The Clinton Courier: The People Issue by The Clinton Courier

THE

PEOPLE ISSUE 5.27.15

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR In his book “Death in the Afternoon,” Ernest Hemingway wrote: “When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.” Romance, conflict, friendship, inspiration, motivation… everything in culture begins with unique individuals and unique personalities. Since its founding more than 200 years ago, Clinton, New York, has developed a firm identity. The parts that make it whole—the local history, architecture, education, sports, art, entrepreneurship and camaraderie—are established and shaped by the residents who live here. The people.

–John Howard

Table of

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Contents

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Editor John Howard john@clintoncourier.com Ad Sales Rep. Carol Misiaszek carol@clintoncourier.com

http://clintoncourier.com http://twitter.com/couriercny http://facebook.com/couriercny 315-853-3490 56 Dwight Ave. P.O. Box 294 Clinton, NY 13323

Q&A:

Dr. Lisa

Lester

By John Howard

You’ve been in Clinton for most of your life, right? Forever. I went to Clinton schools from kindergarten through graduating. I went to school in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania, and then dental school was at the SUNY Buffalo School of Dental Medicine. Then, I did my dental residency in Chicago and worked out there a couple of years. How did you like Chicago? Oh, we loved it. I graduated school and then Dan [Gale] and I got married two weeks later. We both had our jobs lined up and moved out there. I loved all the variety of restaurants and cultures. Was the idea to always come back to this area? No, not necessarily. We moved out there and both really liked it, and we didn’t have any real plans. But then when we wanted to start a family, I started interviewing back on the East Coast where all our parents were, and then my father-in-law, Dr. William Gale Jr., said, “Why don’t you talk to me?” Things just worked out.

How did the transition of taking over the dental practice from Dr. Gale happen? He hired me in ‘97 and I was his associate. And then I bought the practice in ‘99 from him and he was my associate. We kind of switched. (Laughs) It just was a good fit. Did you go into undergraduate school with the idea of becoming a dentist? Oh yeah. I wanted to be a dentist since I was a little kid. I always collected miniature things growing up and my mom thinks that was kind of the start of it—I always wanted to work with small things. Do you find that there are a lot of women pursuing careers in dentistry? About one-third of my class [were women]. It’s more now. I think 50–60 percent of the schools are women now from what I see in statistics that are coming out. I know you do the honeybees outside of work. Do you have any other hobbies? I like to go antiquing. I

like to go to Bouckville, or if there’s a garage sale or an estate sale. And keeping the kids and Dan happy. Having worked in this field for so long, can you discover anything about a person just by looking into their mouth? You’re kind of a mouth detective in a way. Healthwise, you can see many things, from just looking at, like, the wear on the teeth. Maybe they have acid reflux or stomach issues. You can see gingivitis. Red, puffy gums could mean they’re not taking care of them, which can also be a factor in heart disease and things like that. Some people clench or grind their teeth, so you see a lot of wear. The shape of the palate… Maybe they have a sleep disorder. There are just certain things that I look into that they may want to check on. Do you see yourself as an educator in a way? Yeah. Every day, every patient has oral hygiene education. Is it rewarding work? It is. It’s rewarding to help fix a tooth that someone thought, “There’s

no way we’re going to be able to do anything with this.” It’s nice to make them happy that they didn’t have their worst fear come true. I like rebuilding the smile. And usually, everyone’s coming in every six months and you form a bond with your patients. You get to know a little more about them. The running joke with dentists is that you try to talk to patients when you have your hands in their mouth. Do you do that? Yeah. I can translate it. That’s part of the dentist training? Being able to translate that garbled speech? (Laughs) You learn that through the years. Otherwise, it’s a very quiet appointment if they can’t talk back. I did have one patient, who would say, “You always wait to ask these questions or make me laugh when my mouth is open.” So, the next time he came in, his wife brought him a pad to write on.

Jon Kulpa By Mark Warren

hen each season ends, Clinton varsity track and field head coach Norm Deep Jr. takes an eraser to a whiteboard in his classroom. The board lists the entire roster of his athletes by their initials, and among the names represented on the board this year is Jon Kulpa, a senior on the squad.

