All
OTSEGO.life
THURSDAY-FRIDAY, FEB. 13-14 2014
PAGE B-1
MARK PRESIDENTS DAY 2014 • MONDAY, FEB. 17 PRESIDENTS
& Otsego County
G
EORGE W. BUSH MOST FAMILIAR WITH WHAT COOPERSTOWN OFFERS BOTH BUSHES HERE: Expo/Met Gary Carter invited former president George H.W. Bush to his 2003 induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. “41” attended with his grandson, Robert. HILL & BILL: In September 2003, former president Bill Clinton accompanied his wife, Hillary, to Cooperstown while she was campaigning for U.S. Senate from New York. They visited the Hall of Fame. THEN IT WAS FDR: Thengovernor Franklin D. Roosevelt keynoted Owen D. Young Central School’s first graduation in June 1931 in Van Hornesville, just north of the Otsego-Herkimer line. Young, the GE founder then being mentioned as a candidate for president in 1932, invited him. Within a year, FDR was front-runner for the White House, and was elected that fall.
AllOTSEGO.life
Presidential then-candidate George W. Bush makes his way through Cooper Park on Sunday, July 25, 1999, en route to the Hall of Fame Induction of Nolan Ryan, who pitched for the future president’s Texas Rangers. Bush and then-governor George Pataki (behind him) had driven down together from Albany.
43rd President Here As Candidate’s Son, Candidate ‘Regular Guy’ Impressed GOP At Fundraisers In 1987, 1999
He Bought Texas Rangers Hat, Soon After Bought Team Itself By JIM KEVLIN
By JIM KEVLIN
COOPERSTOWN
COOPERSTOWN
I
t was 1987, and the youngest Republican County chairman in Otsego County history, Jim Seward, had been elected to the state Senate the previous November, Seward in and was ready to hand off his party ‘87. responsibilities. Before he could, he had to organize a final annual dinner for the county GOP that April, and it turned out to be his most memorable. For the guest of honor the then-fledgling senator Please See SEWARD, B3
T
he evening before, the phone rang at Tom Heitz’s. It was Bill Guilfoyle, National Baseball Hall of Fame spokesman. An avid Heitz in ’91 fisherman, Guilfoyle looked forward to Saturday mornings in April on Otsego Lake. “Would you be available tomorrow morning for a tour of the Hall?” he asked Heitz, who was Hall of Fame librarian at the time. The “Who’s coming?” Heitz asked. future president was “The vice president’s son,” said Guilfoyle, who hosted at Walter Rich’s EdgePlease See HEITZ, B6 water on Lake Street.
GARFIELD ROOTS HERE: Solomon Garfield, great-grandfather of President James Garfield, a Civil War general and second president, after Lincoln, to be assassinated, moved to the Town of Worcester in 1790. The president’s mother’s family passed through Otsego County where his dad, Thomas, met the young Eliza Ballou. The Ballous continued to Ohio, Thomas pursued and married her, so the president was raised a Buckeye. A state historic marker on Route 7 is near Solomon’s cabin.
Allotsego.com
THE FREEMAN’S JOURNAL • HOMETOWN ONEONTA • www. FOR DAILY NEWS UPDATES, VISIT www.
‘TR’ DOWN 167: A few miles west on Route 167, FDR’s cousin, former president Theodore Roosevelt, dedicated the Jordanville Library on Aug. 26, 1909. TR’s sister, Corinne, and her husband, Douglas Robinson, lived in nearby Gelston Castle, later owned Rostropovich by Mstislav Rostropovich, the famed Russian cellist.
AllOTSEGO.com EVERY DAY