There was trouble at the Ivy Leaf the night of Friday, April 11, 1947.

"Free-for-All at The Ivy Leaf by Bob Cudmore"

More Amsterdam Bar room History 

The Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder 

https://www.dailygazette.com/

also in The Recorder- Loopie’s Irish Pub, located at 410 Mohawk Drive in Tribes Hill, is hosting its 17th annual soup and chili cook-off today, Sunday, January 21, 2024 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Sunday, January 21, 2024-10 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 5:19AM-Sunny, with a high near 20. Wind chill values as low as -10. West wind 10 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph. Tonight Partly cloudy, with a low around 9. Wind chill values as low as -2. West wind 5 to 10 mph. Monday Mostly sunny, with a high near 34. West wind 5 to 7 mph

DeRose's greatest impact in the community probably stemmed from the years he spent directing high school plays and an annual summer musical he produced for 30 years for the city's recreation department.

Bob with a story for Sunday

Memories from Bert DeRose
By Bob Cudmore

Drama teacher and high school administrator Bert DeRose contributed many Amsterdam memories to this column over the past two decades. DeRose died November 28, Thanksgiving night, at 87. His wife Barbara died some 20 days later.

When DeRose was six, his family, living on River Street on Amsterdam's south side, had to flee their home in February 1938 during a Mohawk River flood. When the water subsided DeRose enjoyed playing on the chunks of ice left in his backyard. He said, "That was as close as I ever got to Alaska."

His uncle Ralph Pagliaro was the last Amsterdam soldier to die in World War I. Pagliaro, a native of Italy, was killed by a German sniper in Belgium five days before the Armistice. The body was returned to Amsterdam for burial. DeRose said, "My Grandmother wore black for over 30 years."

A friend of south side alderman Angelo "Susie" Sardonia, who died in 1987, DeRose recalled that in one election campaign Sardonia organized a Kettle Band. The band featured young people banging on tin cans and buckets drumming up votes for Sardonia.

DeRose's greatest impact in the community probably stemmed from the years he spent directing high school plays and an annual summer musical he produced for 30 years for the city's recreation department.

"I always tried to instill with the kids that no matter what they did for the theater, they were part of it," DeRose said in an interview in the year 2000. "Forget about the star. Forget about the lead. There is no lead if the kid who is pulling the curtain pulls at the wrong time."

Watching video of DeRose's productions, his actors convey emotional intensity.

"What we did was study the script," DeRose said. "I went deep into the inner character of the character - the meaning of it all, the feeling at that moment. If you get the teenager, teenagers can do tremendous things."

The community was involved in the spirit of the plays, "Seeing their young people produce something, something for the kids to do in those days."

He said Amsterdam had more than an average interest in show business, "I remember my grandfather telling me, and he was an immigrant from Italy, they would bring in operas, Italian operas here. Polish groups, Irish, so I think it was that type of tradition."

Future Amsterdam Oratorio composer Maria Riccio Bryce accompanied other high school actors on the piano and also acted in DeRose's high school plays. She won the Amsterdam Thespian Society's Kirk Douglas Award for her role in West Side Story. Kirk Douglas, an Amsterdam native and friend of Maria's father Peter Riccio, called to congratulate her.

When DeRose staged West Side Story he said some people felt it was a bit tough for a high school to do. DeRose said, "We had a lot of fun with it and it came across very, very well. At times we had to be very careful during the rumble scene and we had to cool them down a little bit."

DeRose and his daughter Michele DeRose MacShane acted together shortly before his death in video segments used on Roku television episodes of a show called "Kelly James and the Folk Review." MacShane has followed in her father's dramatic footsteps and is also co-writer of a western series being pitched to TV networks.

In the Roku show, MacShane played Raven Rainbow, a middle-aged hippie, and DeRose played her father Umberto. Umberto was his given name.

You can watch several of these episodes on Facebook and you haven't lived until you see Umberto do the tarantella.

"Free-for-All at The Ivy Leaf by Bob Cudmore"

There was trouble at the Ivy Leaf the night of Friday, April 11, 1947.

