Family fun with the Recordio

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette and Recorder

      In the late 1940s my family had a machine called the Recordio to make 78 rpm records for our own amusement.

We often sent these homemade records to my Aunt Winifred and Uncle Albert Gulloni who, with Albert’s daughter Sylvia, had moved to Inverness, Florida after World War II. The Gullonis sent us Recordio Discs they had recorded in return.

First sold in 1939 in variously priced models, the Wilcox-Gay Recordio enabled consumers to make their own records using a microphone or recording audio from an embedded AM radio.

My uncle Al had operated a radio and television repair shop in Scotia and moved south to advance his career in retail. My hunch is my parents got a deal on the Recordio from Uncle Al. It might even have been a gift.

There is a fair amount of information online about the Recordio, manufactured in Charlotte, Michigan. Youtube has examples of recordings made on this system, which one online audiophile described as “decent.” It’s reported online that Johnny Cash and Les Paul used these player-recorders at some points in their early careers.

Wilcox-Gay sold Recordio Discs or blank records in two sizes. You also could play commercially produced 78 rpm records on the machine’s turntable.

Unlike later cassette tape recorders, you couldn’t record over a Recordio Disc once you created it.

That was a problem in our case in that as a spoiled young child I was a show-off, fond of off-color words.

My father would say, “Bob, say Merry Christmas to Aunt Winnie and Uncle Al.” I would sometimes respond by saying, “Poop!”

In my defense I knew this would get a laugh at home from my aunts and sister, if not from my mother and father. We no doubt mailed the off-color Recordio Disc to Florida anyway, where my potty mouth likely got more chuckles.

One family picture shows my father Clarence holding a vase of flowers, standing and singing or talking into the Recordio microphone on a floor stand in our living room in our flat on Pulaski Street.

In this picture the Recordio itself is on a coffee table to my father’s right. The recording arm does not look like it is on the turntable. Maybe my father was practicing.

The picture was taken in 1949 or so as I was a toddler on the floor playing with my aunt, my father’s youngest sibling, Vera Cudmore. My sister, the real singer in the family, may have taken the picture.

My mother and my father’s oldest sister, Gladys Morrell, are sitting on a couch smiling, enjoying whatever father is doing.

The photo was taken before we had a television set and a large, handsome console radio, separate from the Recordio, has a place of honor along the Pulaski Street living room wall.

The Recordio made the move when our family relocated up the hill to a home of our own on Amsterdam’s Peter Lane in 1957. A few years after that Wilcox-Gay went out of business. At some point, unfortunately, our Recordio was discarded along with our Recordio Discs.

My friend Warren Garling, known as Chris Warren on the radio, has been interviewing veteran radio announcers for a podcast series about their careers. Several of them had technical skills and first got into radio by building their own home radio stations as teenagers.

I worked in radio for a half century or so but did not build a home radio station when I was a teenager.

But I did have the family Recordio which helped me practice my speaking skills when I was a child.

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.

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Amsterdam goes to war

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History for Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder

     The movie "South of Tahiti" was playing at the Strand Theatre on East Main Street in Amsterdam, when interrupted as the news broke that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.

Radio coverage was piped into the theater and dazed patrons left the building. A soldier from Amsterdam was among the 2390 Americans killed in the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941. William E. Hasenfuss, Jr. was from a family of nine on Northampton Road.

Hasenfuss had flown planes at an airfield in Perth before enlisting in the Army in 1939. According to research done by the late Bob Going, some 176 Amsterdamians were killed in World War II. Hasenfuss died when Japanese airplanes shot up the B-24 bomber Hasenfuss and his ground crew were working on at Hickam Air Field in Hawaii.

His mother Frieda, Amsterdam's first World War II Gold Star Mother, christened the light cruiser U.S.S. Amsterdam in 1944 at Newport News, Virginia. About twenty relatives and friends of the Hasenfuss family were at the ceremony along with Mayor Wilbur H. Lynch..

