The Fonda Blog

Close to home: Utah crash spurs NH domestic violence survivor to share story

Jo Fonda’s estranged husband crashed plane into Amherst home in 2001

WMUR-TV – Amy Coveno – News Anchor/Reporter – Updated: 12:56 PM EDT Aug 14, 2018

MANCHESTER, N.H. — A Utah man crashed a plane into his own house this week, hours after he allegedly assaulted his wife, bringing back difficult memories for an Amherst woman of a similar tragedy nearly 17 years ago. The pilot, Duane Youd, died in the crash on Monday. His wife and child, who were in the home, survived, despite part of the home becoming engulfed in flames.

On Aug. 25, 2001, Jo Fonda‘s estranged husband flew their private plane into their Amherst home after Fonda filed for a restraining order against him. Fonda’s husband of 20 years died in the crash and destroyed nearly everything they owned, except for a single piece of pottery. “Similar situation where there was a restraining order that was served on my husband and within 12 hours, he had crashed our airplane into our home and burned it to the ground,” Fonda said.

Fonda said she was never physically abused, but her husband was a violent, controlling man. “The banging of a table, you know, the punching of a wall, the ripping off a phone off a wall,” Fonda said.

Fonda feels responsible, she said, to share her story of the warning signs and her strategy with other women who right now are afraid of their partners. She said it starts by getting out of the house. “That is the most dangerous time, right after someone is served a restraining order,” Fonda said.

Jo Fonda shared her story with WMUR.

Fonda said a phone call to a hotline saved her life. She had scrawled the number on a piece of scrap paper that she still has. “It said, ‘pathetic hotline.’ That’s how I felt about the need to reach out for help,” Fonda said.

Fonda’s message to the survivors in Utah is one of love and a shared sisterhood. “She should have never stayed in that house thinking that she was safe,” Fonda said. “My heart goes out to you and I’m so grateful that they did manage to stay safe. It’s a miracle in my mind.”

The memories are difficult to handle, but Fonda said she wants other victims of domestic violence to know that asking for help is what saved her life.

Anyone who is the victim of domestic violence is urged to call New Hampshire’s 24-hour hotline at 1-866-644-3574.

Other links: Glamour.com; The Telegraph

written by admin \\ tags: Events, Marriages, New England

Bridget Fonda and Danny Elfman Buy Full-On Fixer Next Door

By Mark David @YourMamaTweets
BUYERS: Bridget Fonda and Danny Elfman
LOCATION: Los Angeles, Calif.
PRICE: $3.6 million
SIZE: 4,443 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Prolific and in-demand film and television composer Danny Elfman and (presumably) retired actress Bridget Fonda have shelled out $3.6 million, according to both real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak and property records, for a meticulously maintained if comically outdated time capsule of a residence in the historic, guard-gated Fremont Place enclave that’s centrally situated between Hancock Park and Koreatown.

Miz Fonda, born into an illustrious and much-lauded family of actors — she’s Oscar winter Henry Fonda’s granddaughter, two-time Oscar winner Jane Fonda’s niece and twice Oscar-nominated Peter Fonda’s daughter — hasn’t appeared on the small or silver screen since 2002 but before that had a long and admirable career that earned her both Golden Globe and Emmy wins. Mister Elfman, the frontman for the 1980s new wave band Oingo Boingo, has composed theme music and scores for a slew of successful television programs and films including “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” “The Simpsons,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Beetlejuice,” “Dick Tracy” and, more recently, “Milk,” “American Hustle,” “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Fifty Shades of Grey.” He currently has about half a dozen projects in some phase of production including the Tim Burton directed “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” and “Alice Through the Looking Glass” starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, both scheduled to be released next year. Anyways….

Digital listing details indicate the Prairie-style residence sits on a flat, 0.37-acre mid-block lot and was originally built in 1916 with a low-profile hip roof and remarkably deep eaves. The two-story abode currently measures 4,443 square feet with four bedrooms and five bathrooms, per online marketing materials, with additional storage space above the detached two-car garage located behind iron gates at the tail end of a long driveway that passes under a porte cochère as it runs along the side of the house.