With one stroke the initials “JK” will be removed from the list, giving way to the underclassmen at the school next year. Kulpa will be running cross-country and track at Utica College (UC) this fall. Next year, the high school team will have to move on without him. For the past six years, the Warrior runner has been a force in outdoor track, as well as indoor track and cross country. Kulpa says it will be difficult to leave the familiar faces of teammates, coaches and opponents once he graduates. “It kind of sucks to move on from it,” he says. “I’m going to continue it in college but it’s just… [I’ll miss] the friends on the team and the competitors I’ve met that I’m friends with from other schools that I see all the time.” He figures he will run both the 800-meter and 1,600-meter events in college, and luckily, the UC campus isn’t too far from his hometown. As a bonus, one of his fiercest high school varsity competitors will be joining him on the Pioneers’ squad. “We like to call each other our biggest rivals— Tyler Wright, from West Canada, is also going to Utica [College],” he says. 4

“We’re usually the two that are competing in almost any race. Now we’re teammates.” When they’ve met as opponents, the two runners have swayed back and forth between who finishes first. Kulpa first began running track and cross-country in seventh grade. He attended an assembly at school which discussed those sports, and he wanted to try them out. “I remember them talking about the sport crosscountry and I thought, ‘That’s kind of neat because that’s my favorite aspect of all the sports—just running up and down the courts, or up and down the field,’” he says. When he started running, he quickly realized he could keep up with the upperclassmen. He says he won all of his cross-country races in eighth grade for the modified team, besides invitationals, and later during track season he continued his dominance in the win column. “Once I got onto varsity, it was just knocking kids down from there,” Kulpa says. Unfortunately, all of the events he ran started to take their toll. When Sectionals came around during his sophomore year, Kulpa began experiencing shin splint-type pains. At first, he wasn’t sure what was happening. Eventually, he went to a doctor to have himself checked out. He was told he had stress fractures in his tibias, the largest bones that connect the knees to the ankle bones. After an X-ray, the diagnosis shifted to stress reaction injuries, which are a minor form of cracks in the bone. These injuries are frequently seen in longdistance runners, and they

are typically caused by the repetitive application of force, often by overuse, onto a bone. Kulpa promptly took a month off all running activities in an effort to heal. Now two years later, he still feels pain when he runs, but he has learned how to manage his workload better with the help of his coaches. “They still hurt from time to time, but I’ve gotten used to it, and I think they’ve healed for the most part,” he says. “It just depends on how hard of a pounding I give them.” It only makes sense that Kulpa will be pursuing a degree in physical therapy at UC. He got a taste of the rehab process fairly early into his running career. He says it took a while for him to get back into running shape after taking such a large chunk of time off due to his injuries. Despite his injury history, Kulpa isn’t shying away from keeping active. He ran his first ever Boilermaker 15K road race last year, and he plans to continue competing in the event into the future. This year, the race will be held on July 12, about two weeks after his high school graduation from Clinton. Kulpa says even though he is leaving, he has high hopes for the Warriors’ teams moving forward. “I’d say right now, for track and cross-country especially, we have a strong group of kids coming back for the following years,” he says. “The kids that I train with that can keep up with me, or slightly behind me, they’re all freshman. So I’m looking forward to seeing the results in the upcoming years.”

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Zach Lewis

By Chloe Ford

eople often think that art can only be found hanging on the walls of a wellknown museum, or floating from the instruments of a finelytuned orchestra. But local photographer Zach Lewis knows that art can be found in anything and everything. Through photography, he is able to take his own unique perspective on seemingly ordinary aspects of life, and share it with the community.

Lewis, 29, has lived in Clinton since the third grade. He loves how artsoriented the area is. It’s easy to just stroll through the Village and find yourself surrounded by paintings, dance, music, sculptures and nature. Though he remembers taking a multitude of art classes during his time in high school, photography was never among them. In fact, Zach didn’t really get into photography until about five years ago. “When I picked up a camera, it just came to me,” he says. Ever since he developed an affinity for the art, Lewis has been dedicating a lot of time to finding the perfect things to capture with his lens. He likes to stay local, focusing on certain aspects of the Town and Village that might not usually get much attention. “I like exploring the area and taking pictures of things that people don’t