More Amsterdam Bar room History today in The Paper-Paper and on-line

The Daily Gazette Amsterdam Recorder The Historians

https://www.dailygazette.com/

also in The Recorder- Loopie’s Irish Pub, located at 410 Mohawk Drive in Tribes Hill, is hosting its 17th annual soup and chili cook-off Sunday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Saturday, January 20, 2024-6 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:20AM A chance of snow showers, mainly after 3pm. Cloudy, with a high near 14. Wind chill values as low as -9. West wind 10 to 16 mph. Tonight A slight chance of snow showers before 9pm. Cloudy, then gradually becoming partly cloudy, with a low around 6. Wind chill values as low as -8. West wind 11 to 15 mph. Sunday Sunny, with a high near 22. Wind chill values as low as -10. West wind 11 to 15 mph.

More Amsterdam Bar room History

Saturday in The Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder and on-line Sunday here on The Historians

"Free-for-All at The Ivy Leaf by Bob Cudmore"

Thursday, Janaury 18, 2024

Shakespeare at the golf course
By Bob Cudmore

The Phil Kilfoil Company's Woodland Players from New York City performed Shakespeare's comedy "As You Like It" on the grounds of the Antlers Club in Fort Johnson the night of July 13. 1904.

The private golf course, today known as Rolling Hills, had opened in 1901 on a 90 acre site. The original clubhouse was built that year with a spectacular view of the Mohawk Valley from its veranda.

The play was performed atop a hill overlooking the clubhouse with the woods forming what the Amsterdam Recorder reviewer called "an ideal background" to a grassy stage.
Japanese lanterns lighted the audience "with a soft flickering light" and Minch's orchestra, a local favorite, played popular songs before the show, keeping the crowd entertained while they waited.

When the play began, "powerful calcium lights" illuminated the stage and trees with what the newspaper called "a bright but weird glow, which might be well described as exaggerated moonlight."

It was chilly for July. The performance was originally scheduled the night before but had been rained out.

An estimated 350 people sat on camp chairs to watch Shakespeare's pastoral comedy. Many in the patrons arrived on crowded electric trolley cars from nearby Amsterdam. The audience loved the play, according to a rave review the next day in the Amsterdam Recorder.

"Now that the affair is over," wrote the reviewer, "And has proved an unqualified success, it may not be amiss to state that previously there was just a slight undercurrent of doubt as to the ability of any company traveling as does Kilfoll's at present, to properly present a play of such caliber.

"But the first lines were scarcely uttered when all questions along this score were obliterated, and the audience settled itself for what would have been a theatrical treat under any circumstances, but was doubly so amid scenes so absolutely fitting."

There was apprehension at show time among the actors about the financial solvency of their employer, Woodland Players, owned by the Phil Kilfoil Company of New York City.
The reviewer said the entire company was good but gave special praise to Ivah M. Wills who played Rosalind, F.J. McCarthy as Touchstone and James A. Young as Jacques de Boys.
Two weeks after leaving Amsterdam, theatrical producer Kilfoil was charged with passing bogus checks in Oswego, another stop on the tour.

Kilfoil told reporters, "We have been victims of circumstances and there was no intention of defrauding any persons in Oswego. We have met with poor business and benefit performances have so far proved a failure."

The Oswego and Amsterdam papers reported July 30 that charges were dropped when Kilfoil's business partner, Charles Wiegand, provided funds to cover the checks. Wiegand was described as a supervisor of the New York Central Railroad in New York City.

The Recorder said the actors apparently were among those not getting paid, "The company has been receiving money and one by one the members are leaving Oswego as fast as their remittances arrive. There will be no more Woodland Players, it is said, and both Wiegand and Kilfoil have expressed their intention of abandoning the dramatic field as a non-paying venture."

I have secured funds, said Kilfoil, to meet every obligation incurred by the company.
As for the Fort Johnson outdoor venue, the Antlers golf course prospered for many years but its elegant clubhouse burned to the ground in a 1965 fire. A new clubhouse was built.
Historian Hugh Donlon wrote the replacement clubhouse is smaller and lacked the "spacious veranda that had contributed so much to summer social life of affluent Amsterdamians for 60 years."