From a modern-day stand point the interior spaces are — let’s be honest, children — utterly preposterous, and no doubt the entire property will likely be radically altered and updated for future use so the grim decorative details are somewhat moot. Nonetheless, listing photographs show there are heavily and unfortunately textured plaster ceilings and wall treatments, miles of floral wallpaper and floor tiles of an unknown material throughout the main floor living spaces that appear to this property gossip in listing photos a bit too much like linoleum.

At some point, possibly in the 1960s or 1970s, the interiors were revamped and opened up into a spacious, open-plan living/entertaining space that extends from the front of the house clear through to the back and includes an imposing and arguably salvageable stone fireplace. (The stone detailing around the windows the flank the fireplace, of course, would need be removed.) Toward the back of the space there’s a built-in wet bar with mirror backed shelves and an impossibly ugly carved wood canopy. Integrated cabinetry next to the bar houses an upright piano painted the exact same shade of ecru as the walls and multipaned sliding glass doors open to the backyard where there’s a flagstone terrace surrounded swimming pool and a built-in barbecue station.

A low-tiled peninsula divides the main living/entertaining space from an informal dining space that links to a clean but practically archaic center island kitchen. The most bizarre and decoratively egregious feature in the entire house might be located in the step-down formal dining room that overlooks the frond yard and where the white paneled walls are set off by a brick lined niche fitted with three beer kegs. That’s right, children, there are three beer kegs sticking out of the wall in the dining room. Quite frankly, unless this was a frat house we’re not sure what would be better, if those kegs were purely decorative or if they had actual functioning taps.

We confess we have no inside information on what plans the Fonda-Elfmans might have for the property but it seems unlikely they’ll occupy the house as their primary residence even after an extensive and expensive renovation since they have long lived in a larger, neighboring property of just over three-quarters of an acre with a much more grand and probably far more updated 1920s Italian Renaissance villa that Miz Fonda purchased, according to various online resources, in late 2000 for $2.125 million.

written by admin \\ tags: Celebrity, Entertainment, West Coast

‘A labor of love for the Lord’ — Ship inspired by man’s faith in God finally sets sail

By Abigail Curtis, BDN Staff – Nov. 11, 2013

The schooner Beacon Won at the Front Street Shipyard in Belfast. The vessel that was built in Addison will travel to the Bahamas to be used as a charter boat this winter. It will make the voyage under engine power and will eventually be outfitted with two masts.

BELFAST, Maine — The stout, unfinished white boat, still without its mast and sails, looked a little out of place this week, moored as it was next to the multimillion-dollar superyachts of Front Street Shipyard.  The boat — named the Beacon Won — was a hub of activity Monday morning during a stability trial. It also looked like it might have a pretty good story to tell, and it does.

“When we bought the boat, it was really in a dilapidated condition,” Capt. Bruce Dunham said Monday. “We looked at the boat for five minutes, and said ‘no way.’ We did not need a project. We needed a boat. But we came back. We looked at the boat again, and we could not stand to see the boat die.”  At that point, the Beacon Won was nothing more than the hackmatack wooden skeleton, or ribs, of a 65-foot two-masted schooner, and a dream that seemed put on hold by the death of the man who had first dreamed of it.

Dino Fonda heard a message from God to build a ship back in 1986 when he and his wife, Cathy, were living in Venice, Fla. The couple traveled along the New England coast, searching for the right spot to build the boat, and they found it in the Addison Shipyard. They purchased the yard, and although Dino was not a trained boatbuilder, he had an engineering and building background and used books to help him with the tricky parts. He worked on the boat by hand for years while Cathy taught Spanish at Sumner Memorial High School.  “It was a labor of love for the Lord,” Cathy Fonda, now 70, said Monday.

When Dino died in 2003, his ship was not much more than a hull and a deck, and although it changed hands in 2005, for eight years it remained unfinished in Cathy’s dooryard. That changed in 2010, when Dunham and his wife, Sheila Young, read an ad in a marine industry magazine for a partially built schooner. They were in the market for a boat to use in their charter business in the Bahamas, which includes bringing kids on board for sailing adventures and Christian mission work.

