Howard Riley Interview - Revision history

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	\|GW:\|\|Now I know you’ve had a life in government. Tell us a little bit about that. What offices you held and things like that.		\|GW:\|\|Now I know you’ve had a life in government. Tell us a little bit about that. What offices you held and things like that.
	\|-		\|-
	\|HR:\|\|Well, when I was still at the Enterprise, cause I then covered all sorts of meetings and plane crashes and every place the troopers were, I was, I just started covering everything and writing about it and when the [[St. Bernard~~%27s~~ Church\|Catholic church]] burned down, but going to these board meetings, I said it’s got to be interesting to actually be a [[village trustee\|village trustee]] for one term and later on a got to be Mayor also and I was still editor of the paper and I said that was a great thing because I’d write an editorial once a month saying the Mayor’s doing a hell of a nice job, we ought to re-elect him, but anyway, the strangest thing happened with politics and I realized how much I liked it after I got into it, but I ran that year and there were six of us running, three Republicans and three Democrats, I’m a Democrat and I got the higher vote than all six and the Democrats took over control of the board and of course the guy who was elected Mayor was [[John F. Campion\|John Campion]] and a guy named [[Alton B. Anderson]] they were [[World War II veterans]], but the strangest thing happened a year later. Back then every postmaster in the country, they were political jobs, they were appointed by the Postmaster General, so it didn’t matter if you’d ever mailed a letter, you could be Postmaster the next day and that’s what happened here. John Campion had been a Marine Major in World War II and the postmaster died or something and he was a Democrat, there was a Democrat in Washington, it happened to be John F. Kennedy, and Campion was appointed Postmaster and he’d only been Mayor for a year. The Deputy Mayor was [[Myron Skeels]] who worked for the telephone company, the other guy had a gas station and there was one Republican on the board and they weren’t going to appoint him, so they said we’ve got to appoint somebody as Mayor so after a year on there, and I was 30 then, I was appointed Mayor. I had no idea what I was doing, even though I’d covered a lot of meetings….		\|HR:\|\|Well, when I was still at the Enterprise, cause I then covered all sorts of meetings and plane crashes and every place the troopers were, I was, I just started covering everything and writing about it and when the [[St. Bernard's Church\|Catholic church]] burned down, but going to these board meetings, I said it’s got to be interesting to actually be a [[village trustee\|village trustee]] for one term and later on a got to be Mayor also and I was still editor of the paper and I said that was a great thing because I’d write an editorial once a month saying the Mayor’s doing a hell of a nice job, we ought to re-elect him, but anyway, the strangest thing happened with politics and I realized how much I liked it after I got into it, but I ran that year and there were six of us running, three Republicans and three Democrats, I’m a Democrat and I got the higher vote than all six and the Democrats took over control of the board and of course the guy who was elected Mayor was [[John F. Campion\|John Campion]] and a guy named [[Alton B. Anderson]] they were [[World War II veterans]], but the strangest thing happened a year later. Back then every postmaster in the country, they were political jobs, they were appointed by the Postmaster General, so it didn’t matter if you’d ever mailed a letter, you could be Postmaster the next day and that’s what happened here. John Campion had been a Marine Major in World War II and the postmaster died or something and he was a Democrat, there was a Democrat in Washington, it happened to be John F. Kennedy, and Campion was appointed Postmaster and he’d only been Mayor for a year. The Deputy Mayor was [[Myron Skeels]] who worked for the telephone company, the other guy had a gas station and there was one Republican on the board and they weren’t going to appoint him, so they said we’ve got to appoint somebody as Mayor so after a year on there, and I was 30 then, I was appointed Mayor. I had no idea what I was doing, even though I’d covered a lot of meetings….
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	\|GW:\|\|You were a cub reporter at 24 and Mayor at 30.		\|GW:\|\|You were a cub reporter at 24 and Mayor at 30.