Friday, January 19, 2024

Jennet Conant discusses her book The Great Secret: The Classified World War II Disaster That Launched the War on Cancer.  Also heard is film maker Nick Spark who lobbied for U.S. government recognition of medical doctor Stewart Alexander whose work chronicling the Bari disaster in southern Italy was the impetus to developing chemotherapy.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Thursday, Janaury 18, 2024

15 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:14AM

This weekend in The Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder, another Bob story about Amsterdam Bar room History 

"Free-for-All at The Ivy Leaf"

Wednesday, Janaury 17, 2023

Over a thousand passengers had paid $37.95 each for the round trip from New York City to Niagara Falls on the Mohawk Valley Limited.

The Mohawk Valley Limited of 1968
By Bob Cudmore

In 1968 a steam locomotive-hauled passenger train had not passed through the Mohawk Valley for seventeen years.

Railfans were ecstatic and the general public became interested Saturday morning, October 12, when a 19-car excursion train was first pulled by an electric locomotive from Grand Central Station in New York City north to the railyards at Croton-Harmon.

Waiting there was a Berkshire-class steam locomotive, number 759, which had hauled freight for the Nickel Plate Road in its prime. Coupled to the excursion’s passenger cars, number 759 soon was chugging north toward Albany’s Union Station, slated for closure in a couple of months.

The Berkshire class of steam engines were named for the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts where they were used on the hilly Boston to Albany run. Berkshire locomotives had two forward wheels, eight driver wheels and four trailing wheels.

Berkshire engines were at first manufactured by American Locomotive (ALCO) in Schenectady. Later models, including 759 built in 1944, were made at the Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio.

Ross Rowland, a commodities broker in New York, was at the throttle of 759 when it arrived in Albany in 1968. Rowland had founded the High Iron Company to organize a series of steam-powered passenger train excursions with the goal of maintaining steam on the main lines of the railroads in the eastern United States.

Over a thousand passengers had paid $37.95 each for the round trip from New York City to Niagara Falls on the Mohawk Valley Limited.

The train’s arrival in Albany was covered in the Sunday Times Union of October 13. The father of young Amsterdam railfan Emil Suda saw the story. They had missed the train going west but decided to watch it Sunday on the return trip.

“What a fine autumn day it was, sunny and warm,” wrote Emil Suda. “As the hour came and went, it appeared the train was running late!”

Slowdowns for passing trains and unscheduled stops for water and coal slowed the excursion train.

Suda said there were a few others on hand as dusk was coming in at the old downtown Amsterdam train station, “The Mohawk Valley Limited appeared and rumbled down the track—not even slowing down for the onlookers who gathered!

“Regardless it was a sight, seeing those four main drivers of the engine roll along, and the coaches going by, and of course seeing some cinders fall to the ground from the smokestack.”

Some of the passenger cars were modern and some old style. At the rear was an open platform observation car from the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad. There was a dining car, a restored Jersey Central baggage passenger car, and a Pullman lounge from Pennsylvania Railroad’s Broadway Limited.

A private car up front carried Penn Central and Norfolk & Western Railroad executives. The Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central had merged earlier in 1968 and faced considerable financial problems.

U.S. Senator Frank Moss, a Democrat from Utah, was one of the private car passengers. Moss was a member of a Senate committee looking into the decline of passenger rail service in America.

In an article on the Mohawk Valley Limited’s visit to Rochester, reporter John McLoughlin in the Democrat and Chronicle wrote that “grown men and women” stuck their heads out of open windows on the train with goggles on so they could smell the smoke. The goggles protected against cinders causing eye injuries.

Locomotive 759 today is a static display at the Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Suda, a model train enthusiast, has an O gauge model of a Berkshire locomotive like 759.