Mrs. Hasenfuss was overcome with emotion when shipyard workers gave her a diamond-studded wristwatch. Lynch said Amsterdam is “a splendid city” just as “the cruiser Amsterdam is a splendid ship.” "I was thinking of William when I smashed that bottle." she said as the vessel slid into the James River.

USS Amsterdam was among the American ships in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese surrendered in 1945. A model of USS Amsterdam was made by the late Albert M. Swager of Pennsylvania, a former crewman, who donated it to Amsterdam's Walter Elwood Museum.

George A. Tralka, 15, was at his family's James Street home in Amsterdam when he heard news about the attack on the radio.  At first Tralka thought Pearl Harbor was in Alaska. Tralka’s parents went ahead with plans to go out that day and to have Tralka watch his younger sisters.  The next day as Tralka delivered the Schenectady Gazette he heard President Roosevelt's "day of infamy" speech on the radio when at Reid Hill Pharmacy.

"It was a solemn moment in the drug store," Tralka wrote in his memoir, "Diary of a Replacement Soldier." As his senior year in high school drew to a close, Tralka enlisted in an Army training program.  His notice to report came a few days before his senior prom and he was so busy getting ready to go that he failed to notify his date that he couldn’t attend the prom.

Later his brother accepted Tralka’s high school diploma. Tralka survived the war and became a physician in the Washington, D.C. area.

James V. Hogg from Amsterdam was on a Navy ship somewhere in the Pacific when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. His niece Karen terHaar said, "In the months after Pearl Harbor, many ships in the area were ordered to maintain radio silence. The families of crew members did not know if their fathers, sons or brothers were dead or alive."

Hogg's parents, Frank and Mildred Hogg, were living on Grant Avenue in Amsterdam.

TerHaar wrote, "About four months after Pearl Harbor, Mom was sitting on the front porch when she heard the postman's voice. She saw him running down the sidewalk. He was waving a letter and yelling, 'Jimmy's alive! Jimmy's alive!'"

James Hogg became a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy and married a woman from Australia. He later lived in California. Mitsuo Fuchida was the Japanese pilot who led the first warplanes in the attack on Pearl Harbor. After the war Fuchida converted to Christianity and spent many years living in America, although he died in Japan at age 73.

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.

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Two Amsterdam cowboys

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder

     Amsterdam country music performer and radio host Dusty Miller, whose real name was Elmer Rossi, Sr, had a band called the Colorado Wranglers.

Miller's brother-in-law Barry Frank performed with Miller's band. Frank was a radio engineer well known in the Capital District. Miller had a day job stocking cigarette and other vending machines. In later years he delivered medicines from John Tag’s Guy Park Avenue pharmacy to local customers.

The Colorado Wranglers had a long run at Amsterdam's Bob's Tavern.  Miller managed to fit an Amsterdam radio show into his schedule well into his eighties. On his radio shows Dusty sometimes played his own music including his band’s theme song, ‘The happy roving cowboy.” When I started in radio in 1962 I used to run the controls for Dusty’s radio shoed on WCSS.  He was a great collector of radio memorabilia.  When I returned to this area I was glad to get a cassette tape from Dusty that had my introductions to WCSS programs from the 1960s.

Miller's last radio program on WCSS featured interviews with Amsterdam's myriad characters, from bartenders to former talk show hosts to country singers.

"I like country music because it shows life as it is," Miller said.

When he died in 1998 Dusty Miller was buried in his colorful cowboy clothes.

JACK PATTON

Jack Patton described himself as the Polish cowboy.   .

Patton was a musician, songwriter, health food advocate, actor and Amsterdam native.

The Web site HillbillyMusic.com reported that Patton's given name was Frank Aloysius Piecuch.      

His father worked at Mohawk Carpet Mills and changed the family name to Patton because there were too many other factory employees named Piecuch. Jack Patton played traditional Polish music at local weddings and dance halls on violin and accordion.

HillbillyMusic stated Patton was a childhood friend of actor Kirk Douglas, who grew up in Amsterdam as Isadore Demsky. Patton had a cowboy band in the late 1930s which was called Pals of the Saddle. However, the band was referred to as Pals of the Range in newspaper advertisements.