notice every day,” he says. “It’s like rediscovering places that you’ve known forever. You start to realize the beauty you might not have seen before.” Lewis recently found inspiration in the Kirkland Town Library and points out how easy it is to walk by the building and never really notice how unique it is. When he looked at it from behind the camera, all of the history and beauty leapt to the surface. His “photography New Year’s resolution” for 2015 is to focus more on older buildings. He’d like to showcase how significant they are, even though some may be viewed as nothing more than eyesores. Lewis dedicates a lot of time to photography, but it isn’t his vocation. He spends his days at the Utica Adult Learning Center, teaching English as a second language. It’s clear how passionate Lewis is about his job—he loves helping the adult students acquire a skill so crucial to their success, and thoroughly enjoys showing up every day. Asked if he would ever consider leaving the Learning Center behind to focus on photography fulltime, Lewis quickly says, “No.” Though he finds a lot of joy in photography, he would miss teaching too much. Lewis has also combined both of his passions by teaching a photography class of his own. He is very interested in the students’ differing perspectives—how one person can look at a picture or take a picture and interpret it in a certain fashion while another

might view it completely differently. He will sometimes show students photographs or pieces of photographs, and then ask them what they see. The answers almost always vary and some are totally unexpected. “Art can be interpreted in any way you want,” he says. Lewis’ blog, Walking

photography, and even an entire category dedicated to windows and doors. In his work, Lewis takes something that has been widely accepted as “ordinary” and brings out all of its charm. It’s so easy to stroll through life, never noticing the art that lies around us. Lewis is on a mission to capture that

“When I picked up a camera, it just came to me.” Around With A Camera (http://blog.zachlewisonline. com), features photo collections of Clinton, the Kirkland Town Library, and Hamilton College. On his main website (http:// zachlewisonline.com) are photographs divided into categories which include places, people, abstract photography, rural

experience and share it with the community. In doing so, he hopes to teach others how extraordinary everything can be if they just pay attention. “I like to explore, and just focus on whatever I see that strikes me,” Lewis says. A good motto for photography, and for life. 7

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Melissa Larish

By Michael Babcock

ne might say that ballet is in her blood. Melissa Larish started dancing at the age of six and still spends much of her time in the studio. The difference is that now she is the owner of Ballet Arts of Central New York.

Growing up in Westmoreland, Larish studied with Delia Foley, the previous owner of the Clark Mills studio. Every year, she was in the annual performance of “The Nutcracker.” Larish fell in love with ballet and continued through high school when the commitment level is extraordinary. She went on to study dance performance, graduating with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from Butler University in Indianapolis, one of the top ballet schools in the country. All that time and devotion paid off for Larish, who danced professionally for the Channel Islands Ballet in the Los Angeles area. Despite her professional success, Larish really missed the teaching environment. After returning to the area 11 years ago, she started teaching at Ballet Arts. When Foley retired in 2009 she decided to purchase the studio.

Larish and her husband, Glenn, have four children and live in their native Westmoreland. Their daughter is a ballet student and their sons enjoy stagecraft. Through teaching, Larish enjoys getting to know people, students and families, and developing lasting relationships. She finds it very rewarding to work with children, regardless of their level or ability. “Sometimes you have to really push hard on kids to work hard and focus,” she says. “It’s not like public education—there is no one to back you up.” Running the studio is more than a full-time job. As the only instructor, Larish teaches 22 classes each week, plus rehearsals for performances. After six years as the owner, her overwhelming passion for dance is still at the forefront. Just like her students, Larish’s commitment level is obvious—this summer, she and her family will be taking their first week-long vacation together in a while. Ballet Arts students follow the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) syllabus, a London-based dance education and training organization, ensuring quality instruction and expectations for dancers. Larish is currently

completing the extensive two-year program for certification as a RAD instructor; there are only a few throughout the state. Larish feels pressure constantly, mostly from her own high expectations. There is also pressure on students: on the older, more

Larish is also the artistic director for the Mohawk Valley Ballet. One of her dreams is to build a community-wide support base for dance education and performance in the Mohawk Valley. She hopes to see increased presence and love for dance in

serious students, especially if they are pursuing dance as a career; and on younger students, a healthy kind of pressure with personal goals for individual achievement. Every age group has their own class based on ability level. “They aren’t just lumped together,” she says. RAD brings in thirdparty examiners to evaluate progress, which can be intimidating but the structure can also bring rewards. This year, three of four graduating seniors are pursuing dance at the college level.

the area, especially with children and families. Ask her what ballet means to the dancers who step into the Ballet Arts studio, and Larish will tell you that it is “not a boring, hoity-toity experience people have in their minds.” She feels that, especially in the modern age when everything is digital, dance incorporates sight and sound with your physical body. “When parents see their children dancing,” she says, “it’s a beautiful thing.”

