Monthly Archives: December 2013

Looking Backward: 2013

Fast away the old year passes; hail the new, ye lads and lasses. As we look ahead to a new year, we look back at the year we’re finishing. Concentrating just on Steuben County, here’s my list of what future historians might want to know about.

Jan. 17-Feb. 7 Alana Smith-Brown of Corning is a contestant on the TBS television reality competition series, King of the Nerds. She finished eighth in a field of twelve.

Jan. 24 Painted Post voters reject a proposal to dissolve the village.

Jan. 26 This weekend the Keuka Maid dinner boat (long unused) is dismantled and removed from Hammondsport to Canandaigua.

Jan. 28 Hornell Post Office is renamed for Lance Corporal Zachary D. Smith, killed in action January 24, 2010 in Afghanistan.

Feb. Hammondsport Central School Board of Education accepts a $302,000 bid from Robert Lack of Long Rock LLC for purchase of the 1935 Glenn H. Curtiss Memorial School.

Feb. 25 Steuben County legislature asks the state to repeal the new SAFE gun control law, passed in the aftermath of the December 2012 Sandy Hook School massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.

Mar. 12 Christian Harris, analyst with NYS Department of Labor, says Chemung-Steuben-Schuyler unemployment rate is 11.2 % — highest since at least 1990. Closure of the Sikorsky Hawk Works in Big Flats, and layoffs at Corning Incorporated, account for many of the local losses.

May 12 A Florida woman fakes an asthma attack so as to be taken to Ira Davenport Hospital in Bath. There she takes advantage of the setting to report that she has been kidnapped and held in sex slavery in Naples, and escapes from her captor. F.B.I. arrests alleged assailant Brandon Todd in July.

May 30 Sriram Hathwar of Painted Post finishes third in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

July James “Deacon” White of Caton is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

July 11 Governor Andrew Cuomo announces results of a state-commissioned study on tourism’s economic impact. Overall 2012 state tourism spending rose 6.2% but the 14-county Finger Lakes region rose only 2%. Steuben County was at the bottom of the region, with a loss of 0.1%.

July 22 David Lee Simpson of Bath is arrested for using Twitter to threaten two television news anchors over their coverage of the Jodi Arias murder trial in Arizona. When arrested he had several weapons and a news clipping about the mass killing at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Simpson was indicted July 18 in Arizona. He later stated that he had discarded pipe bombs in a stream near Athens, Pa.

July 27 A tornado touches down in Troupsburg.

July 28 Pleasant Valley Mennonite Church holds its last regular Sunday service. Declining membership leads to the ministry’s being closed.

August Leeann Perkowski of Wayland is named National American Miss New York Pre-Teen.

October The Carder World War I memorial again placed on public view, in the Corning City Hall.

Oct. 29 Recall of Kraft and Polly-O string cheese stops production and lays off 75 workers at Polly-O plant in Campbell.

Nov. 5 Voters approve a proposition to restructure county government — notably, moving from a county administrator to a county manager.

November Frank Burnside of Bath (1888-1935) is inducted into the Nevada Aerospace Hall of Fame.

November New transportation center opens in Corning.

Nov. 18 Death of Dick Peer, author of the long-running column “Peering Into the Past,” covering area history. Born Corning 1925. Graduate of Campbell Central School 1943. City Editor of the Corning Leader 1961-1972. Managing Editor 1972-1987. Steuben County Hall of Fame 2004.

December Philips closes its plant in Bath.

And in the year’s sunset, we look back on those who’ve left us. This is always challenging, because inevitably you leave people out. But in addition to Dick Peer, we also remember:
*Lee Schwoerer, Curtiss Museum restoration workshop supporter
*Bud (Marcel) Rouin, who painted murals in the Cohocton Farm Museum
*Jack Kinney, publisher of the Steuben Courier and director of the Bath Chamber of Commerce
*Howard Armstrong, pastor of North Urbana Chapel
*Marcia Meade Coon, trustee of Curtiss Museum, officer of Mercury Corporation
*Janice White, Curtiss Museum volunteer
*Hope Hereford, reporter and writer of the Keuka Lake area. Hope attended the four-room Pleasant Valley School, as well as the central school in Hammondsport. As a small child she attended the 1930 interment of Glenn Curtiss… perhaps the last person living to have done so. To Hope, and to each of the others — safe journey.