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	\|HR:\|\|They were the easiest so I could get through. I think it was then called, I took Shop, I took commercial course, I took typing, anything that looked easy, I took. We took general electricity, I almost electrocuted myself because I made a lamp and when you pulled the chain the light was supposed to go on, but actually somehow the current come down through the chain.		\|HR:\|\|They were the easiest so I could get through. I think it was then called, I took Shop, I took commercial course, I took typing, anything that looked easy, I took. We took general electricity, I almost electrocuted myself because I made a lamp and when you pulled the chain the light was supposed to go on, but actually somehow the current come down through the chain.
	\|-		\|-
	\| \|\|At that time, girls all took home economics to learn how to cook. Then we switched classes and they took shop classes and we took baking and baking bread and stuff and me and this other guy made the best rolls so we got to bring them up to the superintendent of schools, [[H.~~%20V~~.~~%20Littell~~\|Professor Littell]], but on the way up I remember they went off the plate and they were rolling down the stairs, it’s true, and we picked them up and dusted them off and brought them into the professor, and he said they were very good.		\| \|\|At that time, girls all took home economics to learn how to cook. Then we switched classes and they took shop classes and we took baking and baking bread and stuff and me and this other guy made the best rolls so we got to bring them up to the superintendent of schools, [[H. V. Littell\|Professor Littell]], but on the way up I remember they went off the plate and they were rolling down the stairs, it’s true, and we picked them up and dusted them off and brought them into the professor, and he said they were very good.
	\|-		\|-
	\|GW:\|\|Now at Saranac, were you into any clubs or athletic associations or societies?		\|GW:\|\|Now at Saranac, were you into any clubs or athletic associations or societies?
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	\|GW:\|\|So anyway, you worked your way up. I mean you just only stayed at the Enterprise for the most part.		\|GW:\|\|So anyway, you worked your way up. I mean you just only stayed at the Enterprise for the most part.
	\|-		\|-
	\|HR:\|\|Yeah, to the linotype operator, then I became [??] and a guy by the name of [[Jim Loeb]] and [[Roger Tubby]] bought the newspapers. They’d both been, Roger had been editor the ''Burlington Banner'', but he graduated from Yale and was Harry Truman’s last press secretary and Jim Loeb had worked for Averil Harriman and he was a PhD in romance languages, anyway, they loved this little newspaper and they were so nice to all of us, I’d never been treated so well by, you know, educated kind of quasi-wealthy people so I remember Roger Tubby was covering meetings and of course he was new in town so I’d set his stories on the linotype and there’d be mistakes in people’s names or something, so I would correct them and tell him I corrected them and, I thought he was being sarcastic so one day after I corrected these names he said, Howard why don’t you try covering some of these meetings at night and I thought oh I can’t cover any meetings, I’m just trying to help you. Well, I know you are, he said. I’d like you to cover a meeting, I think that’s someplace in the book, but I went to the first one. You can imagine how nervous I was and [[Hayward~~%20Plumadore~~\|Hayward “Red” Plumadore]] was the town supervisor, he was a good lawyer, his son just retired as state supreme court judge, and Red later became a New York State Assemblyman and, anyway I went to my very, very first meeting and of course I got there early with a notebook and Red, they were all in the back room, the clerk, all the councilmen and that and I went in and sat down and they all quit talking and they said can we help you. I said I’m here to cover the town board meeting, or I’m here to cover this meeting.		\|HR:\|\|Yeah, to the linotype operator, then I became [??] and a guy by the name of [[Jim Loeb]] and [[Roger Tubby]] bought the newspapers. They’d both been, Roger had been editor the ''Burlington Banner'', but he graduated from Yale and was Harry Truman’s last press secretary and Jim Loeb had worked for Averil Harriman and he was a PhD in romance languages, anyway, they loved this little newspaper and they were so nice to all of us, I’d never been treated so well by, you know, educated kind of quasi-wealthy people so I remember Roger Tubby was covering meetings and of course he was new in town so I’d set his stories on the linotype and there’d be mistakes in people’s names or something, so I would correct them and tell him I corrected them and, I thought he was being sarcastic so one day after I corrected these names he said, Howard why don’t you try covering some of these meetings at night and I thought oh I can’t cover any meetings, I’m just trying to help you. Well, I know you are, he said. I’d like you to cover a meeting, I think that’s someplace in the book, but I went to the first one. You can imagine how nervous I was and [[Hayward Plumadore\|Hayward “Red” Plumadore]] was the town supervisor, he was a good lawyer, his son just retired as state supreme court judge, and Red later became a New York State Assemblyman and, anyway I went to my very, very first meeting and of course I got there early with a notebook and Red, they were all in the back room, the clerk, all the councilmen and that and I went in and sat down and they all quit talking and they said can we help you. I said I’m here to cover the town board meeting, or I’m here to cover this meeting.
