An evening to remember—Paderewski’s Amsterdam concert

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History

   Ignacy Paderewski, world-famous pianist and composer who served as an early prime minister of Poland in 1919, performed at Amsterdam’s former junior high school on Guy Park Avenue on March 26, 1933. According to historian Hugh Donlon, Paderewski was invited by Reverend Anton Gorski, founding pastor of St. Stanislaus Church, one of the city’s predominantly Polish-American parishes.

Paderewski and Gorski were distant relatives by marriage. Donlon said “(Paderewski) came more to show his appreciation of the intense loyalty of Amsterdam Poles to their native land than to any other purpose.”
 
Historian Jacqueline Murphy wrote in an article for Historic Amsterdam League that the concert was a benefit for the Sisters of the Resurrection orphanage.

Paderewski’s performance raised nearly $2000 and enabled the Sisters to pay off their bank debt.

The Sisters had opened a nursery on Park Street for children of women working in city mills in 1926. The nursery closed the next year and the Sisters then opened an orphanage on Brookside Avenue. Murphy wrote, “The ongoing increase in the need for their services soon overtaxed the Brookside Avenue facility and in 1932 the orphanage relocated to the former Gardiner Blood residence at 118 Market Street on the southwest corner of Market and Prospect.” Donlon recalled the 1933 concert in a column written after Paderewski’s death on June 29th, 1941, “Those of us who were fortunate enough to get into the auditorium—and it was crowded—are now even more privileged to claim with pride, ‘I heard him.’"

Among the first to greet the pianist in Amsterdam was Division Street physician Dr. Julius Schiller who had heard Paderewski when he played for the first time in America with the Chicago Symphony in 1891.

Donlon wrote that in Amsterdam Paderewski played as though he was among “a small group of personal friends.” The program began with a Bach fugue, Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and a sonata by Schumann.

Donlon, who had spent many years as a church organist, wrote, “Before the evening was over he had wandered far from that musical fare. In response to wild enthusiasm he went from one Chopin composition to another, and finished with the brilliant Military Polonaise that left his spellbound audience wishing the joys of the evening might never end.”

“He was an old man then, Paderewski was,” wrote Donlon.  “The passing years, with their heartaches, were taking their toll, and there were times when he played as one tired, very, very tired. But then he would rouse himself and show flashes of his old-time technical mastery and poetic fire, his weariness concealed beneath flawless stage posture. “Those who were thcre need no jogging of the memory. Those who were not there-well, they missed Amsterdam at its musical best.”

The Sisters of the Resurrection Children’s Home on Market Street, made possible by Paderewski’s concert, filled a need.

Murphy wrote, “At times there were as many as 12 to 16 infants no more than nine days old being cared for at the home. And not only did the home care for children, but from time to time, it also helped others in need; a student from Poland who was unable to return to his home because of the world situation spent seven years under the care of the Sisters who made it possible for him to complete his medical studies,
 “The Children’s Home was closed by the diocese in 1960 and the Sisters’ ministry relocated to Massachusetts. The building was demolished in 1966 for the Route 30 South arterial.”

There was also a Protestant-based orphanage called the Children’s Home on Amsterdam’s Guy Park Avenue

Bob Cudmore is a free lance writer.

bobcudmore@yahoo.com

518 346 6657

Joseph Bucci’s Guadalcanal diary

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette, Amsterdam Recorder

  Joseph A. Bucci fought valiantly on Guadalcnal in World War II and then furthered the war effort as a public speaker back home. Bucci was the son of Charles and Mary Bucci who lived at 12 Lark Street in Amsterdam’s East End.  Charles Bucci had served in World War I.  Joseph Bucci’s brother Anthony fought with the Army Air Corps in World War II.

Joseph Bucci was a graduate of St. Mary’s Institute in Amsterdam and the University of Notre Dame.  He was among the first local men to enlist in the Marines in January, 1942 after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December.  He had been working as a life insurance agent for John Hancock.  He also was a candy salesman.

By October Bucci was among those fighting the Japanese in a long campaign on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands of the South Pacific. Bucci and six others were pinned down by Japanese artillery in the Battle of Matiniku River.  The small band had missed orders to move from their foxholes to another position.

Through one long night and the next day the seven endured the artillery barrage and Japanese attacks. The seven Marines were credited with killing 175 to 200 enemy soldiers.Then Bucci and his comrades came under American artillery fire in a Marine counterattack. Ultimately the seven Marines were reunited with their unit.

By November Bucci was wounded by three pieces of shrapnel.  He contracted malaria and was shipped to a hospital in San Diego, California. It was there he learned he was to receive the Silver Star for his actions on Guadalcanal.  He was promoted to Sergeant.

