted Schorer’s services suddenly laid off 600 workers last fall and closed its plant, he related.
“I was on the verge of losing my truck. I was on the verge of losing my house. I was on the verge of losing everything,” Schorer said.
No bailout in sight for him, he took out a second mortgage on his house, paid off his truck, and was headed to a factory in Vermont after the protest ended to pick up a load that needed to be delivered to Alabama by Saturday.
So when he heard about the Tea Parties on Fox News, he began chatting it up and soon found a number of people who liked the idea too, including county Rep. Betty Anne Schwerd, who helped Schorer put together an flier.
(County Treasurer Myrna Thayne and County Treasurer Kathy Sinnott Gardner were among the other public officials at the protest.)
On short notice, Schorer’s son, also Tim, and daughter Jordan distributed the fliers, even though “we were kicked out of the Wal-Mart parking lot.”
The crowd that showed up was angry at federal stimulus spending, but that wasn’t half of it. Taxation generally, illegal immigration, non-traditional marriage, a retreat from the nation’s Judeo-Christian roots, term limits and Second Amendment rights were among the topics raised in an hour of orations and open-ended discussion.
One participant called it “cathartic.”
The local gathering by all appearances was spontaneous, but wire service reports characterized the protests – they occurred in 800-some cities nationwide – as organized by anti-President Obama forces. Organizer Eric Odom was quoted as calling it a “new day for the freedom movement.”
At little before 6 p.m., a half-dozen people with signs, including Schwerd, gathered at the entrance of Wilber Park alongside Route 28, as passing motorists beeped in support.
“We can’t afford these policies,” said Laurie Glockler, who with husband Bill had attended another protest earlier in the day on the green in Norwich. Bill Glockler, a Vietnam veteran, said it was the first protest he’s ever participated in.
Pam Moxley, who drove over from Laurens with Joe and Sheryle Lifgren Charity, said she was at the 1,000-person protest in Syracuse’s Herald Square that morning. “There’s were a lot of young people there with children,” she said. “I was glad to see that.”
By 6, three dozen people had gathered at the pavilion – another couple of dozen filtered in – where Rev. Philip Sell, Hartwick Baptist Church pastor, decried the size of the federal bailout and its impact on future generations.
“The only reason they poured the tea into Boston Harbor,” he said, pouring tea from a Thermos onto the ground, “was they were being taxed but they weren’t being represented. That’s what’s happening today.”
Schorer was the keynoter, and he reported how he wrote U.S. Rep. Mike Arcuri, D-24, asking for help, once last November and then in March. The form letters he received back were identical, except for one paragraph.
That frustration bubbled over throughout the comments.
“When is the governor going to stand up and say, enough is enough, and mean it?” Schorer said.
He traced the banking problems back to 1976 and Jimmy Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act, which required banks located in poor neighborhoods to make loans there. The CRA was reaffirmed by President Clinton, he added.
By contrast, he quoted President Bush railing against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s domination of lending early in his term.
However, he concluded, “This isn’t about left or right. This is about right and wrong.”Labels: 04-17-09, Front Page, Taxes |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 6:39 PM |
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Cooperstown and Around
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 MURPHY AHEAD: At press time, Democrat Scott Murphy of Glens Falls was 86 votes ahead of Republican Jim Tedisco of Schenectady in their too-close-to-call race to represent the 20th Congressional District, which includes eastern Otsego County. In all, more than 156,000 votes were cast in the March 31 election.
ON IRISH HILL: On Monday, April 13, Mayor Carol B. Waller was scheduled to officially launch improvements to water lines, sewerage, streets and sidewalks in the Irish Hill neighborhood at Main Street’s west end.
$100,000 GIVEN: Cooperstown Rotary has donated more than $100,000 this decade to local causes, Jim Gates, a member of the Allocations Committee, announced Tueday, April 14.
ON THE AIR: National Baseball Hall of Fame President Jeff Idelson and local officials were interviewed Wednesday, April 15, for Peter Greenberg’s Worldwide Radio Show, which will be broadcast for three hours Saturday morning, April 18, on more than 150 stations nationwide. For more information, visit petergreenberg.com
NO SMOKING! Pursuant to an Oct. 20 village board vote making Cooperstown’s parks smoke-free, signs were erected Tuesday, April 14, in Badger Park.
RELAY TIME: It’s time to sign up for the Relay For Life, planned May 29 at Westville Airport. Visit www.relayforlife.org/relay/ for information and to register.
BOOK SIGNING: Photographer Richard Duncan will be signing copies of his new book, “Otsego County,” Saturday, April 18 at the Cooperstown Farmers’ Market.Labels: 04-17-09, Cooperstown and Around, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 6:34 PM |
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Reports Of Twain’s Passing GREATLY Exaggerated
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By LAURA COX
 To quote Mark Twain himself, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
There’s no better proof, almost a century after Samuel Clemens’ death (Twain/Clemens died in 1910), than multiple events planned in Oneonta and Otsego County over the next month associated with the classic “Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”
Beginning Saturday, April 18. The BIG READ – Twain is the focus of this year’s National Endowment for the Arts crusade – gets under way at 2 p.m. at the Oneonta Teen Center, 4 Academy St., with a 1938 movie, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” following by a Claymation version of “The Adventures of Mark Twain.”
And that’s just the start of a month of celebrating Mark/Sam, culminating in a Marathon Read May 16 at the Foothills Performing Arts Center, which is the NEA’s implementer in these parts.
Last year’s BIG READ, the first celebrated locally, focused on Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
The BIG READ is not just for kids. Quite the opposite.
“Young readers … get BIG READ attention every day in school,” said Sam Goodyear, BIG READ coordinator and Foothills grants administrator. “We are more interested in stimulating an interest in reading.”
The NEA defines a reader as someone who has read one book in the last year, meaning fewer than 50 percent of American adults are considered readers, with the 18-35 demographic being the “most delinquent.”
This year’s BIG READ will feature a whole array of activities – movies, lectures, plays, even a spelling bee. A highlight of choosing this particular book is it was written in our own backyard, in Elmira, and so a one-day excursion is planned to Quarry Farm, his country house and octagonal studio overlooking the Chemung River and the mountains of Pennsylvania.
It was there, now the Center for Mark Twain Studies, that “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” was written.
Another gem of this year’s BIG READ will be the stage play of Mark Twain’s own “Tom Sawyer.” Sam Goodyear will direct, and a cast of all local actors, led by 12-year-old Chase Thomas of Oneonta, will perform.
“Since the first rehearsal, Chase has really taken on the allure of Tom Sawyer, body movements and reactions,” said Goodyear.
The play will premiere on Friday, April 24, with repeat performance on Saturday and Sunday, April 25, April 26 and May 1, May 2 and May 3, all at the Foothills Performing Arts Center. Admission is free.
The marathon read will also be something for everyone to enjoy. Starting in the morning people will take turns reading aloud, usually in 15-20 minute increments. Come for 20 minutes or stay for the whole day, it starts at 10 a.m. on May 16 at the Bright Hill Center located at 94 Church St. in Treadwell.
“It’s about giving voice to the book, even if just a few are there to listen,” Goodyear said about the marathon read, he plans to bring a copy of the book in German and in French to read aloud from.Labels: 04-17-09, Front Page, The Big Read |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 6:23 PM |
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Curator Ted Spencer Retires; Co-Fathered ‘Women In Baseball,’ Inspiring Hit Movie
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Monday, April 6, 2009
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COOPERSTOWN
 In 1985, Sharon Roepke, a young woman visiting the National Baseball Hall of Fame, gave Ted Spencer a small pamphlet.