Boat owner and Capt. Bruce Dunham in the engine room of the schooner Beacon Won. They will motor to the Bahamas, making more stops along the way to finish the interior of the vessel. The plan is to put the two masts in place sometime next year, after the winter charter season.

The couple may not have needed a project, but they took one on, and still were smiling three years later as the ship neared completion. Volunteers from all over did much of the work to finish the Beacon Won, including carpenters from the Amish community of Lancaster County, Pa., who built the ship’s galley. One man who came to Maine to work on the boat had lost both his daughters in the 2006 Amish schoolhouse shooting.  “This boat has been built by a huge cluster of good people,” Dunham said. “We are very humbled by the communities of Belfast, Jonesport and Addison.”  He said that so far, finishing the Beacon Won has required an investment of about $550,000 in addition to the years of work. The 61-ton ship has been built to be stout and very solid, with 4,200 sheets of marine plywood, epoxy and fiberglass. Even though Dino Fonda was not trained as a boatbuilder, Dunham said that he built the hull strongly and well.

“He was a genius,” the captain said. “It had to be ordained, because he did everything himself.”  David Wyman, an independent naval architect and marine surveyor from Castine, directed clusters of people around the boat Monday morning, shifting weight from one side to another to make sure that it would be sufficiently stable.  “It’s been a fun project to be involved in,” he said. “She’s a great boat.”  Dunham, Young and their crew plan to leave Maine this weekend, after finishing sea trials this week. They will meander down the Atlantic coastline, stopping in communities along the way so schoolchildren can visit the Beacon Won. They’ll be in the Caribbean by January to start the winter charter season there.

Cathy Fonda, who is spry and cheerful, with a faith as solid as the boat her husband envisioned, has become part of the Beacon Won’s family. She said that while she’s delighted that the boat is out of her yard and on its way to doing important mission work, she’ll be sad to see it — and the people aboard — leave the state.  “I’m not going to like it, having to go [away] to get a hug,” she said after receiving a bone-cracking embrace from the ebullient Dunham.  “It’s just exciting,” Fonda said. “I’ve said all along, I think Dino’s watching us, and jumping up and down. At least, I pray he is.”

Volunteers finishing ship inspired by man’s faith in God

By Sharon Kiley Mack, BDN Staff – Oct. 09, 2011

ADDISON, Maine — There are times in everyone’s life when patterns emerge, or coincidences become too frequent, or disparate series of events are inexplicably linked. Some raise their eyebrows and call it chance, while others credit divine intervention.  Such is the story of a 65-foot two-masted wooden schooner being built in Addison by a band of volunteers who believe it was destiny that brought them together and their belief in God that will launch their vessel.

On a tiny patch of land at Pleasant River Bay, where the high tide threatens to float the ship even before it is ready, carpenters from Pennsylvania, Florida, Maine, Texas, Tennessee and the Bahamas are racing to finish The Beacon Won before winter. Capt. Bruce Dunham and his partner, Sheila Young, then plan to sail the schooner south, resting in Maryland and South Carolina, before continuing on to Nassau in the Caribbean.  The ship will become a Christian mission ship — replacing two smaller ships the couple have been using for 19 years — and will take teenagers and church groups on week-long excursions, able to accommodate 30 passengers and a crew of six.

The story of The Beacon Won actually began 25 years ago, in 1986, when Dino Fonda and his wife, Cathy, were living in Venice, Fla.  “For a year before we left Florida, Dino kept hearing the message [from God] to build a ship,” Cathy Fonda said Thursday. A devout Christian, Fonda said she never once questioned her husband’s belief. “So we left Florida looking for a place to build a ship. Little did we know then that we were going to build it for Bruce and Sheila.”

Dino-Fonda

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Dino Fonda is shown working on his schooner in Addison in June 1997.

