Sunday, December 31, 2023

Highlights of Focus on History columns in 2023

                  By Bob Cudmore                     

Navy nuclear submarine captain John Donlon was a native of Amsterdam.

John’s father Hugh Donlon was a Recorder newspaper columnist, author of a landmark 1980 Amsterdam history book, "Annals of a Milltown.

John's mother had tuberculosis.  Anna Frances Nadler Donlon died in 1938.

Hugh Donlon died in Amsterdam at age 93 in 1989. Theur son John died at his Connecticut home at age 95 on December 26, 2022.

Hugh Donlon had started work on a history book called "The Mohawk Valley" in 1932. He typed the manuscript in a second floor office at the family home.

Donlon credited his four sons, "Whose contribution to this book was undisturbed slumber through night hours while their father worked."

John Donlon preserved his father's Mohawk Valley manuscript.

Many publishers were approached but the manuscript remained unpublished until 2015. Writer Dave Northrup edited the manuscript that year with John's help and oversaw its publication.

# "Your article on the Luxuray brought back old memories," wrote Charles Gehring, who lived in Nelliston as a child.

Luxuray manufactured women's underwear, mainly panties, in a factory on Willett Street in Fort Plain.

Gehring said, "My mother worked (at Luxuray) for 27 years from 1934 to 1962. She sewed gussets in women's underwear for 35 cents an hour."

According to the Cambridge Dictionary. a gusset is "a second layer of cloth that is sewn into a piece of clothing to make it larger, stronger, or more comfortable."

Gehring continued, "My father worked at the Beech-Nut (in Canajoharie) in Strained Foods. One of his jobs was to turn the boilers on, which meant he had to be in very early. So, he was always home when I returned from Nelliston grade school.

"Around 4:30 we would go 'over street' (you always used this expression when going from Nelliston to Fort Plain) to pick up my mother. He always parked right in front of Bruschetti's Eternal City bar, which was across the street from the Luxuray.

"He always had just enough time for one beer. Sometimes he would set me up on the bar. Thanks for stimulating some fond memories."

The Eternal City Bar was operated by Romolo and Josephine Bruschetti, natives of Italy who married in Fort Plain in 1915.

Gehring’s career has been as director of the New Netherland Research Center in Albany translating Old Dutch documents from the New Netherland Colony which existed in the 1600s. In 1994 Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands conferred a knighthood on Gehring.

#The USS Amsterdam sailed back to America from Japan when World War II ended, picking up Seabees in Guam.

The passengers brought a different perspective on war to the Amsterdam's sailors.

"We had a laundry, hot food, a ship's newspaper and ice cream almost every day," said former Seaman Steve Fitz. "One of the crew in line for dinner shouted out there was no ice cream today. One of the Seabees said, 'Isn't that a shame. We haven't seen ice cream in two years!'"

Fitz became a popular local talk radio host.

A model of USS Amsterdam was handmade by the late Albert M. Swager of Pennsylvania, a former crewman, who donated the model to Walter Elwood Museum in Amsterdam in 1995. The eight foot replica was loaned for a crew reunion in central New York. The model ended up at Sampson Memorial Museum in Romulus.

It was located through the efforts of Amsterdam’s Stanley Krolikowski and returned to Elwood museum.

Anyone who wishes to contribute time or money to the USS Amsterdam exhibit may contact Mike Parillo at the museum. With artifacts, documents, and photos contact City Historian Robert von Hasseln.

Tomorrow the audio version of this column on The Story Behind the Story Podcast.

 $1695.00 is needed today. https://gofund.me/777777e9

U.S. Mail A check made out to Bob Cudmore, 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302.

Bob Cudmore and Chris Carola "The 77th"

Friday, January 5, 2024-Episode 506-Gary Hoyle is author of Mystery Tusk, the story of a 12,000 year old woolly mammoth tusk found while digging a manmade pond in Maine in 1959.  Plus the tale of an African elephant, Old Bet, shot and killed in the early 1800s in Maine.

MYSTERY TUSK-Searching for Elephants in the Maine Woods is the true story of author Gary Hoyle's search for a mysterious tusk that seems to have two conflicting histories-one ancient and one modern. His search for the truth led him to direct the first excavation of a mammoth in Maine and to uncover historical facts about an elephant that inspired P. T. Barnum.

Friday, January 12-2024-Episode 507 –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.

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Sunday, December 31, 2023

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