It reported on a then-little-remembered All-American Girls Baseball League that flourished during World War II.
The curator mentioned it to Bill Guilfoyle, then the Hall’s director of communications.
Might make a good exhibit. They left it at that.
In November 1986, L.A. Times reporter Janice Mull called Guilfoyle: Ever thought of doing an exhibit on the girls’ league?
Bill conferred with Ted, who said, “Tell her, ‘We’d love to do it, if we had some artifacts.’ And see what happens.”
Before you know it, Dotty Collins, star pitcher of the Fort Wayne Daisies, got in touch and, soon, there were artifacts aplenty.
When “Women in Baseball” opened at 25 Main on Nov. 5, 1986, 1,200 people showed up, compared to the usual 700.
Ted and Bill looked at each other in awe: “We really got lucky on this one; we really got lucky,” Ted said.
Filmmaker Penny Marshall saw a news report, and the result was the huge 1992 hit, “A League of Their Own,” filmed in part at Doubleday Field.
Ted Spencer, who came to the Hall from corporate communications in Philadelphia 29 years ago, announced Monday, April 6, that he’s retiring.
He will be succeeded by Eric Strohl, a CGP alumnus, who will take the title of senior director of exhibitions.
During his tenure at the Hall, Spencer also applied his corporate experience in developing the Grandstand Theater.
After a short vacation, Spencer, without portfolio, plans to be back in the Hall archives, sorting through 60 years of letters and documents that have never been organized.Labels: 04-10-09, Baseball Hall of Fame, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 11:11 PM |
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‘Wisdom, Integrity, Strength’
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Thanksgiving Home Director Leaves,But Philosophy Endures
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
 For years, Pat Donnelly would leave her one home and arrive at her other home to hear Peg Harrington playing “Oh, What A Beautiful Morning” on the piano.
“Who goes to work in a place like that?” asked Pat Donnelly, who Tuesday, March 31, retired from The Clara Welch Thanksgiving Home after 19 years – 17 years as executive director – of going daily from one home to another.
If Pat Donnelly’s love of the job and the place is evident, it is returned.
Jane Forbes Clark, president of the Thanksgiving Home Board of Directors, praised Pat’s “wisdom, her integrity, her strength” and called her tenure “wonderful years for residents and staff.”
Talk to Pat Donnelly for a while – she was interviewed in the country ranch she and husband Paul occupy in a meadow off Route 33 south of the village – and you can see why. Words like “respect,” and “love,” and “caring” surface in various contexts.
But don’t be lulled. Those soft qualities are wedded with intense focus and a penchant for action, for accomplishment.
To hear her tell it, Pat Donnelly’s second, or third, or fourth career as the top Thanksgiving Home executive sounds like it just sort of happened – in a way opportunity knocks for the well prepared.
Born in Malone and raised Milford – her parents ran Crowley’s Corner Store there – Pat trained as an R.N. Graduating from the University of Rochester, she intended to go to California. Home for the summer, she took a temporary job at Bassett Hospital to keep occupied and met a young hospital administrator.
She and Paul married, and they raised four children in Albany, Milwaukee and Spokane, Wash., before returning to Cooperstown in 1989.
On the way, she founded the Childhood Education Association in Albany, returned for her master’s in psychology from Cardinal Stritch College in Milwaukee, and was director of volunteers at a Spokane hospital.
The youngest Donnelly children, Patrick and Megan, were still in high school (the older daughters are Erin and Kara), so Pat was looking for a parttime job with flexibility: The nurse/consultant job at the Thanksgiving Home seemed ideal.
Two years in, Mavis York departed as the Home’s executive, the board asked Pat to take the job, and she did.
About that time, Dr. Bill Thomas, a Harvard-trained geriatrician from Sherburne, was making his rounds at the Chase Home in New Berlin and asked a patient, “What can I do for you?” Her answer – “I’m so lonely” – made him realize that caring requires more than just medical proficiency.
The result was The Eden Alternative, a working philosophy now in place at 15,000 locales around the world. Pat Donnelly heard about it; she and Thomas connected by phone.
What both had concluded was that for a facility to be a home, it has to be a home, non-regimented, where people have control to the degree possible over their daily lives.
“It’s always easier to take care of people then to let people take care of themselves,” said Pat. But that, indeed, was the challenge.
She took the three-day Eden Alternative training course, and the Home’s management staff met weekly to talk through how to put the concepts into action.
As matters evolved, people who had enjoyed art were starting to paint. Gardeners began gardening. Excursions occur to the opera or concerts. A knitting circle began when Hurricane Katrina struck, and it is still going strong today, knitting scarves for soldiers in Iraq.
If a resident wants to take a shower in the morning; fine. Or noon; fine. Or late afternoon; whatever. “We don’t set up the schedule – which is typical in a home,” Pat said. One woman enjoys chopping vegetables, so there’s a space set aside for her in the kitchen. Another likes to bake; so be it.
“It’s real. It’s a place where people live,” said the fledgling retiree. And the staff, used to one way of doing business, got the hang of a new way by the turn of the 21st century.
“If you treat your staff with respect and love” – those words again – “they treat the people they care for the same way,” said Pat.
With that working philosophy in place, Pat, Jane Clark and the rest of the managers and directors turned their attention to the first major renovation of the facility at Grove and Glen, which had been built as a hospital in 1892 and converted to a nursing home in 1928 after Bassett took off.
Plans were to put an addition on the back, widen the halls, open up the rooms. In anticipation, no new residents were admitted for a period and the 14 remaining ones were moved to The Otesaga in September of 2002 when work got under way.
At 3:30 a.m. on the following March 26, a ringing phone woke Pat up. It was Gary Wadsworth, assistant to the facility manager. The Clara Welch Thanksgiving Home was on fire.
“By the time we turned the corner at the Bowerstown bridge, the whole sky was red. I said, ‘Paul, it’s gone.’”
By 3:30 that afternoon, Jane Clark had flown in from Florida and took charge. She convened the directors and said, “We’re going to rebuild.”
“This is her heritage,” said Pat. “This meant a lot to her. The residents meant a lot to her. She didn’t blink an eye.”
It took another year, but the new Thanksgiving Home rose, identical to what the renovated one would have been, but new in every other way.
A philosophy was in place that she knew would endure. The facility – rather, the small-h home – was state of the art.
“I knew it was time,” said Pat. “I knew the home was in a very good place. It’ll just do beautifully.”
It was decided that Laurie Blatt, a Bassett administrator for 26 year, would succeed Pat, and the two spent three months together, ensuring a smooth transition.
And so Pat Donnelly woke up April 1 after 19 years in a 24-7 job with nothing in particular to do. She went to the Clark gym for a work out, as she usually does.
Back home, she went through her address book and sent long, personal messages to friends and family members, the kind she hadn’t had time to for a long while. Then she noticed her e-mail wasn’t working.
“Where are my people to help?” she thought to herself. “Before, I would just say, ‘help me,’ and somebody would help.”
She spent 3 1/2 hours on the phone with a technician; welcome back to the real world.
The world, however, is populated with memories.