The Fondas traveled in a tiny 25-foot travel trailer along the New England coast, searching for just the right spot. Eventually they came to Jonesport, Maine, and Fonda said her husband knew it was the place to stop. One day, shortly after that, the Fondas drove through Addison.  “Dino said he was told [by God] to take a left and look to the left,” Cathy Fonda said. “There at the end of the dike was a building with a sign — ‘Addison Shipyard’ — and a ‘for sale’ sign out front.” The couple bought the shipyard in 1988, moved their travel trailer to the site, and Dino began building his boat.  “I taught school at Sumner High School [in Sullivan] for 15 years,” Cathy said. “I made the money. He built the boat.”

Dino Fonda worked on the boat for years, by hand, by himself, using books to help him with the engineering. He worked every good weather day, sometimes all the way into December. He bought six truckloads of hackmatack, set up a portable sawmill and cut the wood for the boat’s skeleton — the foot-thick ribs, the braces, the decking. Destiny kept throwing him both challenges and inspiration: The detached shop burned down one year but somehow the ship and its blueprints survived the blaze; another year Dino was working in a metal building alongside the construction site when a windstorm blew the roof off the building and the sides collapsed. He was left standing inside, unhurt.

But Dino couldn’t overcome cancer and died in 2003, leaving his beloved ship, which he had named Moriah, incomplete — not much more than a hull and a deck. “People here were so sad when Dino couldn’t finish the boat,” Cathy said. It sat, abandoned, for two years. Cathy sold the boat in 2005 to Steve Pagels of Bar Harbor. He kept the boat at the Addison Shipyard, but after a brief attempt to finish it, Pagels also put it on the market.  For eight years, Cathy looked out her kitchen window every day at her husband’s unfinished dream.

A year ago, and 1,455 miles away in the Bahamas, Dunham and Young read a small advertisement in a marine industry magazine. “Partially built schooner. $80,000. Call,” was all that it said, Young recalled.  “We arrived here last October, looked at it for five minutes and ran away,” Dunham said. “There was so much work left to do.”

But as they were leaving Maine they said some power larger than themselves brought them back to Addison and they decided they needed to buy the boat.  Over the winter, Dunham reached out to his friend Paul Risk, an 89-year-old retired carpenter from Pennsylvania who had never even worked on a boat before, much less built one. Risk knew Dunham and Young through their work with Christian youth groups.

Risk landed in Addison this past July and immediately constructed a greenhouse-style structure to cover the unfinished ship.  “I’ve been in construction all my life and I am overwhelmed at the work that Dino did. I don’t know how he did this all by himself,” Risk said.  He began installing slabs of plywood, four sheets thick, over the ship’s ribs, which had been protected for more than 20 years by melted tar. As word of the project spread through the East Coast’s Christian communities, other volunteers began to arrive and youth groups became involved. Inquiries about helping out came from Tennessee, from Texas, from Maryland.

A bunkhouse was built above the workshop, recreational camper homes began arriving, Fonda opened her home for meals and Risk’s wife, Shirley, began cooking for everyone. Slowly, a wheelhouse was constructed. Fiberglass was installed on the deck. A retired U.S. Navy engineer arrived from Florida to line up the propeller shafts. Engines were installed.  Local workers fabricated fuel tanks, lifted engines, planed the hackmatack. Once Dunham and Young finished their summer mission season in the Bahamas, they came back to Maine on Sept. 21 to join the workers.  “As soon as we get her closed in, we’ll sail her out to warmer waters,” Young said.  “And I’ll be right on board,” Fonda said, adding that she might stay on the ship for a bit of an adventure.

Launching the ship after more than 25 years of dreaming will be bittersweet for Fonda. “But we will have come full circle, from Dino’s dream of a mission to a mission group. I swear Dino’s jumping up and down in heaven. God just keeps bringing people and skills and expertise together.”  “Not any one of us could do any of this,” Risk said. “But when you put us all together, it is amazing. It’s an awesome spirit of unity.”

Dunham, as captain, said working to complete the ship has been a “very humbling experience. It truly is a miracle.” While he works, Dunham wears Dino’s old ball cap and Dino’s work gloves remain hanging in the workshop. “In honor of him,” Dunham said.  Dunham and Young welcome all volunteers, regardless of skill level. For information, call Fonda at 483-4655.