Keuka Maid, on the process of dismantling.

Keuka Maid, in the process of dismantling.

On Dasher, On Dancer, On Prancer — On Frank

Santa Claus was coming to town — specifically, to Corning. But Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen were getting some rest a hundred Christmases ago. On December 22, 1913, Santa was arriving by “aeroplane.”
This was rather daring on the jolly old elf’s part, for on December 22 the airplane was exactly ten years and five days old… still a relatively untested technology. And indeed the ecstatically-awaited arrival was delayed several hours when Santa Claus’s pilot Frank Burnside had to set down in Campbell for repairs. They had flown all the way from Bath, which was standing in for the North Pole. Those 11 miles still passed for a respectable flight in those days.
As a contemporary account put it, “more than 3000 children and many adults lined Market and Bridge streets and even covered the tops of the city’s highest buildings [including the Glass Works and the train station]…. For nearly three hours the crowd waited, and then, just as the greater part of the throng had started homeward, disappointed, Santa… blew into the city, riding on the clouds, just after 4:15.…
“Santa was flying high — 1200 feet or so — and when his machine was first seen against the face of a snowy white cloud far up the valley, it was mistaken by many persons for a bird. As Santa came nearer to the city he rose higher and higher, but once over the city he began to drop down gradually so as to get nearer the boys and girls. Circling twice over the Northside business section, Santa then made a long detour over the Southside, passing southeast of the city, and then returning to the vicinity of Denison Park, where he volplaned easily and gracefully to the earth. The ‘kids’ were on hand to greet him almost as soon as he landed — snowy whiskers, twinkling eyes and all.”
After flying 21 miles in an open-cockpit airplane, he probably had a red nose, too. But that didn’t deter him from touring local businesses, where he handed out a hundred pounds of candy and trinkets.
The Corning Business Men’s Association arranged the trip for $200, and a next-day trip to Hornell was also planned, but had to be scrubbed due to bad weather. Airplane and pilot both came from the Thomas Company in Bath.
Glenn Curtiss in Hammondsport of course dominated the aviation field both locally and nationwide, but Thomas was another significant manufacturer. The Thomas brothers were British subjects but born and brought up in the Argentine. One took a job with Curtiss and the other with General Electric until they figured they’d learned enough to strike out on their own. In Bath they made airplanes of their own design, to the general Curtiss pattern. Their flying school was the first one to be chartered by the Board of Regents, and was famed for its low tuition. On rainy days, you could work some of it off in the plant.
But low prices did not mean cut-rate instruction, and numerous first-rate early aviators got their start at the Thomas school, in wintertime even flying off the ice of Lake Salubria.
Oneonta boy Frank Burnside was one of their success stories, and Thomas hired him to stay on as an exhibition pilot. In those days most airplane sales, even to militaries, were for experimental purposes — a very limited market. Much of the money was in exhibitions… hiring out to do demonstration flights at fairs and celebrations and such. Frank had spent the Fourth of July that year doing flights in Nevada at Ely (second man to fly in that state), exploits which last month saw him inducted into the Nevada Aerospace Hall of Fame. Then he came back to Bath to set an American altitude record. He married locally and made his home in Bath throughout a stellar career with Thomas, Curtiss, and the US Air Mail. Besides his Nevada honors, he’s also in the OX-5 Aviation Pioneers Hall of Fame and the Steuben County Hall of Fame.
Weather grounded him after Santa’s flight, forcing him to spend the second night of his married life minding the airplane in Corning. He prudently dismantled and removed some key components “to keep the youngsters from wrecking the machine,” which certainly would have qualified them for a whole truckload of coal in their stockings.
Santa Claus, “whom some uninformed persons thought resembled Charles D. Brown,” allowed as how he would probably stick to reindeer. But between Frank and Santa, they’d certainly given the children of Corning a Christmas to remember. Any photographs of the day out there, in old albums or cigar boxes? We’d love to see them!
Burnside