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	\|GW:\|\|And how old were you then?		\|GW:\|\|And how old were you then?
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	\|GW:\|\|Now I know you’ve had a life in government. Tell us a little bit about that. What offices you held and things like that.		\|GW:\|\|Now I know you’ve had a life in government. Tell us a little bit about that. What offices you held and things like that.
	\|-		\|-
	\|HR:\|\|Well, when I was still at the Enterprise, cause I then covered all sorts of meetings and plane crashes and every place the troopers were, I was, I just started covering everything and writing about it and when the [[St.~~%20Bernard~~%27s~~%20Church~~\|Catholic church]] burned down, but going to these board meetings, I said it’s got to be interesting to actually be a [[village~~%20trustee~~\|village trustee]] for one term and later on a got to be Mayor also and I was still editor of the paper and I said that was a great thing because I’d write an editorial once a month saying the Mayor’s doing a hell of a nice job, we ought to re-elect him, but anyway, the strangest thing happened with politics and I realized how much I liked it after I got into it, but I ran that year and there were six of us running, three Republicans and three Democrats, I’m a Democrat and I got the higher vote than all six and the Democrats took over control of the board and of course the guy who was elected Mayor was [[John~~%20F~~.~~%20Campion~~\|John Campion]] and a guy named [[Alton B. Anderson]] they were [[World War II veterans]], but the strangest thing happened a year later. Back then every postmaster in the country, they were political jobs, they were appointed by the Postmaster General, so it didn’t matter if you’d ever mailed a letter, you could be Postmaster the next day and that’s what happened here. John Campion had been a Marine Major in World War II and the postmaster died or something and he was a Democrat, there was a Democrat in Washington, it happened to be John F. Kennedy, and Campion was appointed Postmaster and he’d only been Mayor for a year. The Deputy Mayor was [[Myron Skeels]] who worked for the telephone company, the other guy had a gas station and there was one Republican on the board and they weren’t going to appoint him, so they said we’ve got to appoint somebody as Mayor so after a year on there, and I was 30 then, I was appointed Mayor. I had no idea what I was doing, even though I’d covered a lot of meetings….		\|HR:\|\|Well, when I was still at the Enterprise, cause I then covered all sorts of meetings and plane crashes and every place the troopers were, I was, I just started covering everything and writing about it and when the [[St. Bernard%27s Church\|Catholic church]] burned down, but going to these board meetings, I said it’s got to be interesting to actually be a [[village trustee\|village trustee]] for one term and later on a got to be Mayor also and I was still editor of the paper and I said that was a great thing because I’d write an editorial once a month saying the Mayor’s doing a hell of a nice job, we ought to re-elect him, but anyway, the strangest thing happened with politics and I realized how much I liked it after I got into it, but I ran that year and there were six of us running, three Republicans and three Democrats, I’m a Democrat and I got the higher vote than all six and the Democrats took over control of the board and of course the guy who was elected Mayor was [[John F. Campion\|John Campion]] and a guy named [[Alton B. Anderson]] they were [[World War II veterans]], but the strangest thing happened a year later. Back then every postmaster in the country, they were political jobs, they were appointed by the Postmaster General, so it didn’t matter if you’d ever mailed a letter, you could be Postmaster the next day and that’s what happened here. John Campion had been a Marine Major in World War II and the postmaster died or something and he was a Democrat, there was a Democrat in Washington, it happened to be John F. Kennedy, and Campion was appointed Postmaster and he’d only been Mayor for a year. The Deputy Mayor was [[Myron Skeels]] who worked for the telephone company, the other guy had a gas station and there was one Republican on the board and they weren’t going to appoint him, so they said we’ve got to appoint somebody as Mayor so after a year on there, and I was 30 then, I was appointed Mayor. I had no idea what I was doing, even though I’d covered a lot of meetings….
	\|-		\|-
	\|GW:\|\|You were a cub reporter at 24 and Mayor at 30.		\|GW:\|\|You were a cub reporter at 24 and Mayor at 30.