About The Beacon Won

The Beacon Won is a 65-foot gaff-rigged schooner, double masted, with two 3208 Caterpillar naturally aspirated diesel engines.  It has five below-deck compartments separated by watertight walls and has a 5 to 6 foot draft. It has two passenger compartments below deck and an enclosed galley and dining/lounging area on deck.

written by admin \\ tags: Events, New England, News

Shirley Fonda sits cross-legged on the floor in her Park Forest home and cradles Bob in her arms. Bob is about 8. He was born on a Bellefonte sidewalk. A boy brought him to Fonda soon after, still glistening. “So I’ve raised this one since birth, literally,” Fonda says. “He’s not doing well, unfortunately.” She tries to feed Bob, but he’s not receptive. After a while, she stops.

Shirley Fonda feeds one of her cats by hand at her State College home on Friday, January 4, 2013. Photo by Christopher Weddle, CDT.

These days, she would like to quit entirely. As much as she loves cats, she wants out of the rescue business. Fonda has taken in and found homes for stray or deserted cats for 14 years through her nonprofit operation, Fonda’s Foundlings. She has adopted cats from displaced trailer park residents whose new residences wouldn’t allow them. Her success stories number almost 1,500. Cats still fill her house. They sleep on chairs, sofas and window sills, and dart to and fro. Rooms have become colonies with cages and cat trees. Seven cats belong to her, but the rest are waiting for new owners.

Fonda’s weary of waiting. “It would just be nice to have a house again,” she says. She’s 77 and tired. Tired of spending hours daily feeding her residents. Tired of kittens from pets not neutered or spayed. Tired of cats abandoned to their fates. At this stage in her life, she would like to travel again. She and her husband Tom have been all over the world, exotic places like Borneo, and they have shelves of art and other curios to prove it.

She has a doctorate in geology, a master’s degree in zoology and research on marine biology waiting for her to resume. A cellist and classical pianist, she wants to perform with a local symphony and accompany Penn State music students like she once did. “There’s just no time for me to do any of that,” she says. She was trying to retire. For the past two years, she had stopped accepting adult cats, just kittens that she can easily sell to help offset her expenses. Cats kept going to homes, and her menagerie shrank to 40.

But like Michael Corleone, just when she thought she was out, she got pulled back in. Last August, she learned of a State College property overrun by strays. A woman had been feeding the area’s cats, then moved, leaving at least 62 behind. Eleven, including two with litters, were found inside the empty home. Neighborhood residents called Fonda. As a child, she brought home injured animals. As a local wildlife rehabilitation specialist for 25 years, she routinely nursed creatures to health. She couldn’t turn her back on suffering. “They had been there for two weeks and they were starving,” she says. Her shelter population swelled, but because most of the new arrivals were young and friendly, Fonda felt confident she could find homes for them.

Centre County PAWS, the Hundred Cat Foundation and Metzger Animal Hospital assisted her with a clinic to spay, neuter and attend to medical needs. Many young ones still didn’t survive. Since then, about two dozen have been adopted. She’s down to 20 mouths from the summer batch. Retirement draws nearer, but to get there, she needs help. Vet bills, food and litter for last year’s influx have cost the Fondas about $4,000. Weekly non-medical expenses exceed $100. Donations cover only so much, and they always could use more.

Most of all, Shirley Fonda needs caring cat-lovers — like the priest who once showed up and asked for her least-desirable orphan — to take her playful, gentle wards off her hands. Only then will she see more lands, play more concertos or possibly publish her research — if she can resist her own tenderhearted impulses. Call her at 238-4758 or search on petfinder.com if you’re interested in one of the files in Fonda’s thick black notebook. She’s waiting.

Adopt a Cat in State College, PA

We have been rescuing homeless cats and kittens in the central Pennsylvania region for 10 years and were involved in three major rescues in 2005. In January thirteen feral cats were trapped at the Toftrees Resort when management wanted the colony removed. In February 121 cats were rescued over a 6 week period from a home in Spring Mills and in May 59 cats were rescued from a home in only one week.

Nimbus is a gorgeous long hair tortie. She was found with her sister “Cirrus” and Mom “Skye” in a trailer park that was demolished. Nimbus loves loves to be petted. Her sister would be happy if you would adopt them together.