Friday, January 19, 2024

Jennet Conant discusses her book The Great Secret: The Classified World War II Disaster That Launched the War on Cancer.  Also heard is film maker Nick Spark who lobbied for U.S. government recognition of medical doctor Stewart Alexander whose work chronicling the Bari disaster in southern Italy was the impetus to developing chemotherapy.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Wednesday, Janaury 17, 2023

16 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:23AM

Arnold was a cavalry officer in the war of 1812, later attaining the rank of captain. He was supervisor of the town of Amsterdam from 1813 to 1816 when he was elected to the New York State Assembly

Benedict Arnold of Amsterdam
By Bob Cudmore

Amsterdam's Benedict Arnold died on March 3, 1849 and likely was buried at a cemetery on Market Hill, according to research done by historian Christopher Philippo. The growing village encroached on that burial ground. Arnold's remains and others were moved to Green Hill Cemetery on Church Street after it was created in 1858.

Arnold's grandson was also buried at Green Hill. Lieutenant Benedict Arnold Leonard was killed in 1864 in his twelfth Civil War battle.
Arnold Avenue and the former Arnold Avenue School were named in honor of the good Benedict Arnold and his family.

NOT THE TRAITOR
Amsterdam's Benedict Arnold was not the Revolutionary War hero of the battle of Saratoga who later became a turncoat. General Arnold was regarded as a hero until his plans to betray the fort at West Point were found out on September 23, 1780.

The man who became Amsterdam's Benedict Arnold was born less than two weeks later, October 5 of that year. It seems that Benedict was a traditional name in the family.
One source reports the younger Arnold was born in Schaghticoke, Rennselaer County while others list his birthplace as Florida, just south of Amsterdam, or Amsterdam itself.
Arnold married Mary Bovee in 1806 and by 1808 was operating a store at Main and Bridge Streets in Amsterdam.

Arnold was a cavalry officer in the war of 1812, later attaining the rank of captain. He was supervisor of the town of Amsterdam from 1813 to 1816 when he was elected to the New York State Assembly. He was a member of Congress from 1829 to 1831 during the administration of President Andrew Jackson, although he was politically opposed to Jackson.

Arnold was one of the founders of the Amsterdam Aqueduct Company in 1829. The company laid pipes to bring water to thirsty citizens.

He was among those who campaigned to incorporate Amsterdam as a village and was the second president of the village board in 1832. He served again as town of Amsterdam supervisor and, in 1844, was one of the organizers of the Fonda Fair. He owned a distillery whose vats were purchased the year he died for what became Kelloggs and Miller, a linseed oil manufacturer.

Arnold's two story Market Street home was a landmark later torn down for construction of the Blood Building. Today the site is occupied by the downtown hotel.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH AMSTERDAM

In 1946, the Chamber of Commerce sponsored a contest called. What I Don't Like About Amsterdam.
The city's carpet mill economy was still thriving. However, the Chamber wanted to identify problems. The 850 entries were submitted anonymously. A numbering system enabled the Chamber to award cash prizes to anonymous winners.

Charles H. Schenck, Chamber Executive Secretary, said lack of recreation facilities, conditions of the streets, garbage collection, hotel accommodations, transportation, theatrical facilities and sale of alcoholic beverages were the most frequent complaints.
We are quick to criticize those who make an honest effort to do something, wrote the first prize winner. Misguided leadership has done a lot to put nationalism above civic responsibility and has tended to build up group interest with selfish motives. We are all Americans and we should work together.

The second place essay called for Sunday evening services in the churches and an end to competition among veterans groups. The writer proposed the city buy sidewalk snow plows and dedicate the planned athletic fields near the Lynch School as a World War II memorial.
The third place finisher suggested a waste disposal system so that sewage would no longer be dumped into the Mohawk River. The writer also called for beautification of the riverfront.

The Friday Conversation on The Historians

Jennet Conant discusses her book The Great Secret: The Classified World War II Disaster That Launched the War on Cancer.

On the night of December 2, 1943, the Luftwaffe bombed a critical Allied port in Bari, Italy, sinking 17 ships and killing more than a thousand servicemen and hundreds of civilians. Caught in the surprise air raid was the John Harvey, an American Liberty ship carrying a top-secret cargo of 2,000 mustard bombs to be used in retaliation if the Germans resorted to gas warfare. 