Of Jose Gil (Veronica Seaver’s dad), who moved here from Spain as a young man, ran a gas station for decades and was fully involved in the fire department. Active into his ‘90s, he would walk all over town every day, pausing to rest at Spurbeck’s on the last leg home.
Of Ellamae Hanson, who wrote her “Thanksgiving Home Notes” for The Freeman’s Journal for 8 1/2 years, never missing a week.
Of Everett Case, retired president of Colgate University and son-in-law of Owen D. Young, who talked the pre-Eden administration into letting him bring his Steinway grand piano with him; on his death, he donated it to the Home, and it’s still in the library.
Pat remembers his “wonderful wit and a twinkle in his eye.”
And so a chapter ends.Labels: 04-10-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 11:07 PM |
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Aaron Due At Show In His Honor
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COOPERSTOWN
The baseball legend and home-run king himself will be in Cooperstown at 11 a.m. Saturday, April 25, to cut the ribbon on “Hank Aaron: Chasing The Dream,” a permanent exhibit in his honor at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
In announcing the news Wednesday, April 8, Hall President Jeff Idelson called Aaron “a true American hero.”
“His achievements are astounding,” said Idelson, “even to the most knowledgeable baseball fans. Through ‘Chasing the Dream,’ visitors today and for generations to come will learn more about the impactful life and career of Henry Aaron.”
Aaron set many records in his 21-year Major League career, but the number 756 -- his record-setting career home-run tally -- set him apart from the pack. Sporting News named him the fifth most outstanding Major Leaguer of all time.
Barry Bonds purportedly passed that record last year, but his achievement was tarnished by allegations of steroids use.
Born in poverty in the South – he learned to hit accurately with a broomstick and a bottle cap – Aaron played in the Negro Leagues before joining the Milwaukee (then Atlanta) Braves in 1954.
Aaron’s Cooperstown appearance will come 35 years to the day when he first established the record with his 715th career home run at Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium, off Al Downing of the Los Angeles Dodgers, on April 8, 1974.
After the ribbon-cutting, Aaron will be the featured guest for a one-hour discussion in a “Voices of the Game” event at 1 p.m.Labels: 04-10-09, Baseball Hall of Fame, Front Page, hank Aaron |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 11:07 PM |
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Open House At Otesaga Marks 100th
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COOPERSTOWN
The public is invited to an open house, followed by a performance by Glimmerglass Opera’s Young American Artists, Wednesday, April 15 to help mark the resort hotel’s 100th anniversary.
The open house begins at 4:30; the performance at 6.
Light refreshments will be served throughout the afternoon. No reservations are required. The concert is free.
Other centennial activities are planned during the year.Labels: 04-10-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 11:03 PM |
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Cooperstown and Around
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JUSTICE RESIGNS: Henry A. Fernandez, former NYSHA CEO who, as acting village justice, found himself in the middle of a turf war between Mayor Carol B. Waller and Village Justice Enid Hinkes, has resigned. He is leaving the village, he told village trustees.
HEADS HOSPICE: Lola Rathbone of Milford, Catskill Area Hospice & Palliative Care interirm executive director, has the job permanently after a nationwide search. The Hospice board voted unanimous approval Tuesday, April 7.
HEADS HYDE HALL: Likewise, Diane Elliott, Hyde Hall interim executive director, has been offered the position permanently and has accepted.
NOMINEES SOUGHT: Otsego 2000 is seeking nominations for its annual Historic Preservation Awards for Otsego and Schoharie Counties. Check www.otsego2000.org for details.
HOLIDAYS? CCS has two snow days left; if they aren’t needed, the students will get extra holidays on Monday, April 20, and Friday, May 22.
BACK TO TEXAS: Oklahoman Steve Newby, who resigned as village building inspector over the winter, got a surprise offer on his 8 Susquehanna Ave. home, accepted it, and left town Tuesday, April 7. He and wife Vicki are moving to North Texas to be near grandchildren.
FROM RUSSIA: Village Historian Hugh MacDougall has run across a Russia-based Web site about Cooperstown. Check out http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/84564
STIMULUS AID: The first stimulus aid to reach Otsego County is up to $970 per acre being offered for land in flood plains. You must register by Friday, April 10, by calling 547-8337.Labels: Cooperstown and Around, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 11:01 PM |
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At 91, Feller To Trailblaze HoF Classic
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Thursday, March 26, 2009
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COOPERSTOWN
If you had seen Hall of Famer Bob Feller, tall and strong, signing autographs in front of Legends Are Forever last summer, you never would have guessed he was 91 and never would have thought his baseball-playing days are over.
Well, he is 91. And his baseball playing days aren’t over: When it’s “play ball” at the first Baseball Hall of Fame “Classic” at 2 p.m. Sunday, June 21 – Father’s Day – at Doubleday Field, Feller will be on the mound.
Feller, who was one of the “Big Four” Cleveland Indians of the 1950s and, inducted in 1962, has been in the Hall of Fame more than half his life, is the third oldest Hall of Famer after Lee McPhail and Bobby Doerr, both also 91.
“They don’t call him ‘Bob Rapid’ for nothing,” said Hall of Fame President Jeff Idelson, who also announced Monday, March 30, that Ford Motor Co. has been recruited as a major sponsor. “He’s been loosening up most of the spring.”
To a degree the appearance is symbolic, although the Hall of Famer continues to train with the Indians each spring, Idelson said. Asked how long Feller will pitch, the HoF president responded, “He can pitch as long as he wants.”
Feller – batters who faced both him and Nolan Ryan said the former’s pitches were harder – will be one of at least five Hall of Famers who planned to participate in the first “Classic,” which is designed as a replacement for the Hall of Fame Game, held for the last time last summer after seven decades.
The other four who will play in the seven-inning exhibition game are Ferguson Jenkins, Paul Molitor, Phil Niekro and Brooks Robinson, along with 20 other former Major League stars, including George Foster, Bill Lee, Steve Rogers and Lee Smith. Other players will be announced throughout the spring.
Echoing Hall of Fame Game traditions, the “Classic” will be preceded by a game day parade at 12 noon as well as the popular pre-game home-run contest at 1. A full complement of activities are planned throughout the weekend , Idelson said.
Ford’s sponsorship will allow the weekend to be affordable for families. Tickets, which will go on sale Saturday, April 18, are $12.50 for first and third base seats, and $11 for outfield seats.
Hall of Fame members will be able to buy tickets over the phone 9 a.m. to 5 p.m . that same day by calling 1-866-849-7770.Labels: 04-03-09, Bob Feller, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 6:41 PM |
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Proposed 2009 Village Budget May Rise 4.5%
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COOPERSTOWN
The village trustees are proposing a 2009-10 budget that would raise taxes 4.5 percent and basically funds the status quo.
“You can only do the best you can do with what you’ve got,” said Treasurer Mary Ann Henderson.
The proposal, the result of weeks of debate among trustees, will go to a public hearing at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 8, at 22 Main.
The total budget actually drops, from $5.23 million to $5.13 million, but the tax levy rises from $1.62 million to $1.7 million.
The new trustees – Joe Booan Jr. and Willis Monie Jr. – will be asked to vote on the budget at their first meeting.Labels: 04-03-09, Budget, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 6:38 PM |
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The Otesaga Thrives As ‘Place Of Meeting’ for 100 Years
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 The Otesaga’s history dates back to March 1908 when Edward S. and Stephen C. Clark purchased the Holt-Averill property in Cooperstown for a summer hotel. Ten acres fronted 700 feet on Otsego Lake.
