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Sep 11
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Fondas celebrate 50th wedding anniversary
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Bruce and Yoshiko Fonda of Radcliff will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary June 1, 2011. They were married June 1, 1961, in Okinawa. Mr. Fonda is a retired Sgt. Maj. from the U.S. Army and retired from service as a loan officer at Fort Knox Federal Credit Union. Mrs. Fonda is very active in a bowling league and Soka Gakai International. They have two children, 13 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Mr. and Mrs. Fonda then
Mr. and Mrs. Fonda now
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Sep 11
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Pebble Beach war pilot recalls surviving missions
By DENNIS TAYLOR, Herald Staff Writer, Posted: 09/05/2011
After flying his 50th bombing mission over Europe, Bill Fonda of the United States Army Air Force was rotated back to the U.S. to a base in Greenville, S.C. On the day he got those orders, he briefly considered asking for a transfer to a fighter plane squadron.
“I had always wanted to fly fighters, and if I had asked, they might have given me the transfer,” says Fonda, now 91 and living in Pebble Beach. “But I didn’t ask, and they didn’t offer, so I came home.
“I’ve always wondered how my life might have turned out if I had pursued that option,” Fonda muses. “I might not have married the woman I married, might not have had the children and grandchildren I have. My whole life might have been very different — assuming I had survived.”
His survival, he believes, is the reason he was awarded the Silver Star, for “gallantry in action against the enemy,” along with nine other military medals, for his service in the European Theater during World War II.
“It’s not always true — there are exceptions — but my feeling about medals is that you get them for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and managing to survive,” he says.
Read the complete story in The Herald’s print or e-edition of Sept. 4
(If anyone has the text of the full article, or a photo, please forward to webmaster@fonda.org)
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Sep 11
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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
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Sep 11
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Student finds his soundtrack to success
The past few weeks of Grant Fonda’s life would not make for a very stirring motion picture.
Although Fonda participated in an international contest that tested his skill and resolve, there was no final scene of victory, only quiet affirmations. No triumphant hoisting of a trophy over his weary head, only subtler moments to be cherished and worthwhile lessons to be tucked away for a future date.
University of Missouri graduate student Grant Fonda recently traveled to Poland to compete in the Transatlantyk Instant Composition Contest.
The graduate student at the University of Missouri School of Music traveled to Poland earlier this month to compete in the Transatlantyk Instant Composition Contest, a compositional pressure cooker that tested his ability to write emotive music for motion pictures. Although Fonda did not achieve a level of glory worthy of having his own tale captured on celluloid, he came home with a better understanding of what it means to be part of the film industry.
Fonda applied to the competition — founded by Oscar-winning composer Jan Kaczmarek (“Finding Neverland”) — almost as an afterthought, engaging the process between finishing a commission and heading to his native California for vacation. In addition to submitting previously composed works, he was required to score two short film clips that were distinct but equally daunting. The first, a climactic scene from the 2009 film “Get Low,” included a stirring soliloquy from Oscar winner Robert Duvall; it was an “intense” and “delicate” moment with dialogue that needed to be preserved, not drowned out, he said. The second was from a “bizarre” French cartoon in which a young girl, among other things, falls into a bowl of alphabet soup and is attacked by zombies.
For the Duvall clip, he evoked themes of mystery and absolution through the use of unresolved dissonances, inverted chords and pedal tones; Fonda balanced “menacing” and “childlike” themes for the latter. For his work, he was selected as one of 30 participants, which meant trekking to Poland, watching a short film, and composing and performing an accompaniment before a panel of American and Polish judges on the spot.
Fonda was shown a five-plus-minute piece called “Walking,” produced by a Canadian travel commission decades ago; the work was bizarre and psychedelic, with no discernible plot or dialogue, he said. Immediately upon leaving the screening room, he sat at the piano and performed his level best. His strategy: attach a winning theme to the film’s central character and balance out its more extreme elements with a relatively accessible, melodic score. Ultimately, Fonda did not take his place among the 10 finalists. He received praise from the American panelists but was told the European judges wished he’d taken more risks; other contestants incorporated elements of prepared piano or relied on a more serial, clustered set of tones.
Although Fonda did not advance in the competition, his compositional sensibilities were advanced by encouraging, “invaluable” interactions with the likes of composers Christopher Young (“Spider-Man 3,” “The Grudge”), George S. Clinton (the “Austin Powers” films), Bruno Louchouarn (“Total Recall”) and producer Roy Conli (“Tangled,” “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”); these professionals offered lessons on life and art in master classes and specific feedback in personal conversations.
Among the comments Fonda received were praiseworthy pronouncements on his ability to convey mood and character and his capacity to musically captain viewers through a spectrum of emotions in a short period of time. Clinton remarked on his remarkable capacity for suggesting and creating color through orchestration. Additionally, he was told he had a fitting temperament for composition and was encouraged to stand up for his abilities, even while avoiding walking on others in collaboration. Ultimately, he was deeply encouraged by Young’s comments on the relationship between a composer’s maturity and the potency of his or her music.
“He said, ‘You’re not going to be able to evoke the right emotion for a romantic scene if you’ve never been married,’ ” Fonda recalled. “ ‘You’re not going to be able to evoke the right emotion for a funeral if you’ve never witnessed somebody close to you die.’ He said there’s just a certain advantage that being older in the industry has than being younger. … All this time I had been thinking,” as someone who’s closer to 30 than 20, “I’d missed my stride.”
Fonda said he’s likely to reapply next year — this year’s contest might not have provided a feel-good movie ending, but, as he exercises his talent and applies messages received an ocean away, there’s little doubt a sequel is in the works.