He moved to Hollywood in 1939 because Columbia Pictures was going to use one of his songs. Patton was drafted during World War II. He had impaired vision and saw limited duty, repairing damaged planes in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Columbia Pictures apparently used Cowboy Polka, one of his songs, in the movie "Swing in the Saddle" which featured music by Nat King Cole's trio. Patton met a songwriter named Eden Ahbez and apparently  helped convince Nat King Cole to record Ahbez's song "Nature Boy" which became a hit. Patton returned to the Capital District, opened a health food store, did radio shows and performed with his band. At one point, Patton had six health food stores. From 1949 to 1965, he operated a dude ranch called Sunset Ranch in Broadalbin.

 A 1952 Recorder ad reported Patton was doing a show from Lansing Beach Ranch in Broadalbin over Albany radio station WROW. A 1955 ad from the Schenectady Gazette stated Patton then operated Lansing Beach Ranch, renamed Sunset Ranch, which was having a horse pull and a broadcast by Gloversville station WENT.

Roamin' Around, a 1976 column in the Leader Herald, reported Patton was appearing in a movie filmed mainly in Brazil called Inspiration: The Polish Cowboy Rides Again.

Patton was living in Nashville when he died in the 1990s or later. He had purchased a recording studio there.

OLD CARS

Reader William Bechtel of Burnt Hills enjoyed the photos archived online by Library of Congress showing pictures taken in 1941 in Amsterdam: “I actually was driven in cars as seen in the photos and remember them.”

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.

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Amsterdam in 1941
By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette
     Photographer John Collier, Jr., spent one day in Amsterdam but his pictures provided a lasting portrait of a specific mill town just two months before the nation was thrust into World War II.

   A traveling photographer for the federal government's Farm Securities Administration, Collier visited Amsterdam on October 15, 1941.

 Collier was born in 1913 in Sparkill, New York, in Rockland County.  His father, John Collier, Sr., was U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1933 to 1945.
Injured in an auto accident at age eight, John Collier, Jr., had learning disabilities.  Having trouble in school, he was apprenticed to a painter whose wife was a photographer.
 When the federal photo project that brought him to Amsterdam ended in 1943, Collier served in the U.S. Merchant Marine. He went on to use photography as a tool in anthropology, the study of human cultures. He became a professor at San Francisco State University. He died in 1992 in Costa Rica.

Thousands of Collier's photos are archived at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at theUniversity of New Mexico in Albuquerque..  Many of his photos are on the Web site of the Library of Congress. Collier took many pictures in downtown Amsterdam, providing a glimpse of the downtown some of us still remember.

 It was raining when Collier photographed two women and one man walking by the Strand, a movie theater on the south side of East Main Street. The photo has a film noir feel to it. The movies advertised on the Strand's marquee were Mickey Rooney in "Life Begins for Andy Hardy” and a romantic comedy, “Affectionately Yours,” featuring Rita Hayworth.
The Strand was across the street from St. Mary's Church. Previously the theater was known as the Lyceum. In 1949 it became the Mohawk and was operated by the Schine theater chain based in Gloversville. Collier took pictures of barge and boat traffic at Lock 11 on the Mohawk River/Barge Canal.  He documented passage of an oil tanker, the Providence Socony, and a trio of wooden barges, pulled by a tugboat.  He photographed what he called a yacht, by today's standards a modest pleasure boat called Gypsy.

In one photo of downtown Amsterdam, Collier showed three older women talking near the long-gone S.S. Kresge store on East Main.  A younger woman is to the side looking in her purse.  All are wearing hats and coats. A man passing by wears a fedora.  His shirtsleeves are rolled up and his head is down.  No one is smiling.  There are parking meters and flags on the street.  The flags may be leftovers from the recent Columbus Day parade.
Two older men face each other in front of a store window in another photo.  They wear fedoras and rumpled sport coats.  The man facing us has a cane and wears a sweater. His shoes are scuffed. The other man gazes suspiciously down the street.