Percy Griffin of New York City was architect, and construction began in July 1908. The hotel opened on July 12, 1909, and was “conceded to be the finest summer hotel” Upstate. It was named Otesaga, an American Indian word meaning “Place of Meeting”.
The hotel originally had 179 sleeping rooms, including 26 rooms on the top floor for staff. Today it has 135 air-conditioned guest rooms and suites. An “American Plan” hotel, it has a dining room serving breakfast and dinner, plus a lunch buffet that includes seating on the veranda overlooking Otsego Lake.
There are nine meeting rooms, the largest being the ballroom which will accommodate 250 guests.
Originally built as a social hotel, 60 percent of its business today is group meetings and conferences.
During Hall of Fame Weekend, the hotel closes to accommodate the MLB greats.
The first business group at the hotel in 1909 was the New York Press Association, which will be meeting there again in September to celebrate the centennial.
Twice the hotel was used for other purposes.
From 1920 to 1954, it was used by the Knox School, an exclusive two-year finishing school. In 1961-1970, AT&T used it for training. In each instance, the hotel continued to operate as a resort during the summer months.
Across Lake Street are the two hotel tennis courts, built in 1961.
The other major amenity for the hotel guests is the Leatherstocking Golf Course, which is considered to be one of the most scenic and challenging courses in the Northeast. It was built in 1909 and designed by Devereaux Emmet, one of the leading architects of that period. The course was renovated in 1996 by Bob Cupp, another leading architect, who also added a state-of-the-art driving range.
At the height of the season, the staff is 300.Labels: 04-03-09, Front Page, The Otesaga |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 6:24 PM |
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Quietly, Bob Harlem Did Good – And He Honored Rule Of Law
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By JIM KEVLIN
 Once upon a time, there was a young man who went to Richfield Springs High School who “was in fights all the time.”
Lucky for him, his father was a friend of Oneonta’s Robert A. Harlem Sr., the retired state Supreme Court judge.
“He was incorrigible,” Harlem said the other day in an interview from his winter home in Venice, Fla. “You couldn’t rein him in.”
So dad and friend got the boy into the boxing program at the Oneonta Boys & Girls Club.
“If he wanted to fight, let him do it in a organized way, where you have rules,” Harlem told his friend.
The boy, as you might expect, turned out to be a pretty good boxer. And “he turned out to be a fantastic kid,” said the judge.
To hear Bob Harlem, who will be honored Friday evening, April 3, with the Otsego County Chamber’s Eugene A. Bettiol Jr. Distinguished Citizen Award in a gala at SUNY Oneonta’s Hunt Union Ballroom, talk about his life, a similar dynamic surfaces again and again.
As Harlem tells it, he just happened to be there. Then – coincidentally, he’d have you believe – something good resulted.
One Saturday morning, Fred Knott called from Goodyear Lake. This was in the late ‘60s. NYSEG, Knott told Harlem, was ready, after resisting all attempts at negotiating, to breach the dam at the lake’s south end. If that had happened, Goodyear Lake would have been an overgrown gully today.
Within a half hour, Harlem and Knott were conferring in the lawyer’s office. Over the weekend, state Supreme Court Judge Joseph P. Molinari issued a stay, which Harlem served on NYSEG Monday morning. By the time it was over, the dam was under new ownership and the lake was saved. (Good bass fishing there, incidentally.)
Then there was the time Bob Jr., then 17, got a speeding ticket on an errand from his mother to pick up sweet corn at Reynolds’ on River Street.
The son asked the father to defend him, and when the case got to City Court, Judge Al Baldo said to the lawyer, “What do you want? Parking on the pavement?”
Said Harlem, “Read the charge.”
The judge did, then asked, “How do you plead?”
“Guilty,” said the lawyer, and he made the son pay the fine.
On the way out of court, Bob Jr., now president of Otsego Ready Mix and other ventures, said to his dad: “Next time, I’ll get a better lawyer.”
In addition to Bob, they are Ramona Palermo, attorney Richard – his father, at 82, is still doing research for their former firm – Rebecca Lloyd, and Ruth and Rosemary Wood. (In the same vein, Rebecca remembers, when there was something she knew she ought to do but didn’t want to, her father would tell her, “You have to do it; it will build character and instill discipline.” At the time, she bristled; since, she’s used the same strategy on son Derek, now 25 and a sergeant in the Army, and daughter Jaclyn, 23, to good effect.)
Robert A. Harlem Sr. was born in Yonkers, one of five children. Their father, a letter carrier, died when the children were young and their mother struggled to make ends meet.
“We scrimped,” he remembers. “We didn’t have very much. We never had welfare; we never took a dime. We just had a lot of pride.”
After a stint in the Army at the end of World War II, a high school friend got him a job filing papers and doing office work for a law firm in New York City that defended Travelers Insurance Co.
It was there, listening to the lawyers tell their stories, that he found his vocation.
“It really excited me,” he said.
Using the GI Bill and working two jobs, Harlem got his bachelor’s up in Plattsburgh at Champlain College, one of the Associated Colleges of Upstate New York, established by the state to handle the post-WWII demand for higher education, then got his law degree at SUNY Albany.
He was the first member of his family to go to college. There was no desk in the family firm waiting for him.
But fate intervened. The law students sat alphabetically, so he spent a lot of time next to Bob Hathaway, a student from Oneonta, who, as graduation neared, told him of an opening at Harrington & Bookhout.
He’d never been to Oneonta before he came to town for the job interview.
Afterward, he went to Mac’s Barber Shop, then on Broad Street, where “the barber was telling me there was nothing here for young people, about the tragedy that young people had to go elsewhere to get a job.”
As it happened, Bob Harlem got the job. He lived on Academy Street for a little while, then moved to the Town of Oneonta; within a year, he was town attorney. Within five years, he was county attorney. Meanwhile, at Harrington & Bookhout, which also did a lot of work defending insurance companies, his practice was burgeoning.
When attorney Dick Bookhout went on the bench, he handed over a lot of the insurance work to Harlem, who went into practice with Walter Terry.
“I did a tremendous amount of trial work,” said Harlem, estimating at times his cases made up half to 2/3rd of the court calendar.
His advice to lawyers just starting out is three-fold.
One, you have to be better prepared than your opponent; there’s no substitute for preparation. Two, expect the unexpected, as “the unexpected is more usual than the expected.” Three, always be yourself, as “juries can see through people who are trying to play a role.”
As it happens, his most memorable case was one of his last. A Delhi school bus had tipped over, and several students were injured. Defending the school, he sued General Motors which, instead of settling, brought in heavy hitters from New York City’s Thatcher Bartlett, then the biggest firm in the world. In the end, GM ended up stuck with three-quarters of the award.
It was one of his heroes, Judge Molinari, who by example caused Harlem to seek a judgeship: “I totally admired the way he handled people. How gracious he was. How considerate he was. I felt if I could get on the bench I could do something like that.”
Dr. Carson, Democratic county chairman, Oneonta mayor and Fox’s chief surgeon in the 1950s, was another hero: “He taught me more about medical aspects of personal injury law than one could learn in school. A great man.”
And Attorney Sheldon Close, “a student of the law” who was up-to-the-minute on changes in the law until shortly before he died at age 100.