To date Fonda’s Foundlings have rescued 810 cats and kittens, most have been placed in loving homes. The kittens and cats that are available are quite friendly and ready to go to their forever home. All adults have been spayed/neutered, vaccinated, combo tested, and wormed. Fonda’s Foundlings will be at PETCO in State College, PA every SATURDAY afternoon and evening! Please stop by and show your support! If you can’t adopt, please donate!

No, they’re not little Nittany Lions… they’re Fonda’s foundlings!

Woman Opens Home to Stray Cats

Seventy-three-year old State College resident Shirley Fonda said her house is too full of cats for Penn State students to continue treating their pets poorly.   Fonda spends her waking hours feeding and caring for the 75 abandoned and stray cats she houses in her Park Forest home — cats she said she’s taken in as a result of some students abandoning their pets during winter and summer breaks.   “A good number of them are from students just dumping them off,” Fonda said. “I’d say I’ve reached my limits. I can’t afford it anymore. I paid over $9,000 in medical expenses [for the cats] last year.”

Shirley Fonda, 73, of State College, houses 75 stray cats in her apartment. Fonda said many of them are abandoned by students.

Cheryl Sharer, a full-time employee at the Pennsylvania SPCA Centre Hall Adoption Center, said the shelter has a constant problem with abandoned animals — especially after Penn State students head home for the holidays and leave their pets behind.  “Part of the problem is from students,” Sharer said. “We always get very busy around Christmas time and the first month of summer.” Sharer said she blames the problem on all Centre County residents, but the shelter is busiest around the time when Penn State students are leaving the area.

Donna Herrmann, of the The Hundred Cat Foundation, Inc., said her facility spayed or neutered about 600 cats this year alone. They experience an increased number of calls every spring, when unspayed female cats are abandoned during winter break begin to give birth.   “There is a huge feral cat population in State College, and some is definitely from students,” Herrmann said.

Fonda said she receives cats from people who can no longer take care of them and abandoned cats living in colonies. The cat colonies can contain upwards of 50 cats and center around student apartments and houses. “I’ve done rescues in Vairo Village, by the Toftrees Resort and Briarwood Apartments,” Fonda said. Briarwood Apartments is one of the few apartment complexes for students that allows pets, she said. Six rooms of Fonda’s house function as homes for her cats, which she is constantly trying to find owners for.

Penn State student Katie Fields lives in a Nittany Garden apartment on Waupelani Drive that allows pets and kept a cat earlier this year. But she said she quickly learned of how tough taking care of a pet can be. “I only had the cat for four or five days before I gave it back to the original owner,” Fields (senior-art education) said. “Financially, I couldn’t do it.” To students who do take on the responsibility of a cat, Fonda strongly recommends getting it spayed or neutered, and vaccinated.   “Students don’t realize it, but shelters can help you with medical expenses,” she said. “If you get a pet, be responsible.”

written by admin \\ tags: Pennsylvania, Pets, Special Interest

Floodwaters can’t stop Fonda Fair

Spirited effort to clear damage preserves 170-year-old tradition
By Carol DeMare, Staff Writer – Friday, September 2, 2011

FONDA — For 170 years, the Fonda Fair has gone on as scheduled, attracting those from the surrounding farm communities as well as outsiders who come for the food, the rides, the entertainment and even the monster trucks.  This year, Tropical Storm Irene and the Mohawk River got in the way, delaying the opening by two days. But even the onslaught of floodwaters couldn’t make this popular fair a wash-out.  Fair-goers and exhibitors alike — all of them fair lovers, of course — came to the rescue. They cleaned the 60-plus acres of the Montgomery County fairgrounds over more than two days, doing what amounted to grunt work.

On Thursday, as he drove around the property in a golf cart, past the numerous amusement park rides, the cotton candy stands, the barns with the livestock and horses, the junk cars that the monster trucks would go to work on, the huge arena where Kellie Pickler will perform Saturday night, no one could be prouder of how it all came together than fair president Richard Kennedy. Officially, the gates opened Thursday at 5 p.m., and the fair will run through Monday. The seven-day event originally was scheduled to open Tuesday.