In a picture Collier captioned "after school," three young men and a young woman are talking. The young woman is wearing saddle shoes and bobby sox. One youth, identified as James Musella, wears a sweater with a "G", for Gloversville High School.  He and a young man in a leather jacket carry bowling balls.

Family members identified the man in the leather jacket as Albert Basileo who became a Navy seaman in the war. He lived until 1997. In a Collier picture that has been published often, two men in suits join two other men less formally attired in crossing Church Street in front of the White Tower restaurant, then at the corner of Church and East Main.

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.

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Mayor Carter makes friends with FDR

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History

    From time to time in the 1930s and 1940s Amsterdam Mayor Arthur Carter would get in a police car for a trip to Washington, D.C., to visit President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Lionel Fallows, son of Carter’s sister Nellie, said Roosevelt came through for the Amsterdam mayor. It was a triumvirate, Fallows said, with three Democrats in power: Carter the Amsterdam mayor, New York Governor Herbert Lehman and Roosevelt. There was federal money for the golf course, which was named for Carter, and money for other Amsterdam projects. Fallows said Carter could have done more but political opponents sometimes stymied the mayor.

Arthur Carter was born in 1897 in Kidderminster, England, a center of the English carpet trade that was a source of carpet-savvy immigrants who helped build Amsterdam’s leading industry. The youngest of several children, he came to America when he was nine and lived with his family on Lefferts Street in the East End.

Carter served in the U.S. Army in World War I.  He never took to carpet making, working instead in the wholesale grocery business.  In 1923, he married Lorraine Conrad. They did not have children.

Fallows said he did not know if his favorite uncle went beyond the eighth grade in school but said Carter took correspondence courses.

The year after his marriage, Carter started working for the State Comptroller’s Office in Albany as an auditor and got to know Roosevelt who became New York governor

Carter ran unsuccessfully for office in Amsterdam three times. Fallows said his uncle was terrified at first by public speaking but through practice became an expert at holding an audience.

In 1933, Carter was elected mayor, a year after Franklin Roosevelt was elected President. Carter was re-elected five times, the last time in 1941. He was also Democratic Party chairman, then a powerful position in Montgomery County.

In 1943, Carter left the mayor’s job in Amsterdam for the military.  A temporary mayor, John Klubakowski, served until Wilbur H. Lynch was elected and then sworn into office as Amsterdam mayor in 1944.

Awarded the rank of major, Carter served as military mayor of Bologna, Italy, during the Allied occupation. He learned Italian on the job.

When he returned to America, Carter went into broadcasting. He did a program on WSNY radio in Schenectady called Carter’s Comments.

In 1948, Carter was the principal founder of Community Service Broadcasting Corporation and radio station WCSS in Amsterdam. Carter was station president until 1953. He later worked in the financial field.

In 1963, Carter was prevailed upon by the Democratic Party to oppose Republican Marcus Breier in a race for Amsterdam mayor. Breier won.

Carter won more elections than any other Amsterdam mayor, although he did not serve the longest. That distinction goes to John Gomulka who served three consecutive four-year terms starting in 1968 and Mario Villa, who served eight years starting in 1980 and a separate four-year term beginning in 1992.

According to Fallows, Carter enjoyed strong support among Amsterdam’s Polish immigrants in the Fourth Ward and counted Reid Hill businessman Michael Wytrwal as one of his strongest supporters.

Arthur Carter died on August 29, 1983 at age 86. He and his wife lived at 4 Beacon Avenue on Market Hill. He was a member, treasurer and vestryman at St. Ann’s Episcopal Church for more than 25 years. He is buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery, as his wife was Roman Catholic.

A member of Masonic Lodge 829 for 64 years, Carter belonged to the Amsterdam Elks Lodge for 50 years. He was past commander of the James T. Bergen American Legion Post.

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer. 

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Editor remembered for his work at The Recorder 

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History for Daily Gazette and Recorder 

        Silvernail, the last name of an important and  long-tenured Amsterdam Recorder editor during the 20th century, seems to invoke a possible Native American origin. The family says though that Silvernail was not a Native American name but an Anglicized version of Silbernagel, a word of Palatine German origin brought to New York by settlers in the 1700s.