A longtime friend, attorney Ed Gozigian of Cooperstown, said the same thing about Harlem: He loves the law. (Also, “he hits the long ball.”)
So it could be expected that when the opportunity came, he went on the bench, elected as county and surrogate judge in 1972. In 1978, he was elected state Supreme Court judge, serving until 1991, when he went back into practice with son Richard.
In the courtroom, Harlem was in charge, Gozigian remembered: “When an attorney objected, he ruled. And as far as he was concerned, that was it.”
All the trial work he’d done prepared him well.
“Don’t give me an objection like, ‘My client doesn’t know the answer’,” he’d tell the attorneys. “I tried enough cases that I knew all the tricks – or most of the tricks. I didn’t want them tried on me.” Harlem had seen all the tricks.
Over the years, he presided in Albany, Rochester, Brooklyn. Only once, in Manhattan, was there a lawyer he couldn’t control.
“He kept challenging my rulings. And I warned him this was not his role. If he felt there was something wrong he could always take an appeal,” said the judge. “He kept doing it. I finally had to declare a mistrial, the only one in my years on the bench.”
A big part of the job was writing decisions, the most memorable involving Betty Mucha, wife of a Cornell professor, who, although not a lawyer, kept bringing lawsuits in her own name.
If she didn’t like the result, she would sue the judge, and it got to the point she had suits pending against every judge in the Sixth Judicial District.
Harlem’s turn came. She sued him. And he wrote a decision invoking the “rule of necessity,” concluding Mucha could bring no more suits without the approval of a Supreme Court judge.
The ended that. Betty Mucha went on to get an actual law degree and, practicing in Rhode Island, she was disciplined for calling the chief justice of that state’s Supreme Court a member of the “judicial mafia.”
“Ironically,” said Harlem, “the chief justice of Rhode Island was later found to be part of the Mafia and was removed from the bench.”
Mark Grygiel, who chaired the Otsego County Chamber committee that chose Harlem for the award, said he was surprised and impressed by how much good the judge had quietly done.
Few knew, Grygiel said, “because he liked to do things behind the scene, not for the glory, but for the right reasons.”
Often, recalled another friend, Geoff Smith of Medical Coaches, they’d be talking and the phone would ring, with someone asking for a donation or to make a call on behalf of a cause.
“When I started to practice law, life was a lot simpler than is it today,” Harlem explained. “Every lawyer back in those days did pro bono work.
People would come into the office; if they didn’t have any money, we would help them anyway. I never took a fee up front.”
He continued, “We didn’t practice law because it was a business; because it was a profession. We wanted to give something back. We wanted to elevate the role of the lawyer in society.”
Harlem, Geoff Smith said, would have been successful anywhere. Why did he stay in Oneonta? Why does he continue to come back?
“First of all,” the judge replied. “You couldn’t find a better place to raise kids.”
Crime is low. Schools are good. The two colleges “ are more than willing to share whatever attributes they have” – the library, the sports facilities.
“My family understands this,” said Harlem. Son Rich, the lawyer, has been president of Hartwick College’s citizen advisory board. Bob has been chairman of the school board.
“You should create the environment you live in to the degree you can,” said the honoree. “You’re going to be a lot more comfortable, a lot happier, if you help create the environment yourself ...
“...and you do it by involvement.”Labels: 04-03-09, Front Page, Robert Harlem |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 6:23 PM |
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Agway Sale May Spur Redevelopment
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Wednesday, March 25, 2009
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COOPERSTOWN
Mike and Carol Manno, who redeveloped dilapidated 21 Railroad Ave. into some of the only Class A office space in the village, has purchased the former Agway across the street.
“We want to protect our investment,” said Manno in advance of the closing, adding, “We’re old house people.”
The sale was finalized on Wednesay, April 1. The seller, Niles Curtis, operated the Agway for years before selling it to Julie and Matt Barnes. The Barneses moved their business to Hartwick Seminary in March.
“Right now,” said Manno, who lives in Cooperstown but operates Apple Converting in Oneonta, “I just want to put the building back to its original structure as a feed mill and get a feel for it.”
The structure, he said, is sound, could be adapted to any number of uses, and he said he welcomes any suggestions people may have.
Some he’s received so far include a fish and meat market, arts and crafts shops, an Army-Navy store, a restaurant or a flea market.
Agway is at Railroad and Glen, but the purchase also includes a building at Railroad and Leatherstocking that was used for storage. That’s been suggested as an auto repair or tire repair shop.
While Notre Dame architecture professor Philip Bess was in town the weekend of March 20, Bill Waller, chairman of the village’s 2025 Commission arranged for Bess and Manno to sit down and brainstorm together.
The Railroad Avenue neighborhood has been seen as a likely “second downtown” as baseball stores took over Main Street, but the concept never came to pass.
Manno said he would like to see the street closed off during summer Saturdays or Sundays for a farmers’ market.Labels: 04-03-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 6:37 PM |
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When You Listen To John Irvin, Otesaga’s Prowess No Accident
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By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
 When John D. Irvin was a junior in high school in Virginia, his father Doral – that’s The Otesaga general manager’s middle name – took him on a business trip to the old Hotel Roanoke.
Fred Walker, the hotel’s sales manager, asked the tall young man what his plans were.
Young John wasn’t sure.
“You ought to do hotel sales,” said Walker; his protege can still remember the older man’s raspy voice today. “It’s a great career. I’ve loved every minute of it.”
Three weeks before he graduated from high school in Lynchburg, the phone rang.
“Johnny, what are you doing this summer?” said the raspy voice.
That summer, his mentor got Irvin a job at the Cavalier Hotel in Virginia Beach, where he said he worked some, but remembers the summer mostly as a good time.
The next spring, the phone rang again. Same rasp: “I checked on you. You didn’t work hard enough.”
That summer, Irvin worked at the Hotel Roanoke, and Fred Walker made sure he worked hard enough.
Monday through Friday, Irvin had a split shift, toiling on the front desk during the crowded check-out time in the morning and the crowded check-in time in the afternoon. On Saturdays, he worked into the wee hours as the night auditor.
“That was the job where I fell in love with the business,” said Irvin, top executive at the Cooperstown resort hotel that will be honored Friday, April 3, with the NBT Bank’s Distinguished Business Award at the Otsego County Chamber’s annual Banquet and Celebration of Business at SUNY Oneonta’s Hunt Union Ballroom.
The hotel was founded 100 years ago by brothers Edward S. and Stephen C. Sr. of Cooperstown’s notable Clark family. Jane Forbes Clark, Stephen’s granddaughter, is The Otesaga’s president today.
In addition to Irvin, other key executives during The Otesaga’s 100th anniversary year include Bob Faller, director of sales and marketing; Katie Sanford, reservations manager; Glenn Schilling, director of rooms operations; Gordon Clarkson, director of catering & conference services, and Chris Stecher, director of restaurants.
Irvin’s approach to recruiting the team that seamlessly operates Otsego County’s hub of business and social gatherings on Glimmerglass’ shores: “I believe in letting people do their jobs. I want to have someone in every position who’s smarter in that position than I am.”
That approach to running a 300-employee operation – it includes not just the hotel proper but the Cooper Inn and the first-class Leatherstocking Golf Course – was honed in a 40-year career. The centerpiece was two decades with the multi-national Marriott Corp., but Irvin’s love was always historic hotels that The Otesaga exemplifies.
He was raised in what he remembers as Lynchburg’s small town atmosphere, where his father had two careers.