Reach Aarik Danielsen at 573-815-1731 or e-mail ajdanielsen@columbiatribune.com.
Copyright 2011 Columbia Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
This article was published on page C2 of the Sunday, August 28, 2011 edition of The Columbia Daily Tribune.
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Mar 22
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Fonda buildings become history
Written By: Michelle Monroe
ST. ALBANS CITY — The buildings at former Fonda paper products plant site have been taken down and now meticulous cleanup work will begin, according to St. Albans City Director of Planning Chip Sawyer. “It’s coming along really well,” said Sawyer of the demolition that’s taking place on Lower Newton Street.
Only a small structure, outfitted with hoppers remained at the site this morning and those soon will be taken down with a crane. Materials from that portion of the complex will then undergo asbestos abatement and any recyclable metal will be reclaimed. Thus far, 1,160 tons of general debris have been removed from the site along with 65 tons of mildly contaminated debris, Sawyer reported this morning.
There are a couple of areas within the former factory where there is a high level of PCBs – a class of chemicals which have been linked to cancer – and those areas will be sealed off and permanently fenced, explained Sawyer. Currently, the pieces of the buildings are still being sorted through and cleaned. Recyclable materials are being gathered and recycled as part of that process, as well.
About a month of work remains, said Sawyer today. The basement will be filled in and all of the cleaning areas and materials will need to be dismantled and cleaned. As part of the demolition, steps have been taken to insure water does not leave the site and stormwater is being treated on site before being sent to the wastewater treatment facility. Funds for the demolition project have come from the State of Vermont and the Northwest Regional Planning brownfield’s loan program. Total cost of the demolition, which began on Sept. 15, is roughly $900,000.
The paper products factory was built in 1942 and was acquired by Fonda in 1980. In 2002, about 245 people were employed at the plant, which was sold to Solo in 2004. A year later Solo announced its intention to close the factory, and the doors were shut for good in 2006. When Solo announced the closing there were 168 employees. In some local families multiple generations have been employed at the plant. The site, which straddles the town-city divide, is now owned by the city.
The future of the site is still undecided, but a feasibility study for a co-generation facility found that a facility generating 10 megawatts of electricity along with steam heat — fueled by wood chips — would be able to pay for itself in approximately seven years. The city is investigating the possibility of a private company building such a facility at the Fonda site.
Clock ticks for Fonda building
Written By: Leon Thompson, St. Albans Messenger
Demolition bids’ deadline Tuesday
The Fonda Solo Building will be demolished this summer.
ST. ALBANS CITY, VT –– Crews responsible for demolition of the vacant Fonda/Solo plant on Lower Newton Street could be mobilized and ready by May 1, according to one of the city’s development leaders. Contractors’ bids to raze one of the largest enclosed spaces in the city, are due at City Hall Tuesday. Jim Tischler, planning and development director, told aldermen during their regular meeting last week that he hopes to have a contractor’s bid to them by the second week of April.
The city has secured all funding necessary for the $600,000 demolition project, including two grants totaling $400,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and $200,000 from a state brownfields program.
The city purchased the 120,500-square-foot building on a 4.5-acre parcel in 2007 for $300,000. Toward the end of 2010, the state approved a phased-in mitigation plan to clean the contaminated site, once used to manufacture paper products. The first phase calls for demolition of the two buildings and to keep the area protected until the city has a development project in place. “It was the administration’s position that the best way to show the community that the project needs to move forward is to proceed with the use of that grant money and get the buildings demolished,” Tischler told the city council last week.
The Fonda / Solo brand lives on, with headquarters in Illinois and manufacturing worldwide.
Two weeks ago, about 65 people – more than has graced the inside of the plant for years – went on a walk-through of the site for potential bidders. Tischler said the city has already received 24 sets of plans from bidders all over New England and the Midwest. Ward 5 Alderman Joe Luneau wondered $600,000 was adequate. Tischler said demolition could come in under bid. Project specifications also require the city to recycle some materials at the site. During demolition, workers will fence off the area and post signs that warn of contamination in the area. Contaminated areas will be covered with gravel for protection. The winning contractor will provide flaggers for traffic control and also remove debris without going through neighborhoods, Tischler said.
Last November, the city council unanimously chose Weston and Sampson, a Peabody, Mass., environmental consulting firm, to oversee razing of the Fonda/Solo plant. Weston and Sampson also facilitated the bidding process for demolition. During the demolition process, the city has been working with three EPA officials, the Department of Environmental Conservation, the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development and the Northwest Regional Planning Commission. The city had wanted to raze the building by the end of 2010, but delays bumped that goal to this July, the end of the current fiscal year. The city has a redevelopment concept in mind for the site, with several contenders interested in it, but city officials have been reticent in releasing any details.
The Solo Cup Company, which purchased the paper products manufacturing plant from Fonda, closed the facility in 2005 and laid-off 168 employees. The proposed remediation would occur at the surface level, with sub-grade remediation (soil clean-up) occurring once a new business has committed to the site, so that remediation and construction can happen simultaneously. Brownfields testing in 2008 revealed contamination by polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), trichloroethene (TCE), and some metals were in concentrations above regulatory limits.
In the 1960s and 1970s Fonda was a leading U.S. food container company that provided paper cups and other paper products which among other uses, were found at large professional sports venues. The ink used to manufacture other products contained PCBs – potentially toxic environmental compounds – and was spilled on the concrete floor, leaving it contaminated. Groundwater on the western side of the building also contained TCE, a cleaning solvent that previously was used in anesthesia.
Also see previous post here. Solo Cup Company info here.
Note: It is not certain why the company originally took the Fonda name, but there is a family branch which settled in the area in the mid-1800’s and a local town used to be called Fonda Junction.