When one young sailor after another began suddenly dying of mysterious symptoms, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Alexander, a doctor and chemical weapons expert, was dispatched to investigate. He quickly diagnosed mustard gas exposure, but was overruled by British officials determined to cover up the presence of poison gas in the devastating naval disaster, which the press dubbed "little Pearl Harbor". Prime Minister Winston Churchill and General Dwight D. Eisenhower acted in concert to suppress the truth, insisting the censorship was necessitated by military security. 

Mohawk Valley Weather, Tuesday, January 16, 2023

21 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 7:20AM

Help us continue The Historians Podcast by making a donation.  Please contribute at https://gofund.me/777777e9  or send a check made out to Bob Cudmore, 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. Thank You very much

Tomorrow on The Historians the Bob conversation with Samantha Hall-Saladino

The role of the glove industry in Fulton County is being explored in a series of displays and programs called the Year of the Glove.  Fulton County historian Samantha Hall-Saladino, a Gloversville native, discusses this project.

Two smart men from the Mohawk Valley

By Bob Cudmore

   Amsterdam’s Bill Hojohn was very smart, according to his longtime friends. 

   Local history fan Emil Suda said William Walter Hojohn was born in Amsterdam in 1906 and died at age 80 in 1987.  He was survived by two sons, William, Jr. and Richard.

   Suda said, “A tall thin lanky man with glasses, Bill

had a fantastic career in electronics as he was a genius in the field--working for the General Electric in Schenectady, then the federal government at White Sands Proving Grounds.

   “He then came closer to home at the Rome Air Force Base (now Griffiss) doing radar work.  He ended his career working in Amsterdam at Electro Metrics Corporation.

   “All these places of employment were ongoing while maintaining a radio repair shop here in Amsterdam on weekends. First out of his home, followed by opening an actual shop at 222 East Main Street in 1941. 

   “By the 1950s television was coming into demand and Bill expanded into the market, not just repairing sets, but even installing antennas on roofs!”

   Hojohn also had a passion for model trains.  Suda continued, “The electric train hobby was very popular and this is where Bill’s passion went, not with the tinplate models of Lionel or Gilbert American Flyer but with the scale HO lines. 

   “This is where Bill reached out to service the needs of those who purchased (model) trains.  He aligned himself as an authorized repair center for the Lionel and American Flyer brands.

   “In Amsterdam a few stores sold electric trains at the Christmas time but none compared to what the John E. Larrabee Hardware Store could offer and those repairs kept Bill busy.”

   There was a special shop that Bill Hojohn maintained according to Suda, “Bill’s most remembered and iconic location was his move to 9 Grove Street in 1955 directly behind the Niagara Mohawk building on Market Street. 

  “Over the wooden door with a glass window hung a painted yellow metal sign reading The Radio Workshop dressed off with two lightning bolts.  Up on the second floor one was greeted by a fairly large “L” shaped model train empire about 20 feet in length, in scale HO that sadly never got completed.

   “Urban renewal in Amsterdam in the early 70s forced (Bill Hojohn) to move and retire.”

   Suda thanks Jerry Snyder of Historic Amsterdam League for providing information for this article from microfilm copies of the Amsterdam Recorder.

EMAIL MAN

   When computer programmer Raymond Samuel Tomlinson, 74, died in 2016 in Lincoln, Massachusetts, news stories around the world noted his roots in Amsterdam, Vail Mills and Broadalbin.

   At his death from a suspected heart attack Tomlinson was a principal engineer for Raytheon.  He is credited with sending the first email messages between separate computers in 1971 and making the decision to use the “at” sign-@-to separate the sender’s name from the sender’s Internet address. 

   Born in Amsterdam in 1941, Ray was the son of Raymond and Dorothy Tomlinson who lived near the village of Broadalbin in Vail Mills, a hamlet in the town of Mayfield. 

   “We knew he was smart but had no idea how smart,” said Samuel “Tom” Tomlinson one of Ray’s cousins.  “Tom” said that for Ray, “School was a breeze.”