The first, with the Chapstick company, where Doral Irvin developed the “turn thing” – for lack of a better term – at the bottom of the Chapstick tube. Young John would ride back and forth to Richmond with his dad as he checked the machine shop that was developing the device’s prototype. (Later, every time his father would pass a display of Chapsticks, he would test the tubes to make sure they were working right.)
The second was as executive director of the Elks National Home in Bedford, Va. (“We’re in the same business,” he’d tell his son. “The only difference is my guests don’t check out until they REALLY check out.”)
John went on to Virginia Tech and, after graduation, two years in the Army, overseeing a program in Texas training soldiers to speak Vietnamese before they were deployed to Southeast Asia.
As his discharge neared, he picked up the phone. Soon, he heard that familiar raspy voice at the other end. Four or five interviews and two job offers later, ex-lieutenant John Irvin found himself in sales at the famous Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., where J. Edgar Hoover was a daily luncheon guest in The Rib Room.
In the years that followed, he was director of sales at the Spanish-style Hotel Hershey (run by the Milton Hershey Trust to benefit his school for orphan boys); the Sandestin (the innovative resort in Florida’s panhandle went bankrupt before it opened, but – reorganized – flourished in later years), and the historic Homestead in Hot Springs, Va.
At the Mayflower, there was a bellman who was so frail guests would carry their own luggage, fearful he would topple over from the weight. Why didn’t he retire? It turns out he spoke 27 languages, making him indispensable to the operation.
At Hershey, Irvin was organizing the annual conference of the National Association of Secretaries of State, hosted that year by Pennsylvania then-Secretary of State Dolores Hoffman, when he was summoned to summer training at Fort Indiantown Gap.
When Hoffman called to check on progress, she reacted with dismay. At her direction, the reservist soon found himself standing in front of the commanding general at The Gap, who advised Irvin testily that his “special assignment” during his two weeks of training that year was to run Hoffman’s convention.
“Lieutenant,” the general barked as Irvin turned to leave, “...and get a haircut.”
In 1976, Irvin jumped at the chance to move from sales into management at the Whiteface Inn & Golf Club in Lake Placid. When it was sold at the end of the season, he went back to sales at the Colony Beach & Tennis Resort on Long Boat Key, near Sarasota, Fla.
“The best thing that happened” during the Lake Placid sojourn came during a visit to Atlanta, where the 6-foot-4 Irvin met a lively 5-foot young woman. She was “cute,” had “a charming personality” but, best of all, “she laughed at my jokes.” He and Nancy married a year later in Florida, (where her equally petite mother succeeded in cutting the top off the groom’s head in all the photos.)
Nancy had worked for the Hyatt on Peach Street in Atlanta, so knew what she was getting into. These careers are 24-7. Their enduring 33-year marriage produced two children. Daughter Nicole, 29, is studying for a second master’s in psychology at The New School, after graduating from Auburn and getting her first master’s from University College, London. Son Ren, 26, is a life support systems operator at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta.
After his marriage, Irvin managed Dunfee’s Houston hotel and The Lodge of the Four Seasons, Lake Ozark, Mo., before joining Marriott for what would be a 20-year association. He managed its St. Louis Airport site, The Grand Hotel in Port Clear, Ala. (nine years), The Bay Point in Panama City, Fla., and – again – The Grand.
Over the years, Irvin had been active in the American Hotel Lodging Association (he is currently on the board of directors) and had made a lot of contacts in the industry. So it was only natural that he heard Frank Maloney was retiring after a successful stint as The Otesaga’s general manager. Before long, Irvin found himself, after an afternoon of interviews, sitting in a rocking chair on the veranda overlooking Otsego Lake, the Sleeping Lion in the distance, chatting with the guests – “The loved it” – as he waited to join his hosts for a business dinner.
Irvin was smitten with The Otesaga from the start – the white pillars and brick front reminded him of The Homestead – but it was the level of service – and the multiple layers of service in the diningroom – that sold him.
“I want this job,” he said to himself. Today, he says, “I’m really the envy of a lot of my peers.”
Irvin calls The Otesaga “the heartbeat” of the community,
the way only a hotel in a resort town can be. On any given day, there might be a christening party in the morning, a wedding in the afternoon, and a reception for mourners in the evening. The resort’s many longstanding guests, who come back year after year as their families grow, also create an inviting continuum.
And, of course, there’s Hall of Fame Weekend, when The Otesaga hosts baseball legends.
This – a place he loves, working for people he admires – will be the last stop in his career, which Irvin nonetheless anticipates will continue for another half-dozen years. He and Nancy have bought a retirement home in the village, and plan to do the same in Atlanta, where they will spend their winters near their son and two of Nancy’s sisters.
In recent years, he had been on the board of advisers at SUNY Delhi, which has an ever-more respected hospitality program.
“The industry has given me a wonderful life,” explained Irvin. “I like to give something back.”
Fred Walker would be proud.Labels: 04-03-09, Front Page, The Otesaga |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 6:21 PM |
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Cooperstown and Around
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Scott Murphy Leads By 25 Over Tedisco
At presstime Wednesday, April 1, Democrat Scott Murphy was leading Republican Jim Tedisco by 25 votes for the 20th District Congressional seat that includes eastern Otsego County.
The tally was Murphy, 77,217, to Tedisco, 77,192, according to the state Board of Elections. Tedisco edged Murphy in Otsego County, 1,052 votes to 1,001.
The outcome of the race to replace Kristen Gillibrand was seen to hang on the absentee ballot count.
ORGAN DONORS: Tim Wiles, National Baseball Hall of Fame director of research, will appear Sunday, April 5, as his alter-ego, Casey at the Bat, at St. Malachy’s Catholic Church, Philadelphia, to raise money to renovate the church’s organ, built by the father and grandfather of “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” lyricist Jack Norworth. The Phillies home opener is also that day.
DEAL IN WORKS: The village’s Doubleday Field Committee closeted itself Wednesday, April 1, to develop a counterproposal to a proposal of Tom Hickey, Fly Creek, to bring a New York Collegiate Baseball League franchise to Cooperstown in 2010. Chairman Eric Hage said the discussion was promising, but would say little more.
RAIL BOOM: Here’s some good financial news: The Cooperstown & Charlotte Valley excursion trains out of Milford have sold out this weekend.Labels: 04-03-09, Cooperstown and Around, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 3:39 PM |
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Mayor To Retire In ’10, Picks Katz As Successor
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 Republican Wife Of GOP
Chairman Backs Democrat
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
It’s still a year out, but Carol Bateman Waller, mayor of Cooperstown since 2002, has decided not to run for a fifth term when her current term expires next March.
And, a Republican herself and wife of the village Republican chairman, she is endorsing her deputy mayor, Democrat Jeff Katz, to replace her at the village’s helm.
“He’s worked very hard. He loves this village,” she said in an interview Wednesday, March 25. “It’s what’s best for Cooperstown, and that’s all that matters really.”
For his part, Katz said, “I appreciate that – her faith in me and her trust in me. I’ve put in a lot of hard years and taken on controversial issues. If the voters so choose, I would be honored to be mayor of Cooperstown.”
Waller’s announcement came a week after the Republican village trustee candidates outpaced the Democrats by a wide margin in the annual village elections.
Joseph Booan Jr. led the ticket with 341 votes, followed by GOP running mate Willis Monie Jr. with 276.