He was home on leave in July 1943 when the Recorder printed an account of Bucci’s actions on Guadalcanal written by Marine private Eddie Lyon, who had interviewed Bucci at the San Diego hospital.  Bucci and his parents went to the Recorder offices to read the story and have their picture taken.

In December 1943, Bucci was still at home, assigned to the Scotia Naval Depot on Route 5, today an industrial park. He had applied for Officer Candidate School. That month Knights of Columbus Council 209 in Amsterdam honored Bucci at a dinner and presented him with a special ring. Bucci was honored or spoke at numerous gatherings while home on leave. “When I was in the South Pacific, I dreamed of getting home,” Bucci told the Knights of Columbus, according to a newspaper account.   “Just at the present I wish I were down there again.”

He added, “It is my fond wish and hope that this international mess will soon be over and that all of us can come back to the good old American way of life. However, I expect to be shoving off again soon and in whatever part of the world I am I will have this ring with me, a reminder of your thoughtfulness and I will be thoughtful for you.”

Bucci became a second lieutenant in October 1944. 

He attended Albany Law School after the war and in 1948 became head of the new Montgomery County Probation Department.

A 1951 clipping states that he was promoted to captain in the Marine Corps Reserve by President Truman. He and Louanne Wilkes of Albany married in 1953 and moved to California where Bucci worked in the Ventura County Probation Department.

In their later years Bucci and his wife moved to Virginia to be near one of their two sons. Bucci died in 2010 at age 96 at Lovingston Health Care Center in Arrington, Virginia. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer. 

bobcudmore@yahoo.com

518 346 6657

"Walking the horses"

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette, Amsterdam Recorder

  In the early 1900s, thoroughbred horses owned by carpet mill magnate Stephen Sanford walked each summer to Saratoga Springs from Sanford’s Hurricana Farm in Amsterdam. Racing Hall of Fame trainer Hollie Hughes, who served three generations of Sanfords, recalled the annual trek in Alex M. Robb’s book,”The Sanfords of Amsterdam.” The trip began at the Sanford horse farm on what is now Route 30 in the town of Amsterdam.

Efforts are underway to preserve remaining buildings at the complex, originally called Hurricana Farm but later known as Sanford Stud Farm. “First, we’d go up to Hagaman, a couple of miles away, and then we’d head for Top Notch, or West Galway, as it’s called,’ Hughes said. ‘That would be about five miles. Then we’d go three miles straight east to Galway village. Then we’d go to West Milton, about seven miles farther east, and there we’d stop at the old Dutch Inn and feed the horses and men. My, those breakfasts tasted good!

By that time it would be close to daylight. “On the way over, half the horses would be under saddle with boys up. After breakfast the saddles were put on the others which had been led by the men up to this point, and we’d walk the remaining ten miles to Saratoga, coming in by Geyser Spring.” In 1901, Sanford built his own stable on Nelson Avenue in Saratoga. He had as many as 35 horses at a time.

When asked why he kept so many horses, the industrialist replied he was not in the raising business for margin, in other words for profit. Author Robb, an official of the New York State Racing Commission in 1969 when he wrote his book about the Sanfords, said Stephen Sanford started buying the property that would become Hurricana Farm in the 1870s. His doctor recommended he take up farming as a hobby to help with what may have been stomach ulcers.

And Robb said that Sanford’s sons, John and William. encouraged their father in this enterprise because of their own interest in fast horses, especially jumpers. William died in 1896. From 1903 through 1907, the Sanfords invited the people of Amsterdam to the Sanford Matinee Races at Hurricana on the Sunday closest to Fourth of July. Trolleys ran up to Market and Meadow Streets.

From there, horse drawn wagons took people to the farm. Some automobiles went to the farm as well but were not admitted to the grounds. There was food, drink, music and, of course, horse racing. Some 15,000 attended the event during its last year. New York State outlawed betting in 1907 and racing stopped at Saratoga.

Temporarily, the Sanfords sold most of their horses to out-of-staters and Canadians, according to Robb. Stephen Sanford was blind the last five years of his life. Born in 1826, he worked with his father John and then on his own to create the famuly carpet mills. Stephen Sanford went to West Point, served in Congress and was a friend of Ulysses S. Grant.

The elder Sanford doted on his grandchildren, in particular his namesake, born in 1899. He gave young Stephen a Shetland pony almost before the youngster could walk. The boy called the pony Laddie.

The grandfather bestowed the nickname Laddie on his grandson as well. Stephen Sanford died February 13, 1913. Six months later, racing resumed at Saratoga along with the first running of the Sanford Memorial. Stephen’s elder son John continued to head the carpet mills and racing stables created during his father’s lifetime. According to Robb, John Sanford inherited $40 million at his father’s death.

Bob Cudmore is a free lance writer.

bobcudmore@yahoo.com

518 346 6657

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