News

Carrying on Flag Day tradition with high notes and sartorial splendor. A spectator watches as the Saints Brigade Drum and Bugle Corps of Port Chester, NY, passes during the Flag Day Parade down Warren Street in Hudson Saturday, June 8. This was the 23rd annual parade and festival, with events throughout the day starting with the parade and ending with fireworks. The festival was at Waterfront Park with food vendors, a monster slide and rides. One of the parade grand marshals was Ron Jablanski, a Hudson High School graduate and Vietnam War veteran who was only recently awarded a Bronze Star for his service. The Saints Brigade is a community based non-profit organization for members of all ages and genders. “We strive to instill qualities such as honesty, dedication, team work, commitment and pride,” their website reads. Photo by David Lee

PFC Ron Jablanski receives the Bronze Star

by DAVID LEE

Vietnam veteran and Hudson native Ron Jablanski (pictured far r) got a hero’s welcome home in an event conducted at the Hudson Elks Lodge on Saturday, June 1. Mr. Jablanski, who now lives in Worcester MA, had enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1968 and was seriously wounded in combat in Vietnam in September 1969. Due to a paperwork ‘snafu’, the Bronze Star with Valor Device that he was told he had earned was not presented to him until the ceremony on Saturday when USMC Colonel Todd Traver pinned the medal on his lapel. Mr. Jablanski spoke with great emotion of his family and the people who supported him and he even sang a little song before accepting the applause of the full house. Colonel Traver, in reading a fuller account of the citation, said that the acts for which PFC Jablanski was being recognized with the Bronze Star occurred on the night of September 13, 1969. Colonel Traver credits Mr. Jablanski with having saved many lives in that encounter. The fighting for which he received the Purple Heart was on the night of the 17th when their perimeter was breached and 13 American soldiers were killed. Photo by David Lee

K’hook weighs plans for inn/eatery and new B&B

by EMILIA TEASDALE

KINDERHOOK–The Village Planning Board held two public hearings last week on applications for special use permits for two new businesses on Broad Street/Route 9. At the June 6 sessions the board had a debate over a bed-and-breakfast proposed for 5 Board Street. The other project, The Three Sisters Tavern LLC/Dutch Inn, a restaurant, received positive comments from the community and support from the board.

The Village Planning Board had to table approval of the special use permit for the Three Sisters Tavern LLC, which is on the site of what was the Dutch Inn on Broad Street, though board members said they supported the application. The site plan for the restaurant in the basement and first floor of the building have to be reviewed by the county Planning Board before the Village Planning Board can act on it. The county Planning Board will be meet later this month, according to Village Attorney Rob Fitzsimmons, and then the Village Planning Board can have a special meeting to approve the permit so construction can start.

Jennifer Ose-MacDonald, one of the applicants for the tavern, told the board that this is phase one of the project to open the restaurant and a 10-room hotel in the building. The application for the lodging space has not yet been submitted. She said it was all one project in two phases. Read more…

A decade old, Pride steps forward again

by DEBBY MAYER

HUDSON—As The Columbia Paper went to press, the 10th annual OutHudson Pride Festival was in full swing. Spotty Dog Books & Ale started the festivities on June 12 with a reading by Karen Williams and Camille Spencer. The Carrie Haddad Gallery opened “Mortals, Saints and Myths” the same day.

Beginning Friday, June 14 the festival would be packed with events and parties, all described at outhudson.com.

Caught between meetings on Tuesday, Rich Volo, aka Trixie Starr, the driving force behind 10 Pride Festivals in Hudson, said more than 50 groups would march in Saturday’s parade. Marchers line up at noon near the 7th Street Park and wend their way down Warren Street, with planned music and impromptu dance. Read more…

Where did the name Cheviot come from?

by TOM SHANNON

AMONG THE MOST DISTINCTIVE PLACE names on a map of Columbia County is Cheviot, the name of a riverfront hamlet in Germantown. How did a Scottish place name end up gracing the Hunterstown tar camp, where German Palatine refugees labored from 1710-1712?

Sometime after the Palatine migration but before 1762, a sawmill was built by “Judge” Robert R. Livingston on the small creek that runs to the Hudson through this area. Though many thoughtful observers may be led to think that Germantown was relatively free of it from an early date, Livingston family influence on this little hamlet would linger well into the 20th century.

By the time of the 1798 Wigram map, the area had become known as Jacobi’s Landing, named for local resident and Palatine descendant Heinrich Jacobi (1753-1807). By the close of the 18th century, the area was a busy shipping port. The name Jacobi’s Landing slowly faded from usage in the years after Heinrich’s death.

The Cheviot railroad crossing in the mid-twentieth century. Note the mail pouch hook at trackside on the right. Photo courtesy Germantown History Department

Read more…

Store foes say permit’s expired; not so, says town

by DIANE VALDEN

COPAKE—A proposed gas station/convenience store in the Craryville hamlet has been under site plan review by the Copake Planning Board for more than a year and a half and remains as contentious as when the public hearing opened.

GRJH, Inc., established in 1995, is a privately-held wholesale gasoline and oil company in Millerton, Dutchess County. It proposes to build a new gas station/convenience store on the northwest corner of the state Route 23, county Route 7 and Craryville Road intersection.

The 1.7-acre site at the four-way intersection is where the former Craryville supermarket once stood, between the Craryville Post Office to the west and the Craryville United Methodist Church to the east. Read more…