   Ray was valedictorian of the class of 1959 at Broadalbin.  The class had forty-five students. 

   Ray’s girlfriend in high school was Barbara Andersen.  Andersen told the Daily Gazette the young man came up with a “concoction of wires and things” that enabled her to talk with him while not interfering with her family’s business phone at the White Holland House restaurant on Route 29.

The Friday Conversation on The Historians

Jennet Conant discusses her book The Great Secret: The Classified World War II Disaster That Launched the War on Cancer.

On the night of December 2, 1943, the Luftwaffe bombed a critical Allied port in Bari, Italy, sinking 17 ships and killing more than a thousand servicemen and hundreds of civilians. Caught in the surprise air raid was the John Harvey, an American Liberty ship carrying a top-secret cargo of 2,000 mustard bombs to be used in retaliation if the Germans resorted to gas warfare. 

When one young sailor after another began suddenly dying of mysterious symptoms, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Alexander, a doctor and chemical weapons expert, was dispatched to investigate. He quickly diagnosed mustard gas exposure, but was overruled by British officials determined to cover up the presence of poison gas in the devastating naval disaster, which the press dubbed "little Pearl Harbor". Prime Minister Winston Churchill and General Dwight D. Eisenhower acted in concert to suppress the truth, insisting the censorship was necessitated by military security. 

Mohawk Valley Weather, Monday, January 15, 2024

16 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:28AM

   “All these places of employment were ongoing while maintaining a radio repair shop here in Amsterdam on weekends. First out of his home, followed by opening an actual shop at 222 East Main Street in 1941"

Two smart men from the Mohawk Valley

By Bob Cudmore

   Amsterdam’s Bill Hojohn was very smart, according to his longtime friends.  .

   Local history fan Emil Suda said William Walter Hojohn was born in Amsterdam in 1906 and died at age 80 in 1987.  He was survived by two sons, William, Jr. and Richard.

   Suda said, “A tall thin lanky man with glasses, Bill

had a fantastic career in electronics as he was a genius in the field--working for the General Electric in Schenectady, then the federal government at White Sands Proving Grounds.

   “He then came closer to home at the Rome Air Force Base (now Griffiss) doing radar work.  He ended his career working in Amsterdam at Electro Metrics Corporation.

   “All these places of employment were ongoing while maintaining a radio repair shop here in Amsterdam on weekends. First out of his home, followed by opening an actual shop at 222 East Main Street in 1941. 

   “By the 1950s television was coming into demand and Bill expanded into the market, not just repairing sets, but even installing antennas on roofs!”

   Hojohn also had a passion for model trains.  Suda continued, “The electric train hobby was very popular and this is where Bill’s passion went, not with the tinplate models of Lionel or Gilbert American Flyer but with the scale HO lines. 

   “This is where Bill reached out to service the needs of those who purchased (model) trains.  He aligned himself as an authorized repair center for the Lionel and American Flyer brands.

   “In Amsterdam a few stores sold electric trains at the Christmas time but none compared to what the John E. Larrabee Hardware Store could offer and those repairs kept Bill busy.”

   There was a special shop that Bill Hojohn maintained according to Suda, “Bill’s most remembered and iconic location was his move to 9 Grove Street in 1955 directly behind the Niagara Mohawk building on Market Street. 

  “Over the wooden door with a glass window hung a painted yellow metal sign reading The Radio Workshop dressed off with two lightning bolts.  Up on the second floor one was greeted by a fairly large “L” shaped model train empire about 20 feet in length, in scale HO that sadly never got completed.

   “Urban renewal in Amsterdam in the early 70s forced (Bill Hojohn) to move and retire.”

   Suda thanks Jerry Snyder of Historic Amsterdam League for providing information for this article from microfilm copies of the Amsterdam Recorder.

Tomorrow, Monday, January 15, 2024, Bob has the story behind the story "All about two smart Men" 

EMAIL MAN

   When computer programmer Raymond Samuel Tomlinson, 74, died in 2016 in Lincoln, Massachusetts, news stories around the world noted his roots in Amsterdam, Vail Mills and Broadalbin.