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	\|GW:\|\|So when did you, I know you were still working for the Enterprise, but when did you quit as editor?		\|GW:\|\|So when did you, I know you were still working for the Enterprise, but when did you quit as editor?
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	\|HR:\|\|I quit in 1974 and I bought, there was a liquor store down across from where they build the ice palace now, where the [[deli]] is, I bought that building and the ones next to it and I had a liquor store there for a while and that’s when I went to work for the Olympic Committee. And I had…		\|HR:\|\|I quit in 1974 and I bought, there was a liquor store down across from where they build the ice palace now, where the [[70 Shepard Avenue\|deli]] is, I bought that building and the ones next to it and I had a liquor store there for a while and that’s when I went to work for the Olympic Committee. And I had…
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	\|GW:\|\|Tell us about that.		\|GW:\|\|Tell us about that.

MWanner at 14:22, 11 December 2025

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	\|GW:\|\|That’s amazing, the rise that you did, it enabled you to experience the entire operation, it’s better than had you just moved in at the top, you saw everything from the bottom up.		\|GW:\|\|That’s amazing, the rise that you did, it enabled you to experience the entire operation, it’s better than had you just moved in at the top, you saw everything from the bottom up.
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	\|HR:\|\|Yup, yup, the very last chapter in that book, [[Alice Ridenour]] whose father owned the paper from 1920 something to 194, I wrote this story, it’s the very last chapter in the book called Web Break and when it, when the temperature was bad on a cold day in the winter, the web was the way the paper was weaved through the press and it would break, it would take forever to wind it back through and people waiting for the paper, and it would be snowing and cold and stuff, so anyway that, she loved that part of the story the way we used to put out the paper by hot type. But anyway, I stayed there for 23 years.		\|HR:\|\|Yup, yup, the very last chapter in that book, [[Alice Ridenour]] whose [[John S. Ridenour\|father]] owned the paper from 1920 something to 194, I wrote this story, it’s the very last chapter in the book called Web Break and when it, when the temperature was bad on a cold day in the winter, the web was the way the paper was weaved through the press and it would break, it would take forever to wind it back through and people waiting for the paper, and it would be snowing and cold and stuff, so anyway that, she loved that part of the story the way we used to put out the paper by hot type. But anyway, I stayed there for 23 years.
	\|-		\|-
	\|GW:\|\|Now I know you’ve had a life in government. Tell us a little bit about that. What offices you held and things like that.		\|GW:\|\|Now I know you’ve had a life in government. Tell us a little bit about that. What offices you held and things like that.

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	\| \|\|And then a short while after moving to that farm we actually moved to Saranac Lake where my brother lives now, back in 1942 when I would have been 12 and I got a job you know as a paperboy and it was like, you’re right, like my whole life changed all of a sudden. You know I had money all the time, I knew everybody, I was downtown, we had this house you just walked from the house downtown and had, you know, electricity and running, well the farmhouse did there too, but yeah it was like I couldn’t have had a happier childhood.		\| \|\|And then a short while after moving to that farm we actually moved to Saranac Lake where my brother lives now, back in 1942 when I would have been 12 and I got a job you know as a paperboy and it was like, you’re right, like my whole life changed all of a sudden. You know I had money all the time, I knew everybody, I was downtown, we had this house you just walked from the house downtown and had, you know, electricity and running, well the farmhouse did there too, but yeah it was like I couldn’t have had a happier childhood.
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	\| \|\|The strange thing was that this being so active with the tuberculosis then, we lived at [[5 Pine Street]] and on the corner there was a huge house, [[Ron DeLair]], the architect owns one of the houses, there was two there and they named them for most of the patients. I think this was [[Endicott Johnson]]’s house because a lot of people in these big places all got sick and they had cottages for most of the people were from one company, but anyway, so I [[carried trays]] there when I was probably 14 and that was, nobody seemed to worry about us getting TB, I mean they were the sickest patients, there were some that were bedridden, they didn’t get up, you brought them their breakfast, brought the tray back down, but the funny part I used to think about after, on Sunday I used to go shop for these patients down at [[Rice's Drugstore]], buying them cigarettes and candy and newspapers and here they're dying of lung disease, but they’re out there smoking away and the doctors didn’t seem to mind.		\| \|\|The strange thing was that this being so active with the tuberculosis then, we lived at [[5 Pine Street]] and on the corner there was a huge house, [[Ron DeLair]], the architect owns one of the houses, there was two there and they named them for most of the patients. I think this was [[Endicott Johnson]]’s house because a lot of people in these big places all got sick and they had cottages for most of the people were from one company, but anyway, so I [[Tray boys\|carried trays]] there when I was probably 14 and that was, nobody seemed to worry about us getting TB, I mean they were the sickest patients, there were some that were bedridden, they didn’t get up, you brought them their breakfast, brought the tray back down, but the funny part I used to think about after, on Sunday I used to go shop for these patients down at [[Rice's Drugstore]], buying them cigarettes and candy and newspapers and here they're dying of lung disease, but they’re out there smoking away and the doctors didn’t seem to mind.
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	\|GW:\|\|The doctors probably smoked too.		\|GW:\|\|The doctors probably smoked too.