Kendall Kennedy of Fort Plain, 11, stays with her holstein Tish in the 4-H Cattle barn at the Montgomery County Agricultural Society's Fonda Fair just a few hours before the 5 pm start of the annual fair on Thursday Sept. 1, 2011, in Fonda, NY. (Philip Kamrass / Times Union)

This year’s fair theme is “American Made, American Pride,” Kennedy said. “And the pride is showing through,” added the owner of a horse and dairy farm in Fort Plain. Hundreds of volunteers, some from as far as Lake George, converged on the fairgrounds Tuesday morning.

The Mohawk runs alongside the fairgrounds and Fonda Speedway, which are adjacent to each other — actually, the fairgrounds owns the speedway and leases it out. On Sunday, the river, fueled by water from the Schoharie Creek, overflowed its banks and Kennedy was taken in a sheriff’s boat to assess the damage. That was at 7 a.m. and by noon that day, the water was down by 2 feet.

As soon as the locks opened, the water dramatically receded and by Tuesday morning, it was 90 percent dry, Kennedy said.  The Cook family of Bleecker, Fulton County, had smiles Thursday as they walked around a clean fairgrounds, not far from their stables where they will show eight of their 12 horses from their “hobby farm.”  Ron “Chip” Cook, 44, and his wife, Becky, 41, along with children David, 11 and Bethany, 18, were all involved in the cleanup. Three other daughters, Abigail, 15, Moriah, 14, and Sarah, 12, also deserve credit, their mother said.

Everyone shoveled out stalls, pressure-washed the walls and disinfected everything, the parents said. The kids — all are members of the 4-H — cleaned and painted the poultry barn where they will exhibit their rabbits.  “This has been our family vacation for years,” the father said. “We look forward to it.”  “It’s an agricultural fair,” he said. “It’s all family down here, not blood-related but family.”  In years past, some 70,000 to 80,000 turned out over the seven days of the fair, Kennedy said.

The flood ruined equipment in the four concession stands at the speedway, concession manager Randy Yurkewecz said. At 6 foot 2, he was removing food from freezers as the water rose to his chest and he was told to get out.  The 49-year-old Yurkewecz said a flood in 2006 also destroyed equipment in the concession stands, but the track still stands, and the resilience of the speedway workers will come through again. There will be races Sept. 17 and the 24, Yurkewecz said.

Kennedy, who also is a territory manager/equine nutritional consultant for Cargill Animal Nutrition, is in his 11th year on the fair’s board and sixth year as president. He was around for the 2006 flood as well.  This time, he told the eight to 10 superintendents of the fair to get the word out a massive cleanup would begin at 8 a.m. Tuesday and he needed volunteers. The local newspapers and radio stations also put out the word.

By 8 a.m. 100 to 150 volunteers had showed up, including the Mohawk Fire Department with a pumper truck and high-pressure wash for the buildings.  “It took them 12 hours and it would have taken us two weeks,” Kennedy said. “The volunteers shoveled and swept and carried tables and chairs out of buildings.”

Students showed up to work, he said, including the great-grandchildren of Mike Scott, who was a fair director and dairy farm and the legend for whom Scott Hall is named.  Eileen Douglas, 68, a dairy farmer from Fort Plain organized the clean-up and then the setting up of exhibits at the Agricultural Awareness Building. Her 12-year-old granddaughter Alexis Douglas was helping set up Thursday.

“I sincerely believe the public needs to know where their food comes from … and that it’s safe,” said Douglas, who’s been exhibiting at the fair for 40 years. “Agriculture puts the roof over your head, the food on your table and the clothing on your back.”  Her daughter, Sandy Douglas, 48, also of Fort Plain, helped with the cleaning. As soon as Route 5S was open for travel, “we were here,” she said. Her first reaction to the mess left by the flood waters was, “It was overwhelming.”

Reach Carol DeMare at 454-5431 or cdemare@timesunion.com

written by admin \\ tags: Events, Montgomery Co., Village of Fonda