   At his death from a suspected heart attack Tomlinson was a principal engineer for Raytheon.  He is credited with sending the first email messages between separate computers in 1971 and making the decision to use the “at” sign-@-to separate the sender’s name from the sender’s Internet address. 

   Born in Amsterdam in 1941, Ray was the son of Raymond and Dorothy Tomlinson who lived near the village of Broadalbin in Vail Mills, a hamlet in the town of Mayfield. 

   “We knew he was smart but had no idea how smart,” said Samuel “Tom” Tomlinson one of Ray’s cousins.  “Tom” said that for Ray, “School was a breeze.”

   Ray was valedictorian of the class of 1959 at Broadalbin.  The class had forty-five students. 

   Ray’s girlfriend in high school was Barbara Andersen.  Andersen told the Daily Gazette the young man came up with a “concoction of wires and things” that enabled her to talk with him while not interfering with her family’s business phone at the White Holland House restaurant on Route 29.

Bob Cudmores conversation with Bruce Luyendyk "The cold Southland"

Bruce Luyendyk is a geologist and author of Mighty Bad Land, the story of his explorations of Marie Byrd Land in Antarctica in the 1990s, These explorations led to the discovery of a new continent, named Zealandia.

The Friday Conversation on The Historians

Jennet Conant discusses her book The Great Secret: The Classified World War II Disaster That Launched the War on Cancer.

On the night of December 2, 1943, the Luftwaffe bombed a critical Allied port in Bari, Italy, sinking 17 ships and killing more than a thousand servicemen and hundreds of civilians. Caught in the surprise air raid was the John Harvey, an American Liberty ship carrying a top-secret cargo of 2,000 mustard bombs to be used in retaliation if the Germans resorted to gas warfare. 

When one young sailor after another began suddenly dying of mysterious symptoms, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Alexander, a doctor and chemical weapons expert, was dispatched to investigate. He quickly diagnosed mustard gas exposure, but was overruled by British officials determined to cover up the presence of poison gas in the devastating naval disaster, which the press dubbed "little Pearl Harbor". Prime Minister Winston Churchill and General Dwight D. Eisenhower acted in concert to suppress the truth, insisting the censorship was necessitated by military security. 

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Sunday, Janaury 14, 2024

34 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:03AM

Two smart men from the Mohawk Valley

By Bob Cudmore

https://www.dailygazette.com/

The story posted today in The Gazette and Recorder, here on The Historians tomorrow, Sunday, January 14, 2024

   Amsterdam’s Bill Hojohn was very smart, according to his longtime friends.

   Local history fan Emil Suda said William Walter Hojohn was born in Amsterdam in 1906

A Saturday story from Bob

Country western entertainers Jack Patton and Dusty Miller

A reader asked if I knew anything about Jack Patton, the Polish cowboy. I interviewed Patton once or twice on my WGY radio show in the 1980s.

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 supposedly 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 and producer 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 according to HillbillyMusc. 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. HillbillyMusic reported 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 helped convince Nat King Cole to record Ahbez's song "Nature Boy" which became a hit.

Patton also may have helped songwriter Stan Jones present Jones's song "Ghost Riders in the Sky" to Vaughn Monroe who had a hit with the tune in 1949. However, Jones's biography failed to mention Patton.

Patton returned to the Capital District, opened a health food store, did radio shows and performed with his band. At one point, HillbillyMusic.com reported 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 giant 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.

The column expressed the hope the movie would be popular in Brazil, the United States and Europe, especially Poland.

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

My conversations with Patton were arranged by Amsterdam country music performer and radio host Dusty Miller. Miller, whose real name was Elmer Rossi, 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 machines in the area. In later years he delivered medicines from a Guy Park Avenue pharmacy to local customers.

Dusty Miller was promoted as the entertainment at Patton's Sunset Ranch on July 4 in 1957.

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.

Miller's last radio show 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.