Democrat Richard Abbate, a Katz protege, garnered 177 votes, and incumbent Milo V. Stewart Jr., 137.
When he sought a second three-year term as trustee – in 2008 – Katz ran behind Republican Neil Weiller, 313 to 283, and only 24 votes ahead of Republican Doug Walker, a newcomer to politics.
That election came soon after a peak in the controversy over whether to institute paid parking downtown, where Katz was identified as a paid parking advocate.
After the election, Waller named Katz as her deputy mayor, replacing Republican Paul Kuhn, who had retired from the board.
Asked about Waller’s intention, Kuhn said she’s been talking up the idea for some time, and said he wasn’t aware of anyone else interested in leading village government.
“I don’t think anybody wants it,” he said of the mayor’s position. “It’s a thankless job, let’s face it.”
Kuhn said he endorsed Katz and his runningmate, Jim Vrooman, in 2008, and would endorse the deputy mayor “in a split second and work for him” if he ran for the top office.
Party politics, he continued, matters little in small towns, and he recalled that, for years, leaders of both parties in Cooperstown would get together and craft a “union ticket” that both would then endorse.
Ironically, it was Waller’s husband, Bill, who as village GOP chair revived the idea of contested races, saying voters deserve a choice.
If he continues in that vein, Bill Waller could be crafting the campaign for a Republican mayoral candidate at the time his wife is working for the Democratic standardbearer.
“I may have to move back to Main Street,” joked the mayor. She and her husband moved a couple of years ago from the vicinity of their store, Mohican Flowers, to Beaver Street.
Carol Waller, daughter of the late Charles Bateman, an influential county representative, was in the third year of her third three-year term as village trustee when then-mayor Wendell Tripp decided to step aside. She ran for the two-year post in 2002 and was elected again in 2004, 2006 and 2008.
Because of the sometimes bitter divide over paid parking, she ran last year because “I felt I needed to do it one more time.”
Katz, who was raised in New York City and had a career as a floor trader on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, retired to Cooperstown earlier this decade with his wife Karen and three young sons. A baseball enthusiast, he researched and published “The Kansas City A’s & the Wrong Half of the Yankees.”Labels: 03-27-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 6:31 AM |
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Crosby, Stills, Nash Plan To Perform At Doubleday
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By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
‘It seems likely that the drugs, booze, and groupies at the backstage parties have been replaced with Ensure, Viagra, and grandmothers. Not even rock stars are immune to the unstoppable creeping of time – and hairlines,” The Tech, MIT’s student newspaper, concluded when Crosby, Stills and Nash performed in Boston in 2001.
What may seem negatives to a college-age reviewer may be just the thing for headliners who perform in Doubleday Field, where the trio’s website, crosbystillsnash.com, says the 1960s icons will be performing Friday, June 12.
“All the shows we’ve done have appealed to a wide range of age groups,” said Deputy Mayor Jeff Katz after news of the website listing surfaced. Plus, “classic rock stars do tend to have a built-in following. Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, have a pretty devoted tour fol-
lowing.”
The two Doubleday Field concerts of 2006 – Paul Simon on the Fourth of July Weekend and Bob Dylan on Labor Day Weekend – followed a successful formula that, after a one-year hiatus, is being tried again.
The 2006 concerts netted the village a guaranteed $20,000 each, Katz said. And that didn’t include $2 for every ticket sold locally (at the time, through the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce), and money the fire department generated by running the concessions.
Those concerts were organized by Jam Productions out of Chicago. This one’s promoter is Stuart Green, a co-owner of Magic City Music Hall in Johnson City, near Binghamton.
So Katz said this summer’s deal doesn’t necessarily have to conform to the earlier ones: “What we’ve always said is: Propose a business deal to us.”
The recent history of bringing headliners to Doubleday Field goes back to 2004, when Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan did a joint concert that was deemed a big success. In 2004, Ed Tripp of Cooperstown spearheaded a concert by the Beach Boys, which was deemed less of a success.
Katz and Mayor Carol B. Waller said, even though the band is listing Cooperstown on its itinerary, nothing is certain since a contract has not yet been agreed upon. The village trustees intended to meet Friday, March 27, to hash out the details.Labels: 03-27-09, Concerts, Doubleday Field, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 6:27 AM |
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CCS Principals, McPhail Confer On How To Divide Kuch’s Duties
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COOPERSTOWN
It’s back to the drawing board, at least partly.
CCS Superintendent of Schools Mary Jo McPhail planned to meet Thursday, March 26, with her principals to revisit how to divide up the duties of former high school principal Gary Kuch among remaining administrators.
Two weeks ago, the CCS board announced middle school Principal Mike Cring would become Grade 7-12 principal, and elementary Principal Theresa Gorman would become K-6 principal. Under that plan, Gorman would go back and forth as necessary between the elementary school on Walnut Street and the high school on Linden Avenue, where Grade 6 is located.
McPhail emphasized that there are two separate issues here.
One, how to divide up Kuch’s responsibilities, which is driven by the opportunity to save money in the face of a $600,000 cut in state aid, the result of Governor Paterson’s need to close a state budget gap that has grown from $14 billion to $16 billion in recent days.
Two, whether to move Grade 6 back to the elementary school. That question was one of the Curriculum Committee’s objectives for the year, approved last September, well before the scope of the state aid cuts became clear.
On Wednesday, March 18, before an audience of more than 100 teachers, parents and taxpayers, some voicing support for the elementary-middle school-high school structure as it now exists, the superintendent said “it is not a foregone conclusion” that Grade 6 will be moved, and she pledged to reopen the matter.
McPhail didn’t want to discuss what she would recommend when she, Cring, Gorman and interim high school Principal Amy Kukenberger met Thursday afternoon, but said “the only piece that is being revisited is the administrative assignment.” The Grade 6 question is yet to be addressed.
In the report on the March 18 meeting, a quote misattributed to Elizabeth Redd, a neurologist, should have been attributed to parent Maureen Micek, a pediatrician. Micek asked that the school board not rush any decision.Labels: 03-27-09, CCS, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 6:23 AM |
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Cooperstown and Around
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Openings Herald Arrival of Spring
It must be spring: Two local stalwarts of the tourism trade – NYSHA’s museums and the Fly Creek Cider Mill – are opening.
The Fenimore and Farmers’ museums open Wednesday, April 1. The first features “Hidden Treasures” from its archives; the latter, self-guided visits of offerings. (See Page 9)
Opening Friday, April 3, the cider mill will feature curd tastings 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
Also, Glimmerglass Opera tickets go on sale Monday, March 30.
SPRING FLOWERS: Enjoy “Build-A-Bouquet Saturday,” March 28, where flowers will be available from establishments throughout the downtown, a promotion of the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce.
RESERVATIONS DUE: For tickets to the Otsego County Chamber’s Celebration of Business – former Judge Robert Harlem and The Otesaga will be honored Friday, April 3, at SUNY Oneonta – call 432-4500, extension 201.
SP-O-O-O-KY: Cooperstown Candlelight Ghost Tours begins its fifth season at 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 1, departing Pioneer Park. Reservations, 547-8070.
