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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