Jim and Bill By John Howard

t’s 7:42 a.m. on College Hill Road. The air feels damp as a few heavy drops of rain fall from a threatening sky above. On the sidewalk, William Sequin Jr. and James Grande are climbing the Hill. They have just passed the Hamilton College stone marker on their right. This is not quite the midway point in a 5.5-mile route that will take the walkers up and down, from the campus to their home on Coventry Place. The daily routine has been a fixture of Sequin and Grande’s morning for 10 years. Like clockwork, Sequin and Grande are precise with their timing, to the point where College professors and professionals headed to the Westmoreland Thruway entrance measure their own punctuality based on where the pair is along their route. Inadvertently, they’ve become a part of the community’s day. “There are people whom we see daily who wave to us, and we have no clue who they are,” Sequin says. “I went to the doctor—a new doctor—and I was standing where you give your information. This girl kept looking and looking at me,” adds Grande. “She says, ‘Don’t I know you from someplace?’ She says, ‘I know. I live on Route 233 and you walk up the Hill every day.’” Both Sequin and Grande are teachers, with roots in the Utica city schools. They went on to live and work on Long Island before moving back to the area. After retirement, Sequin continued a career in higher education consulting, 10

which sustains itself on a word of mouth basis. He also assists with students learning English as a second language at Hamilton. Like the exercise, he says, continuing to work with students has kept him feeling young. In their home, Sequin and Grande have a whole room dedicated to books. Aside from foreign films, Broadway music, and their dog, Mr. Hamilton, reading is their greatest passion. When they walk, Sequin carries a Kindle tablet and reads aloud from The New York Times to Grande on his right. Previously, he held a print edition of the paper, but that changed a couple years ago when the paper’s newsstand price went up to $2.50—the electronic edition was more affordable. “I really miss the hard copy,” says Sequin, who still buys the Sunday edition of The Times for the ads and the theater section. “This is convenient,” he says, pointing to the tablet, “but it ain’t like having the hard copy in your hands.” Sequin and Grande are in a domestic partnership. They met in 1964 when Sequin was a senior in college and, ironically enough, it was through exercise—Grande was running by Sequin outside and the two recognized each other from a previous encounter. Now in their 70s, Sequin and Grande have been in a committed relationship for 50 years. While same-

sex marriage has been legal in New York State since 2011, they have avoided the option. Certain tax obligations and the negligible significance of the legal term “married” have so far rendered the idea unappealing to them. “I don’t need a piece of paper,” says Sequin. If this year’s brutal winter taught Sequin and Grande anything, it’s that sitting inside is boring. Their morning exercise routine dates back to the 1970s, when the couple jogged 3.5 miles together every day. Somewhere in the mid1990s, they switched to walking when the physical strain of running became too much. They lengthened the route to make up for the slower pace. At the time of the switch, the couple was living in the Berkshires, a naturally hilly environment. When they moved to Clinton in 2005, it made sense to take on College Hill. Sequin blames the addition of the newspaper reading aspect of their walks on his compulsiveness. What used to be a half-hour part of their day jogging stretched to a two-hour walking session, and he doesn’t want to waste the time without doing something productive. After their walk, Sequin and Grande sit down for breakfast. Sequin does The Times crossword puzzle and Grande does the Los Angeles crossword puzzle in Utica’s Observer-Dispatch. Depending on the weather,