Stanley Silvernail was born in the town of Unadilla in Otsego County in 1917, the son of Harry and Olive Brownell Silvernail,  His father died when Stanley was a child and he was raised mainly by an aunt and uncle. He worked for the Amsterdam newspaper for 41 years, retiring in 1982.  In a news story on Silvernail’s death in 1990, Recorder reporter John Becker, wrote Silvernail was both a “fierce competitor and a kind, compassionate person.”

He was a graduate of Syracuse University, working his way through college with a job at the Syracuse Post Standard newspaper.  He earned a degree in journalism and liberal arts at Syracuse.   

He was a veteran of the U.S. Army Air Corps serving in Europe and Africa during World War II.  He was recalled to the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War as public relations director of the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.  He earned the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Air Force reserves.

He married Wilhelmina Anna Phillips in 1945.  They lived on Black Street in Vail Mills.  They are survived by two sons, Joel and Jeffrey.  SIlvernail was buried at Fairview Cemetery. He became Recorder city editor in 1953.  In 1970 he was appointed managing editor and in 1978 was named editorial page editor.

When Silvernail died, former Recorder editor Brad Broyles said “Stan was one of the warmest, toughest, most honest and decent people I ever knew.”Stanley Silvernail’s son Jeff reminisced about what it was like growing up as the son of a newspaper man:

 “Journalism was a demanding career. Dad worked full days Monday through Friday plus Saturday mornings. He also often wrote at home on his old manual typewriter on his own time. It made quite a racket.

     “We had a private line before anyone on Black Street because people were always calling for him usually with things that no one wanted to share on a party line. Until I was 12 his 2 week vacation was spent fulfilling his Air Force Reserve obligation. Once he retired from the service we were finally able to take family vacations.

 “Every year we spent 2 weeks at the Recorder's camp on Lake Pleasant, Pine Knoll Lodge. I have many great memories of those vacations fishing with my Dad. 

 “When I was little sometimes Dad would take me to work with him on Saturday morning. This was long before computers. Watching the stories come in on the teletype was fascinating and then they were dispatched to the correct desk with a pneumatic tube system. “In spite of his long hours, my father made a point of coming to our baseball games. He was a rabid baseball fan, especially of his beloved Phillies. He watched TV with a transistor radio by his ear so he could follow the progress of the Phil's games on evenings during the season.

 “His work connected him with many politicians. He was essentially fond of Rep. Sam Stratton who was also in the Air Force Reserve. We were on the Nixon's Christmas card list. After his death State Senator Hugh Farley called me to personally tell me how much my Dad meant to him. “Around the dinner table family discussions often revolved around current events and politics.”

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.

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More than a waitress

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette, Amsterdam Recorder

   When Orsini’s Royal Restaurant at East Main and Liberty Streets in Amsterdam opened in the 1920s, there were curtains on the booths.

Customers who were not Italian didn’t quite know how to eat spaghetti, according to a family member. Patrons embarrassed to be seen eating this unusual ethnic dish closed the curtains when dining on pasta. The Board of Health eventually ordered the curtains removed.

Anthony Orsini, an immigrant from Abruzzi, and his wife Julia Richitelli, born near Naples, started the restaurant, also known as the Royal Lunch, after Anthony learned cooking at Amsterdam’s diners. It was a family business involving sons Ralph, Arthur and Alfred and daughters Mary and Genevieve.

Genevieve was a founder of Psi Chi Phi a high school sorority for Italian girls. After graduating, she worked as a waitress.

Ten cents was a usual tip, and then twenty-five cents became standard. She said a fifty-cent tip was remarkable, ‘We had to wear an apron. We had to wear a decent looking outfit. And we had to be very neat. We had the pencil on a chain.’

When the late Judge Robert Sise was a youngster he went to first Friday communion at St. Mary’s Church, then stopped at Orsini’s for breakfast before school at St. Mary’s Institute. Sise’s parents gave the child money and told Genevieve to supervise. Sise wanted chocolate doughnuts but Genevieve said she made him have toast or oatmeal, “Bob was a little annoyed with me.”