Signs of the Season

Leave a reply

As we’re here at Christmas and holiday season, most of us remember holidays gone by… when the kids were little, or when WE were little. Maybe we always enjoyed visiting department stores that no longer exist. We enjoyed TV specials that no one bothers to show. We enjoyed family and friends who are no longer with us.
A lot of our Christmas “feeling” takes us back – “just like the ones I used to know.” But it seems to me that we also always want to say fresh… to explore new experiences, and maybe add them to our list of traditions as well. So herewith are some signs and experiences of the season. Some have already gone by for THIS season, so for heaven’s sake check before dashing through the snow. Print this off, and save it for an early start next year.
*Star over Bath. We moved into Bath village on New Year’s Eve of 1995. We’d never lived in the Southern Tier before, and after sunset we asked: what’s that up on the hill? We unpacked the binoculars, and verified what we’d suspected. A fine bright Christmas star shines over Bath each night, beaming brightly from Mossy Bank. What an elegant sign of Christmas.
*Community Christmas celebrations. Many of our towns and cities have special nights or weekends when they gather and enjoy the season. Yes, the merchants are trying to stimulate business. But the streets, parks, and squares are lighted and decorated. Bells ring, and carolers sing. Hot chocolate flows, library ladies read to kids, fire trucks give rides, and neighbors find each other in the dark. Try Sparkle of Christmas (Corning), Christmas in the Park (Hammondsport), Spirit of Christmas (Bath), Dickens of a Christmas (Wellsboro), Starshine (Penn Yan), A Touch of Christmas (Dundee)… they go ever on and on.
*Salvation Army bell ringers. It’s COLD out there! If it’s cold for us as we dart between car door and store door, how cold is it for those bell ringers standing there hour after hour? How cold is it for homeless kids, night after night? Pitch in, and pitch into the pot. Somebody needs the help. It might be somebody you know… if not this year, then maybe next.
*Menorah collection. Growing up in Rhode Island, we would often visit the shopping center at Garden City during Christmas season. With a little wheedling, our parents could be convinced to drive toward home through the surrounding urban/suburban neighborhoods to see the Christmas lights. Cruising comfortably along enjoying lights in the darkness, we especially enjoyed noticing those homes which instead of (or in addition to) Christmas lights had a lighted Menorah celebrating Chanukah. Temple B’rith Kodesh in Rochester exhibits the 200-piece Lewis menorah collection. Some are works of fine art, while others are crude pieces painstakingly formed in poverty, and perhaps in secrecy. Some are cheap commercial products. Some are whimsical, some are tiny, some are huge. As a general rule the collection is open for view without admission during business hours year-round, but check ahead, especially being aware to avoid services and Jewish holidays.
*A lane of Christmas trees. On Clara Barton Street in Dansville, between the Lutheran and Episcopal churches, community groups have decorated two rows of living Christmas trees that line a walkway between the two buildings. It’s like strolling your way through Christmas.
*A houseful of trees. Granger Homestead in Canandaigua hosts a Festival of Trees each year. The mansion is crammed with dozens of trees, from huge ones to tabletoppers, decorated traditionally or avant-garde. Anything goes, and you can pretty much guarantee the Christmas mood by the time you leave. Tioga County Historical Society in Owego has a similar O Tannenbaum event.
*Rooms full of toys. Tioga County Historical Society also has an annual toy exhibit, this year all toys that could have been found in or before 1914, to honor the society’s centennial. Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport has its annual show of dollhouses, miniatures, antique dolls, and antique toys. The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester has a gigantic collection of playthings, all excitingly presented.
*City sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style. Even if you’re not actually shopping, take some time to stroll the colorful streets, peeking in the windows to see the displays. Some of our favorites are Market Street in Corning, Main Street in Wellsboro (with its wreath-hung gaslights), Main Street in Canandaigua, the River Row in Owego, and Main Street in Penn Yan.
*Live it up at the library. Most of our libraries have kid-oriented activities and story times for the holidays, not to mention videos and books… ESPECIALLY books about Chanukah, Kwanzaa, and other aspects of the season that often get short shrift. Libraries are warm in the cold weather. They’re relaxed, they’re friendly, they welcome kids, and they don’t cost a dime.
*Something different. We’ve enjoyed Kwanzaa activities at Rochester Museum and Science Center… sometimes there are other ethnically-centered celebrations as well. Not to mention caroling Tesla coils, and a holiday laser show.
*Holy night. One place you can find the spirit of Christmas is church. We’ve attended festivals of lessons and carols in Horseheads and in Bath. Caroling trips. Living nativities. Midnight masses. Christmas Eve services. Every fellowship has its own traditions, and its own new ideas. The doors are open, the welcome’s warm, and just like the library, it doesn’t cost a dime.