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they’ll work on the lawn or shovel the driveway before easing into the rest of the day. They cook most of their meals themselves, and the menu is always healthy. The “dull” life, as Grande puts it, is a nice change of pace to the chaos of their days in the heart of school districts. Sequin and Grande are from Utica and New Hartford, respectively, and community-wise, Clinton has far outweighed the brief stint they spent in Florida near some of Grande’s family. But there are certain things left to be desired. Having lived for many years where Broadway and foreign films were a short day trip to New York City away, the couple admits that the move back to the Mohawk Valley was a bit of a “culture shock.” But being natives to the area, they knew what they were in for in terms of culture. They still try and get out as much as possible, be it through the MunsonWilliams-Proctor Arts Institute’s film series, the new Rome Cinema Capitol, or independent screenings at Hamilton Theater in Hamilton, New York. It’s unclear if Sequin and Grande’s future together will be in Clinton much longer, or if they will head to someplace warmer. (Just not Florida, though. They’ve learned their lesson on that.) Wherever they end up, they’ll always be walking, until their health forces them to stop completely. Sitting in his chair over a cup of coffee and a halffinished crossword puzzle, Grande cracks a tired smile. “That could be soon,” he says.

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Becky Hudon By Sue Kazin

verything looms large at Harding Farm: the 1794 mansion, the farm’s 200 acres, the daily decisions and phone calls generated by numerous rental properties, and, certainly, the bison. Managing all these pieces is Clinton native Rebecca Hudon. Hudon’s journey to her position as property manager for Harding Properties of New York started in Old Forge, where she managed three family-owned rentals. Driving from Barneveld to clean, maintain and manage the properties, it was here that she got her first taste of property management and the effort needed to be successful. “That’s how you make money in the beginning; you have to do everything,” says Hudon. “I really loved talking to people and dealing with people. Really, that’s what I truly like.” A move to Clinton presented Hudon with an opportunity for a part-time position at St. Mary’s Preschool, but soon, a creative ad on Craigslist caught her eye. Hudon called the ad’s author, Boston-based Ben Nye, one of the owners of Harding Farm. “We ended up talking on the phone for about an hour and a half and had a great conversation [and] small-world connections, and we hit it off,” she says. Harding Properties owns and manages multiple properties on Harding Road and in the Village of Clinton for both overnight and longterm rentals. As attractive as the position sounded, Nye explained that Hudon would actually be working for three brothers and their spouses. “That was my only concern,” she says. “It wasn’t that I couldn’t handle all those properties … it’s not just six people—they are six family members, each with his or her own opinion.” After a conference call with the spouses, both sides found a lot to like, and Hudon was hired part-time. That was three years ago. Last year, the Nyes offered her a full-time position as their exclusive agent. Hudon is incentivised to maximize bookings and finds personal and work time constantly overlapping. Weekends are no different from weekdays. “I don’t shut my phone off because every phone call is a potential overnight, and every overnight is

good news for me,” she says. “I can do business everywhere. If I’m sitting at a baseball game, I can take a reservation, take a credit card, all by my phone.” During some rare downtime this summer, she will run in the Lake Placid Half-Marathon. She says the days leading up to the June event have been “flying by.” Hudon’s list of property management duties includes advertising, showing, interviewing, handling rents, and taking repair and service bids. She creates a punch list of suggested capital improvements to present to the owners, then implements their decisions. She’s not above cleaning rooms or pulling weeds to keep things looking good and improve the bottom line. This winter, she says, was particularly “brutal” on the property’s old homes with broken pipes, ice back-ups and associated issues. She never knows what will need her attention. “That’s what I like about this job so much,” she says. “I control my own schedule, for the most part. I go from corresponding with brides to feeding the bison to taking bids—it’s always changing. That’s the draw for me.” Now, about those bison... There are seven American bison on the farm now—a baby joined the herd last May. Hudon takes care of the bison by herself, which requires her throwing nine bales of hay and two bags of grain (“sweet food”) every morning and night in the winter. Although she doesn’t name or pet them, and respects that they are 1,500-pound

wild animals and “not to be trusted,” she explains, “When you feed them every day, you don’t look at them as bison burgers.” “I think you have to be an animal lover on those [minus] 15-degree days. You have to care about their wellbeing,” she says. Which is a good thing, since the bison weren’t part of the deal when she was hired. Heaving the 40-pound feed bags and bales of hay may have kept her from needing a gym membership this year, but tendonitis in her shoulder suggests Hudon may need to accept help feeding the bison next year. According to Hudon, the story about why the owners brought the bison to the farm is true. After seeing motorists slow down in Yellowstone National Park for bison, the owners wanted their own herd to slow traffic on Harding Road, a state highway. She says the owners plan to extend the pasture as the herd grows and are considering a pull-off to accommodate curious passerbys. Bison are the most visible part of Hudon’s job, but, ironically, they occupy the smallest fraction of her time. “For hundreds of years, bison roamed the prairies, and they did just fine,” she says of the self-sufficient species. When the first calf arrived last spring, Hudon was on the scene soon after the birth. The entire herd was circling the mother. The calf was up and walking in about an hour with its mother by its side. “Nature really does its thing,” says Hudon. “It truly does.” 13