In the Depression, Orsini’s offered a blue-plate special for thirty-five cents that featured meat or fish, mashed potatoes and vegetables. Coffee was five cents.

Richard Ellers, who later lived in Ohio, remembers the Orsini meal ticket. Waitresses punched the ticket, which cost $4.50 but was actually worth $5.00 in food.

The Strand Theater was across the street and stage performers such as Baby Rose Marie and Buddy Ebsen frequented the restaurant.

In the early 1940s, Anthony Orsini relocated the restaurant to Market Street. It was open twenty-four hours a day, with son Ralph handling the overnight shift. There was more room for wedding receptions--a six course Italian meal cost one dollar a plate.

Genevieve married Edward Hartigan in 1944. Hartigan, the son of an Amsterdam police detective, fought with Merrill’s Marauders in the China-Burma-India Theater in World War II. He had been a vaudeville performer, bartender and later worked at the Scotia Naval Depot. He died in 1964.

The Hartigans lived at the corner of Division and Pine Streets and took in boarders, including members of the Rugmakers baseball team and WCSS radio announcers.

Orsini’s Restaurant closed in the 1950s. Anthony Orsini then worked as a cook for Tony Griffin at the Wil-Ton Lanes on Main Street. Later, his son Ralph opened an Orsini’s eatery on Wall Street near the former junior high where students bought French fries in little paper bags.

After Orsini’s closed on Market Street, Genevieve waited on tables at Isabel’s, a family-owned Italian restaurant on West Main Street, and then was a waitress for Pedro Perez at the Elks Club and a lakeside restaurant.

In 1957, she began working for the New York Retirement System, retiring herself in 1974. That year, she married Morris Palombo, a widower who was a food broker. Morris died in 1999.

Genevieve Orsini Hartigan Palombo was 99 when she died on Thursday, February 13, 2014. She had two children, son Michael and daughter Jennifer. Michael died in 1984.

Genevieve also was survived by two step-daughters, Sandra and Carol, plus seven grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

She enjoyed crocheting, reading, writing, cooking, entertaining, collecting nut crackers and writing letters.

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.

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Lonely hearts killing case linked to Amsterdam

By Bob Cudmore

Focus on History, Daily Gazette, Amsterdam Recorder 

      An Amsterdam woman was the step-daughter of a 1949 victim of a notorious murderous couple.

Mary C. Fay was listed in the 1930 census as a hospital nurse living in Albany with her father, Matthew Fay, and step-mother, Janet J. Fay (nee Flinn).

Mary Fay married a prominent physician, Alton Spencer. In 1940 Mary and Alton were living in Canajoharie with their daughter. They subsequently moved to Amsterdam.

Matthew Fay, Janet Fay's husband and Mary Spencer's father, was a steamfitter. Matthew and Janet lived on Caldwell Street in Albany until Matthew's sudden death in 1946.

At the end of 1948 Janet Fay, then about 60, was lured into a romantic relationship by Raymond Martinez Fernandez, a native of Hawaii who wore a toupee.

The late historian David Fiske wrote in a New York History Blog article, "The modus operandi was to use 'lonely hearts' ads to lure lonesome women into romantic situations in order to make use of their financial resources. In several cases (at least) the victims were then murdered."

Fernandez was joined in the scheme by Martha Beck. Beck, who had children in Florida, was originally earmarked to be one of Fernandez's victims, but the couple fell in love.

Fiske wrote that Fernandez began courting Fay at her Albany apartment on New Year's Eve of 1948, "Beck stayed out of the way at a hotel. After their initial meeting, Beck was introduced as the sister of Fernandez (a ploy used with other victims). Before long, Fernandez proposed marriage to the lonesome widow, and she accepted."

Fiske said Fay introduced her new friends to the Spencers at their Summit Avenue home in Amsterdam in early 1949. Dr. Spencer told the Albany Times Union, "We weren't suspicious in any way."