Building the Future: Our Science & Discovery Center

Leave a reply

In 1994 something new appeared in the Corning area — the Science & Discovery Center. Like all projects it’s had fits and starts, and ups and downs, and changes of direction. There was drop-in location on Market Street, then at Arnot Mall, then at the Wings of Eagles. Sad to say, the fondly-remembered drop-in spot, with its hands-on science fun, is no more. But through all that the SDC has brought working scientists and experiential science to thousands of students in dozens of schools, camps, museums, and libraries.

The twentieth century gave birth to a new field of literature: science fiction. However interesting that may have been on its own, it sprang from a far deeper, more significant development.

Science was affecting and changing the lives of ordinary people.

Once the domain of dabblers, often leading to interesting but not-especially-relevant discoveries, science now filled homes with electric lights; telephones; radio; Thermos bottles; aspirin; Pyrex. People lived longer, and fewer children died. Science seemed like a miracle worker.

Soon, though, people learned that “the lights of a perverted science,” to use Winston Churchill’s words, could be turned to dangerous ends. New forms of pollution arose… including radiation from nuclear bombs. Scientists invented poison gas. Science enabled new forms of domestic espionage even as it facilitated communication, education, and entertainment.

Ordinary citizens, especially voting citizens, face more and more important decisions relating to science. But again and again American students are near the bottom of the developed world in mastery of math and science concepts, and even behind many developing countries. On one recent assessment we dropped six places in six years. The general public is doing no better.

The Science & Discovery Center (www.sdcsciencecenter.org) aims at moving science past a boring subject that has to be “gotten through.” The joy of science activity, the thrill of science discovery, should be part of every student’s birthright. If those joys and thrills are in fact part of student life, they can only lead to greater lifelong enthusiasm for science, and better-informed decision making.

Better trained teachers, better presentation of key concepts, and especially experiential learning, will all help. Data from the National Science Foundation recently indicated that the majority of educators teaching math and science didn’t have certification in those areas. The SDC tries to help teachers and bring much-needed resources to the school. Their mobile lab is their most visible offering, but they also deliver in-class learning modules, large-group science presentations, teacher workshops, special programs for dedicated special-education settings, and more.

We should point out that a center such as this, and offerings such as these, are almost unprecedented in a community this size. Science has a particular importance in our community, which is home to a major high-tech corporation. The SDC helps students become enthusiastic about it… around 20,000 students in a dozen districts a year. The future of science is the future of our world.