Q&A: Kirkland Police Officer Shawn Occhipinti By Mark Warren You work from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. for the department. What is it like working in the dead of night? I love my shift, I like working the nights. I like dealing with the different types of people that are out at night. When I say “different types,” I mean you have a variety of people. You might have someone who is just driving home from work to someone who has just been involved in a domestic [incident]. Now you’ve got to take their problems and make them your problems and try and settle them and make a difference. The stillness of the night is different because, in law enforcement anywhere, the stillness of the night can go away just like that—in a matter of 2.5 seconds it can go away. With that shift, are you a big coffee drinker? I drink one cup of coffee a day. I will grab a cup of coffee either at the station or I’ll stop at Dunkin’ Donuts real quick and grab a medium coffee with cream and sugar, and that’ll be all I need for the day. (Laughs) There is talk that you may be moving up the chain at the Kirkland Police Department. Is that true? Trying to. My goal is to be the next police chief of the Town of Kirkland. Right now I’m just a regular patrolman. I don’t have any rank, I don’t have any supervision, but I do try to take the extra steps to help the police chief with any administrative stuff. Whether it be filing reports, follow-ups or a burglary investigation—anything that requires a follow up, I try to take on the extra caseload just to show them that I can handle the work. My goal here in police work is to achieve some sort of rank in the Kirkland Police Department and step right into Chief Dan [English]’s shoes. And just make the police department excel from there. I mean, I’ve got ideas on top of ideas. Any trivia about yourself that people may not know about you? I have two things: I love to run. It may not look like I like to run, but I do like to run. (Laughs) I love doing the Boilermaker. The Boilermaker is one of my most favorite things in the world to do. And my garden—I haven’t started it yet, but it is out in my backyard. When I first got married to my wife, my mother-in-law had a garden. I was just kind of shocked that she did that because me, if I wanted a tomato I would’ve gone to the store and got one. She grew them and I think that’s great. So that following 14

summer, my father-in-law helped me dig up a garden, so I did a garden with him and had all sorts of different vegetables. I got addicted to it. So you’ve got something of a green thumb now? Oh, I’ve got 10 green fingers actually, now. (Laughs) Now that my daughter’s getting older, she and I will actually go out there and we’ll dig the hole, plant the plants, and as the tomatoes grow she’ll go pick them and we’ll pick the squashes or we’ll pick the strawberries. So, it went from just a hobby that I had to something that I absolutely love doing with her now. Your daughter’s name is Kambria. How did you and your wife, Kira, decide on that interesting name? My wife found it. She was probably eight months pregnant, maybe nine, and she called me up one night and she said, “I got the name for the baby.” And I said, “Oh, what is it?” She said, “How’s Kambria sound?” I said, “Sounds good to me,” and I’ve loved it ever since. She is absolutely the light

of my life, I just love her to pieces. She comes to the police station, the guys love her. Any fun stories from your time at the police academy? The one thing I really didn’t like at all was the pepper spray. When it came to the day of being pepper sprayed, that was probably the worst experience ever. I’ve been pepper sprayed once, and then I got a little by accident when we had to arrest someone one day, and it was like reliving the whole moment all over again. So are you a fan of the television show “CSI”? Or, perhaps “Law and Order”? (Laughs) No, I do like “Law and Order,” and let me tell you sometimes I wish my job was as easy as the TV show, where I could solve a crime in an hour. Unfortunately, I can’t make my police car make that “doink-doink” sound from “Law and Order.” (Laughs). So, I guess I’ll never be able to.

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Take out too! (315) 853-6013 7756 Route 5, Clinton, NY MON-THUR 3pm-9pm, FRI-SAT 11:30am-10pm, SUN 11:30am-9pm

Book Your Party of Event Now! Room for up to 50!