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Saturday, January 13, 2024

45 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:06AM

Amsterdam Soup Fest this Weekend. You can find the "Map" on The Daily Gazette 

https://www.dailygazette.com/

In 1929 Harry Vanderbeck and Victoria Vicky Karner moved to Amsterdam with their son Donald. They had married six years earlier in Singac, New Jersey. Harry managed the Van Dyk and Vicky began making sandwiches there. They lived on Mathias Avenue off Vrooman Avenue hill.

Tea and coffee in downtown Amsterdam
By Bob Cudmore

One of the most popular lunchtime spots when downtown Amsterdam was booming was the Van Dyk.

The building at 24 East Main Street which became the Van Dyk, sometimes spelled Van Dyke, had been previously occupied by offices of Adirondack Power and Light, according to an article written for Historic Amsterdam League by Jacqueline Daly Murphy.

When the power company moved to Market Street in 1927, the James Van Dyk Company, a chain grocery store, moved to 24 East Main from its 92 East Main Street location. The store, which boasted in an advertisement that it had 300 outlets, specialized in teas and fresh ground coffees. The local owner and manager was Earl F. Fischer.

On the second floor of the building, above the store, was a tea and coffee eatery affiliated with the grocery called The Duchess. Duchess was a brand of coffee sold at the store.

Murphy said the upstairs establishment featured only the finest ingredients and the freshest vegetables, an electrical refrigeration plant, hand-washed dishes, radio entertainment and singing canaries hanging in each room. The Duchess closed in 1928 and the downstairs grocery began serving coffee and tea.

In 1929 Harry Vanderbeck and Victoria Vicky Karner moved to Amsterdam with their son Donald. They had married six years earlier in Singac, New Jersey. Harry managed the Van Dyk and Vicky began making sandwiches there. They lived on Mathias Avenue off Vrooman Avenue hill.

Murphy wrote, With Vicky making homemade tuna fish, egg salad, or ham and cheese sandwiches, and Harry grinding the coffee beans and making coffee, the shop drew huge lunch crowds.

Murphy recalled that in the 1940s the Van Dyk had faded green metal stools and wall counters, Vickys warm brown eyes (were) peeking over the counter in the front of the store where she made her sandwiches in view of passers-by. Her cheeks seemed flushed as she didn't stop her labor, the aqua uniform complimenting her ruddy complexion.

Vickys uniform, Murphy said, seemed to be the same dress, apron and hat that the bakery workers wore across the street at the Federal Bakery.

Murphy said the aroma of coffee beans penetrated the air. Harry Vanderbeck, tall and lanky, usually smoked a cigar as he worked. He was known for his homespun philosophy and wry humor.

Retired Daily Gazette reporter and current WCSS talk host Sam Zurlo said the Van Dyk was always mobbed.

Retired city deputy fire chief Mike Mancini said his parents enjoyed ground coffee at the Van Dyk and allowed young Mike to have tea. He put cream in his tea from little glass bottles with cardboard tops. Afterward, the family crossed the street to the Federal Bake Shop at 33 East Main Street where Mikes Dad, an East End undertaker, would buy a jellyroll.

The Van Dyk closed in March, 1954. Vicky Vanderbeck died that June in New Jersey and was buried at Marys Cemetery in Fort Johnson.

Harry went to work at the venerable Trasks Cigar Store at 6 East Main near the intersection with Market Street. At one time there were Trasks Cigar Stores in Little Falls, Amsterdam, Gloversville and Utica.

In 1962 Vanderbeck became co-owner of Trasks with George Rogers, buying the store from Ford Trask. Rogers had begun clerking at Trasks in 1934 and became manager in 1956 after the death of manager Fayette Hale, Sr. Hale had managed the Trasks store in Amsterdam for 25 years. He collapsed and died one morning at work.

Rogers and Vanderbeck offered the Trask store for sale in 1969. Vanderbeck retired in 1989, after working sixty years in downtown Amsterdam.

Larry Gooley tells the story

Historians Episode #49, the year was 2015, almost typed 2025, not yet!

Larry Gooley wrote the history of Adirondack serial killer Robert Garrow.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Thursday, January 11, 2024

37 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:48AM