BEACH FAIR: The Friends of Glimmerglass State Park are seeking antique, crafts and food vendors for its beachfront “Glimmerglass Marketplace” fundraiser 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, May 9. E-mail nboshart@yahoo.com
SPRING GALA: Cherry Valley Artworks Art Show & Auction is 7 p.m. Saturday, April 4. $10 for hor d’oeuvres, desserts. Cash bar.Labels: 03-27-09, Cooperstown and Around, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 6:18 AM |
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Smithy Hires Fulbright Scholar As Gallery’s Executive Director
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Monday, March 16, 2009
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 Unadilla Native Ariell Ahearn
Completing Master’s At Cornell
COOPERSTOWN
Ariell Ahearn, a Unadilla native, potter and Fulbright scholar who is completing a master’s in public administration at Cornell, will become the Smithy Pioneer Gallery’s new executive director in early summer.
“She is one of the most magical people you could hope to meet,” said Elizabeth Nields, the Otego potter who serves on the Smithy board.
Ariell’s mother, Susan, lived in Oneonta when her daughter was a toddler, and Nields knew her then. They reconnected during Ariell’s teen years.
Ahearn later took a Nields’ pottery course while a student at Hartwick College, and “her energy transformed everyone,” her mentor said.
Henry F. Weil, Smithy chairman, said the board wants Ahearn to reach out to artists in the region and “make decisions for herself on what will work best.”
The Smithy, housed at 55 Pioneer St. in the village’s oldest building – originally William Cooper’s store – should be “a place for members of the community to be creative” and “a place of surprise and enjoyment,” Weil said.
Ahearn’s studies of art and public administration seemed ideal.
While at Hartwick, Ahearn said, she took advantage of opportunities to study abroad and did so in Mexico, Russia and then Mongolia.
She was inspired to seek a Fulbright to pursue research on the impacts of capitalism on that former socialist republic, the topic of her master’s thesis.
In addition to sculpting with clay – lately, abstracts of goats, which she raised while a girl in Duanesburg – she is a photographer.Labels: 03-20-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 7:09 AM |
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Teachers: Hands Off 6th Grade
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McPhail Reverses: Middle School May Not Be Dissolved
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
Cooperstown Middle School’s teachers argued putting Grade 6 back in the elementary school would ruin years of effort to smooth the transition from childhood to teenager-hood.
High School Principal Mike Cring, who was middle school principal until a week before, agreed.
And they were backed up by 100 parents.
In the face of the onslaught, Superintendent of Schools Mary Jo McPhail retreated Wednesday, March 18, from plans to move Grade 6 back to the elementary school, which would have dismantled the middle-school concept created 20 years ago.
Yes, the superintendent told the crowd in the middle/high school cafeteria, the school board, the week before, had announced it would not hire a replacement for former high school Principal Gary Koch, now Worcester Central superintendent. And it would assign Grades K-6 to Elementary Principal Theresa Gorman and Grades 7-12 to Cring.
These steps were taken to save money due to Governor Paterson’s reductions in state aid, McPhail said.
However, she continued, it is “not a foregone conclusion” that Grade 6 would be moved out of the Linden Avenue high school back to the Cooperstown Elementary School on Walnut Street, and the concept would be further studied.
Her announcement, about 90 minutes into presentations and pleas to preserve the middle-school concept as it now exists, drew applause from the crowd.
It was unclear if now Cring would oversee Grades 6-12, or if Gorman, as previously anticipated, would be ferrying back and forth between the two schools.
The evening began with an introduction by Cring and a PowerPoint presentation where each teacher, sequentially, gave reasons why the Grade 6-7-8 combination must stand.
Math teacher Mike Leggett praised the “true culture” and “strong middle school identity” that has been developed through the Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound design implemented since Cring arrived on the scene.
“Everything we do is transition,” added Dave Bertram.
“Careful consideration should be made in making seventh grade the transition year,” added Deb Miller.
And another called moving Grade 6 “a huge disruption and loss of our middle school that means so much to our kids.”
When the parents’ turn came, Elizabeth Redd said, “You need to slow this process down.”
Alex Thomas, the SUNY Oneonta sociologist and Hartwick parent, argued no changes should be made until a data-collection model is established to measure relative success.
Added Martha Heneghan, “I was not uinder the impression this is a done deal.”
It seemed that no one was around 20 years ago when the decision was made to create the middle school and move Grade 6, until former school board President Bob Hage was identified in the crowd.
The “seed of the middle school,” it turns out, was not necessarily educational, he said. The elementary school was “bursting at the seams,” so moving Grade 6 made sense for practical reasons.
At the time, he said, he anticipated the move might be reversed if the situation changed, as it now has: There’s room at the elementary school, and it’s the high school that’s now crowded.
Theresa Russo, a SUNY Oneonta education professor who serves on the CCS school board, had collected research – available on www.cooperstowncs.org – that showed middle schools are falling out of favor: When a transition occurs – like the shift to middle school and then to high school – performance drops, and reducing transitions from two to one actually benefit students.
However, the teachers had put together a packet from the National Middle School Association that decried “the rush to dismantle middle schools.”Labels: 03-20-09, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 7:05 AM |
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It’s Booan, Monie By Wide Margins
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Republicans Rout Dems In C-Town
COOPERSTOWN
The Republican ticket trounced the Democrats in the Wednesday, March 18, village elections.
Joseph Booan Jr. led the ticket with 341 votes, followed by Willis Monie Jr., 276, to win the two open seats.
Richard Abbate tallied 177 and the one incumbent, Milo V. Stewart Jr., 137.
Village GOP Chairman Bill Waller credited the margin with the amount of door-to-door campaigning Booan and Monie conducted.
He added, “They didn’t tell people what the issues were; they asked them what the issues were.”
The tally was a little lower than usual, perhaps due to downpours throughout the afternoon.
In all, 440 voters cast ballots at the fire hall, plus 52 absentees, compared to 505 and 50 in last year’s mayoral race.Labels: 03-20-09, Elections, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 7:02 AM |
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Cooperstown and Around
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BESS BACK: Notre Dame architecture professor Philip Bess will meet with the public at 2 p.m. Sunday, March 22, at 22 Main, to discuss how the village might implement the recommendations his graduate students developed last year. The public is welcome. He was invited by the village’s 2025 Commission.
RECTOR TO RETIRE: Christ Episcopal Church has formed a search committee to find a success to Father Samuel Abbott, rector, who is retiring June 30.
AARON VISIT? It is hoped that the hero himself will come to Cooperstown for the 11 a.m. Saturday, April 25, ribbon-cutting of “Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream,” a new permanent exhibit at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
MURPHY BACK: Scott Murphy, Democratic candidate for Congress in the 20th District, was back in Otsego County Wednesday, March 18, meeting voters in Milford. He and Republican Jim Tedisco face off in a special election Tuesday, March 31.
DAY-CARE OK’D: The village trustees approved Mary Turi’s application to relocate her Cooperstown Pre-School at the corner of Walnut and Deleware at their monthly meeting Monday, March 16. She had lost her lease to premises at Lake and Fair.
WEEK ON LAKE: The Cherry Valley Chamber of Commerce is raffling off a week at the Sleeping Lion Inn. Tickets are $5 at A Rose is A Rose, Gates-Cole Insurance, Coyote Café, NBT Bank or the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce.
CRAYON FUN: This year’s Crayon Carnival, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday, March 21, at Cooperstown Middle/High School, will feature “The Stroll of Nations,” allowing kids to “travel” to foreign lands.Labels: 03-20-09, Cooperstown and Around, Front Page |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 6:57 AM | | |