December, 1901: A Final Touch of Grace

Leave a reply

Once Thanksgiving of 1901 was over, the thoughts of everyone in Hammondsport turned to—Christmas! W. E. Cook “respectfully” called people’s attention to the possibilities of hardware as gifts for their loved ones. “Why not a Range, Stove, Cutter, Whip, Bells, Horse Blankets or Mechanics’ Tools? Because they are useful does not detract from their suitability for Christmas gifts.” W. T. Reynolds agreed, pointing out that “Santa Claus is a common sense old fellow… . He has a way of being practical as well as jolly…JUST NAME A MORE SUITABLE GIFT than a nice pair of Shoes, Slippers or Rubbers for any member of the family.”
A. M. Becker & Company (“The Cash Store”) offered “holiday bargains in everything.” This took in shoes and boots, but also included underwear, dress goods, black goods, bedding, sterling silver novelties, handkerchiefs, pillow covers and dressing sacks, not to mention “Unmatched Cotton Values.” Becker proclaimed, “The Christmas Spirit Prevades This Store,” which was probably true if your Christmas spirit ran to heavy fleece-lined men’s underwear at 33 cents (“others ask 50”).
That misspelling of “pervades” is original, by the way. There was no Pagemaker and no spell check in those days. Typesetters had to work with tiny letters raised in reverse, so the wonder is not the number of errors that they made, but the number that they avoided, especially considering how bad the lighting was. A speedy typesetter was one of the most awe-inspiring sights the world had to offer back then, but they tended to get very near-sighted as time went by.
Did kids have to be satisfied with boots (Arctic buckles at 49 cents) and underwear back in those days? Not necessarily. You could get skates and sleds at W. E. Cook in Pulteney, F. N. Goodrich & Co. Offered “Trains of cars, Ringing Bells, Mouth Organs, engines that steam up, Toy Banks, Toy Blocks, Doll Beds, Tool Chests, Drums, Whips and Guns.” Goodrich also sold G. A. Henty’s historical adventure books, which were just as big as Harry Potter a hundred years ago. “Six Trading Days to Christmas,” Goodrich proclaimed in 60-point type. “We fear some people would not be ready for the ringing of Christmas Chimes if we did not keep counting the days and saying Hurry! Hurry! Early in the day is a good motto to be adopted by Christmas shoppers.”
Of course, other things than shopping were also engaging the minds of Hammondsporters. The new Opera House Block was at last fully open, and it lost its first tenant. Mrs. Benedict’s dancing class had proved so popular that she had to move to more spacious quarters in the Town Hall, a few doors down of Sheathar Street. J. L. Shattuck moved with his family into the janitor’s apartment in the Opera House, which meant that they were on hand when fire broke out on the morning of Thursday, December 5. Prompt action by citizens and firemen saved the structure—can you imagine Hammondsport without it over the last 112 years?
Winter was coming on strong. It was four below on the 17th, and Painted Post was under four feet of water. Hammondsport School closed some of its rooms while the furnace was being repaired, and P. G. Zimmer begged electrical customers to be patient and cut back their consumption while he installed a new engine. In his “spare time,” he was overhauling the Kanona & Prattsburgh locomotive at the B&H shops. People were skating at the head of the lake before Christmas. Influenza was widespread, and bad checks were circulating around Bath and Hammondsport.
Out in the wider world, the British continued to do badly in South Africa, even as mass meetings in the United States protested British actions against the Boers. In our own colonial war, General Chafee accused surrendered Philippine leader Emilio Aguinaldo of continued subversion of U. S. rule, threatening to exile him to the mainland. “Gentleman Jim” Corbett (actually William Rothwell) took the heavyweight boxing title away from Terry McGovern. Bad feeling about the Boer War did not stop John Philip Sousa and his orchestra from performing for the Queen’s birthday.
Chicago was suffering from a coal famine. Police and striking streetcar workers in Scranton were fighting running gun battles. Up in Rochester, Susan B. Anthony predicted that New York women would vote by 1914; she was off by four years, but wouldn’t live to see it. Out in the Midwest, Walter Elias Disney entered the world.
Reverend Thomas Duck resigned after serving St. James Church for nine years. D. S. Derrick opened a shoe repair service in Glenn Curtiss’s bike shop. Curtiss himself took on a situation as traveling sales rep for a bicycle plant in Syracuse.
School closed for two weeks at Christmas, and the Hammondsport Wine Company gave every employee a turkey. There was good sleighing in the hills as December dawned, so the year ended much as it had begun, with merry parties, warm blankets, jingling harness bells, and the schuss of runners through hard-packed snow. They seem to have enjoyed it. I think we would, too.
Christmas 1901 Becker