By Bob Cudmore

   Longtime Amsterdam mayor Burtiss Deal was five foot five and weighed 150 pounds when he played varsity football for Amherst College in Massachusetts.

   Into his seventies Deal was able to make an impact on a conversation by jumping onto a table from a standing position,

   Born January 29 1882 at a home on Amsterdam’s Division Street, he was the son of entrepreneur Charles Deal and Eugenia Deal. 

   Charles Deal moved his family to West Galway after Burt was born and the elder Deal operated a shoddy mill.  The mill used scraps from woolen underwear to make new but inferior woolen yarn.

   When Burt was six years old the Blizzard of 1888 and his younger brother Howard arrived simultaneously.  The doctor was marooned with the Deals for several days until the roads were cleared.

   The Deals after a time moved back to Amsterdam and Burt graduated from Amsterdam High School, then on Academy Street. 

   He helped principal Wilbur H. Lynch pack his books for a trip to Mexico for an administrative teaching job. 

   In 1900 Deal pitched for the Creelers baseball team, named for the textile workers who tended Amsterdam’s carpet weaving looms.

Monday more from Bob "The story behind the Story" (a six minute podcast)

   Deal went to college in 1903, joined a fraternity and played football.  He had to leave without a degree and come back to Amsterdam because his family had financial reverses.

   Deal went to work.  He was with the production department of General Electric in Schenectady and then in sales for 17 years at International GE.  He was employed at Mohawk Carpet Mills in Amsterdam for five years.

   Amsterdam Mayor James Cline appointed Deal to his first political job on the Civil Service Commission.  A Republican, Deal was elected as Sixth Ward Alderman from 1932 to 1938.

   Deal opposed Democratic Mayor Arthur Carter and Carter’s New Deal programs.  Deal said despite his last name he had no connection to President Roosevelt’s New Deal or President Truman’s Fair Deal.  As a tribute to his people skills, however, he was elected vice president of the Democratic Party controlled common council in 1937.

   Deal’s former high school principal Wilbur H, Lynch succeeded Carter as mayor.  Lynch appointed Deal the city clerk in 1944 and 1945.

   Democrat Joseph Hand was elected mayor in 1945 but lost to Deal in the 1947 election.  Deal was reelected three times.

   Deal enjoyed establishing a friendship with Jan D’Ailly, the mayor or burgomaster of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.  He once took the burgomaster on a fall tour of upstate New York.

   Deal was not an activist mayor and was friendly to industry.  Unfortunately many problems caused decline of industry in the area including Amsterdam’s carpet mills.

   Deal was the mayor in 1954 when Amsterdam’s sesquicentennial was celebrated with a huge parade and other festivities.

   In 1955, as Deal’s fourth term was coming to an end, Bigelow Sanford carpet announced it was leaving Amsterdam.  Deal and city Republican chair Walter Going decided it was time for a change. 

   Frank Martuscello ran that year on the GOP ticket and was elected, the city’s first Italian-American mayor.

   Deal was 73 when he left politics.  His eightieth birthday was the occasion for stories about his career by two giants of local journalism, Sam Zurlo in the Gazette and Hugh Donlon in the Recorder.  Deal’s life is also chronicled in one of Michael Cinquanti’s books on Amsterdam birthdays. 

   Deal never married and lived in a house on Division Street which he called Gracie Mansion, a reference to the mayoral residence in New York City.

   Deal died in 1967 at the Lamp Nursing Home.  He was 84 and was buried at Green Hill Cemetery.

Monday, May 8, 2023

Amsterdam Mayor Burt Deal

Tuesday, May 9, 2023-From the Archives of Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-Marching drum corps in World War II

After all these years, Sylvia Zimolka Stock and Frank Yazum remember the colors their rival Amsterdam drum corps wore during World War Two

Wednesday, May 10, 2023-From the Archives- Episode 158, April 7, 2017-Folksingers Cosby Gibson and Tom Staudle perform songs from the early days of the Erie Canal.  The building of the canal began two hundred years ago.  Cosby and Tom have also appeared on Historians Podcast with songs about being a lumberjack, poetry of Poe and Kipling put to music, and labor union songs.

Thursday, May 11, 2023-From the Archives of Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-The Rockon Wye

Friday, May 12, 2023-Episode 474-New York City correspondent Jim Kaplan reports on how Harlem was economically developed in the early 1900s.  Jewish financiers joined with Black realtor Phillip Payton and other black businessmen to improve race relations in New York City.

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Joyce Stah, on the history of RISE, WMHT's radio information service for the blind and print disabled in New York's Capital Region and Hudson Valley. RISE volunteers read articles from newspapers, periodicals and books to audiences who would otherwise be unable to access such information. RISE depends on donations from organizations and individuals. RISE also carries each episode of The Historians Podcast.

Bob Cudmore "History stories from The Mohawk Valley"

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