A short time later Fay took several thousand dollars from her bank account, left Albany and went to Valley Stream on Long Island with Fernandez and Beck.

Mary and Alton Spencer received a typed letter supposedly from Fay that did make them suspicious.

"We received many letters from Mrs. Spencer's stepmother," Dr. Spencer told the Times Union. ''None ever were typed. We thought it was very unusual." Mary Spencer went to Albany and convinced police to search for her step-mother.

Police found that Fay was murdered in Valley Stream after Beck became jealous when she saw Fernandez in an embrace with Fay. Beck, who weighed 200 pounds, bludgeoned Fay with a hammer and Fernandez then strangled Fay with a scarf, according to prosecutors.

The couple then went to Michigan, having found another lonely victim there. Fiske wrote, "Their killing spree halted when they were arrested in Michigan, where they admitted to having murdered a woman and her young daughter. Because they were in a state with no death penalty, they also felt comfortable telling police there about a widow they had murdered in New York State."

Police found Fay's body in Ozone Park in Queens, buried in the cellar of a house the killers had rented. Mary Spencer went to Queens to identify her step-mother's body.

New York State, which had a death penalty then, extradited Fernandez and Beck. Fernandez blamed Beck for the killing. He did tell police he had murdered 17 women, but authorities could not confirm that.

Both were found guilty after a 30 day trial that summer. Mary Spencer testified about the visit the two killers had made to her Amsterdam home.

Fernandez, 36, and Beck, 31, professed their love for each other before being executed by electric chair at Sing Sing prison in 1951. The case has been the subject of a book, e-book and 1970 film.

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.  

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Weather prophet Cousin George

 By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History for Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder 

  Weather prophet George Henry Casabonne was once described in a newspaper story as "cocky as a blue jay and scrappy as a bantam rooster."

Casabonne, five foot two, worked as a stonemason, farmer and General Electric factory hand. His 1974 obituary stated he was born in Northville in 1886. In 1959, though, he told the Gazette he was born in Tribes Hill.

He married Lydia Kruger and they had four children. Starting in 1917 the family maintained a farm on West Line Road in the town of Charlton in Saratoga County.

Casabonne burst onto the local media scene in the 1930s, following in the footsteps of a weather prognosticator called Uncle George Van Derveer of the town of Florida.  Amsterdam Recorder managing editor Bill Maroney was reputedly the first to call Casabonne "Cousin George."

Widely published historian David Pietrusza grew up over A. Lenczewski’s Bar and Grill at the corner of Reid and Church Street in Amsterdam.  Cousin George was a regular at the bar and sometimes entertained the patrons by playing his fiddle.

Pietrusza said Cousin George was famous for his weather predictions but also well known for his ability to douse for water.

Pietrusza recounts in his Amsterdam memoir "Too Long Ago" that Cousin George accurately predicted the end of a summer drought and Pietrusza witnessed the event by getting soaked walking home from the library.
    

Cousin George said he based his forecasts on lunar phases, the size and prevalence of woolly bear caterpillars and his own weather records.  He maintained that "satellites and Sputniks" zooming through space led to unexpected wind currents and rain here below.

He delivered seasonal forecasts to local media and was known for coming up with creative explanations for prognostications that went awry.

Cousin George was a favorite of newspapers, radio and then television. He performed on the Pete Williams country and western television show on WRGB.

He did not comment on global warming and was a media star before development of social media.

Cousin George did take some ribbing because of the squeaky sound of his violin. He could clog dance and tap dance.  As a show-stopper he would do a high kick.

Toward the end of his life Cousin George moved to his daughter Georgianna Chirickio's home on Lyon Street in Amsterdam.

Former Recorder reporter Steve Talbott's desk at the paper was closest to the door in the 1970s when Cousin George was ending his run. Talbott tended to receive walk-in news releases first, including visits from Cousin George with his seasonal forecasts.

In 1973, Cousin George's daughter drove him to the paper. When asked about her father's health, she looked down sadly and said he was not well. Cousin George died the next year.