MWanner at 13:28, 11 December 2025

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	[[File:Howard~~%20Riley~~.jpg\|right\|thumb\|\|Howard Riley ]] My name is Gerry Waterson and today we are interviewing former Saranac Lake Mayor [[Howard%20Riley\|Howard Riley]]. The date is December 28, 2010 and this is part of the Historic Saranac Lake oral history project and we are located here at [[Saranac%20Village%20at%20Will%20Rogers\|Saranac Village at Will Rogers]].{\|-		[[File:Howard Riley.jpg\|right\|thumb\|\|Howard Riley ]] My name is Gerry Waterson and today we are interviewing former Saranac Lake Mayor [[Howard%20Riley\|Howard Riley]]. The date is December 28, 2010 and this is part of the Historic Saranac Lake oral history project and we are located here at [[Saranac%20Village%20at%20Will%20Rogers\|Saranac Village at Will Rogers]].{\|-
	\|GW:\|\|First of all, Howard I’d like to thank you for taking the time to talk with us. Let’s begin by asking a few basic questions and then I hope from there we won’t have yes or no answers, but that could be my undoing. I might give you the wrong questions and since we are time limited to about 40 minutes we have to proceed at a good pace here. Some beginning things, first of all, let me have your full name.\|		\|GW:\|\|First of all, Howard I’d like to thank you for taking the time to talk with us. Let’s begin by asking a few basic questions and then I hope from there we won’t have yes or no answers, but that could be my undoing. I might give you the wrong questions and since we are time limited to about 40 minutes we have to proceed at a good pace here. Some beginning things, first of all, let me have your full name.\|
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	[[		[[File:Howard%20Riley.jpg\|right\|thumb\|\|Howard Riley ]] My name is Gerry Waterson and today we are interviewing former Saranac Lake Mayor [[Howard%20Riley\|Howard Riley]]. The date is December 28, 2010 and this is part of the Historic Saranac Lake oral history project and we are located here at [[Saranac%20Village%20at%20Will%20Rogers\|Saranac Village at Will Rogers]].{\|-
			\|GW:\|\|First of all, Howard I’d like to thank you for taking the time to talk with us. Let’s begin by asking a few basic questions and then I hope from there we won’t have yes or no answers, but that could be my undoing. I might give you the wrong questions and since we are time limited to about 40 minutes we have to proceed at a good pace here. Some beginning things, first of all, let me have your full name.\|
			\|-
			\|HR:\|\|Howard John Riley\|
			\|-
			\|GW:\|\|And you were born in what town?\|
			\|-
			\|HR:\|\|I was born in the hamlet of [[Gabriels\|Gabriels]] on July 20, 1930 on a farm, in the farmhouse.\|
			\|-
			\|GW:\|\|And you essentially lived here most of your life?\|
			\|-
			\|HR:\|\|I’ve lived here all my life. You’re supposed to say you’ve lived here all your life, so I can say not yet. My five siblings all were born in that farmhouse, actually called the sisters farm in Gabriels. My father was the farm manager for the [[Sisters%20of%20Mercy\|Sisters of Mercy]] on the farm and that farm was built to support [[Gabriels%20Sanatorium\|Gabriels Sanatorium]] which was run by the Sisters of Mercy. There was one other question,
	\|}		\|}
	* To listen to the interview please visit Historic Saranac Lake's "oral history project" page located here: [[http://www.historicsaranaclake.org/oral-history-project.html\|http://www.historicsaranaclake.org/oral-history-project.html]]		* To listen to the interview please visit Historic Saranac Lake's "oral history project" page located here: [[http://www.historicsaranaclake.org/oral-history-project.html\|http://www.historicsaranaclake.org/oral-history-project.html]]

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