Talbott said, "Stan Silvernail, the managing editor, a great guy and good editor, was the keeper of the Cousin George memory file. He would tell us young reporters about how Cousin George would admit to his occasional mistaken forecasts. There was a picture in the Recorder files of Cousin George shoveling shoulder-high snow in the Recorder parking lot on a day when he had said there would be no snow."

On March 16, 1974 he sent his granddaughter to the Recorder with his spring forecast the day before he was admitted to Amsterdam Memorial Hospital.

The newspaper reported, "Cousin George's last forecast was among his best, and right on the button." He died March 21, 1974 the first day of spring.

Snow turned to rain as Cousin George had predicted. He was buried at St. Mary's Cemetery in Fort Johnson.

Bob Cudmore is a free lance writer.

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Perth, Amsterdam and the Moon

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder.

The name of the class of 1938 valedictorian at Perth High School may be inscribed on a plaque left on the Moon during an American lunar landing..

Stanley J. Jevitt, Sr., was born in Avoca, Pennsylvania, the son of Antoni and Julia Dziewit. The spelling later was changed to Jevitt. Stanley was the sixth of eight children.

Antoni and Julia were Polish immigrants who originally settled in Amsterdam. They moved to Pennsylvania where they had a farm and where Antoni worked in the mines. A doctor told Antoni he had early stages of black lung disease and advised him to stop mining. The family relocated to Perth, buying a farm on McQueen Road.

After high school, where he was also class president, Stanley Jevitt earned a degree in aeronautical engineering at the University of Alabama, known for its program in rocket science. He was the first of his siblings to go to college; Perth school superintendent John Paris said if his parents couldn’t afford college, he would see to it that Stanley’s bill was paid.

Jevitt learned to fly while in college, graduated in 1942 and enlisted in the U.S. Navy. Stationed in Alameda, California, he was crew chief on the Martin Mars flying boat, a huge seaplane that flew supplies between California and Honolulu.

After the war Jevitt worked at Schenectady General Electric on development and testing of jet engines. He also operated Sacandaga Sea Plane in Mayfield. He gave flying lessons and transported customers by seaplane on fishing and scenic trips. Jevitt taught his wife Dorothy, an Indianapolis native, several of their six children and three of his brothers to fly.

In February 1948 Jevitt survived an airplane accident on snow covered Mayfield Lake. According to the Leader Republican, Jevitt was landing on what he believed was a couple inches of snow on top of the frozen lake. However there was actually 16 to 18 inches of snow cover. The plane nosedived and turned over on landing. No one was injured but volunteers worked for hours turning the plane upright and towing it off the lake using toboggans.

Jevitt left GE and worked for other aeronautical companies: Bell Aircraft, Lockheed and Martin Marietta. He joined NASA in 1966 at Cape Canaveral in Florida. In a news release in May 1969 NASA reported that Jevitt was playing a key role in the launch of Apollo 10 that month.

His niece Frances Luzinas said Jevitt was on a list of engineers whose names were inscribed on a plaque left on the moon, most likely during Apollo 11 in July 1969.

NASA’s public information office said it does not have any information on official plaques left on the Moon with Apollo employee names on them. However, NASA said there were unsanctioned actions by employees and contractors that were not formally documented. The NASA statement continued, ‘Unfortunately, we have no way of confirming whether or not Mr. Jevitt's name was on an unofficial list/plaque.’

In later years, Jevitt was assistant to the chief engineer on the Space Shuttle and contributed to development of the Shuttle’s rocket booster.

He died at age 77 on April 18, 1998 at Cape Canaveral Hospital in Cocoa Beach, Florida and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

AMSTERDAM’S ROCKET MAN

Petrone Square, the corner of Church and Main streets in Amsterdam, is named in honor of Rocco Petrone. Petrone was born in Amsterdam in 1926, the son of Italian immigrants. He was launch director and what the New York Times called a ‘driving force’ in the Apollo moon program. He died in 2006.

Cudmore in The Gazette

https://www.dailygazette.com/life_and_arts/history/cudmore/

Bob Cudmore is a free lance writer.

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