A Shining Musical Moment

Life in a small city like Fulton can often seem uneventful. We go about our routine of jobs or school, grocery shopping and getting to those chores around the house. It’s rare when something exciting happens that grabs the attention of our whole city. But when such an event does take place, Fulton responds. For example, the time our high school band earned an opportunity to travel to Europe.

It was 1971, and Richard Swierczek, the band director for G. Ray Bodley High School, had received an invitation for his group to participate in the International School Band Festival. The festival promotes excellence in music education and annually extends an invitation to fewer than two percent of U.S. school bands. Included in Swierczek’s invitation were details about the next festival, slated to take place in July 1972. The location: Vienna, Austria.

Austria. Exotic land of “The Sound of Music,” its Alps mountains and hills alive and surrounded by countries Fulton students had only ever seen in history books. Four thousand miles from home. It was an unbelievable opportunity for Fulton youth, many who’d never before traveled beyond New York state borders.

In 2013, when The Fulton Library’s Memoir Project was in its first year, we were looking for people willing to write about memorable Fulton events. I was a high school junior in 1972 and not a band member, but I had a vague memory of the Vienna excursion and thought it would make a good Project memoir. One of the students on the trip was local author Jo Ann Butler and we asked her if she’d be willing to share her Vienna memories. She immediately agreed.

In her memoir, Jo Ann covered all aspects of what it took to make the Vienna trip possible for the Bodley band’s seventy musicians, eight musical staff, and chaperones. Money, of course, was a major hurdle to overcome.

“With airfare, bus touring for three weeks, hotels, and meals,” Jo Ann remembered, “it will cost about $650 in 1972 dollars to send each of us to Europe. $50,000 is a lot of money in Fulton.”

It sure was. I used Google to find out what $50,000 equates to in 2018. Over $300,000. Almost a third of a million dollars. Raised in one year. In the small city of Fulton. But the people of Fulton know how to rally behind an exciting opportunity for its youth. Here’s how Jo Ann explained action taken by community leaders:

“Dick Swierczek sat down with the students and their parents. If we wanted to go to Europe, we must commit to a year of fundraising and dedicated practice. The vote was a resounding, ‘Yes!’ On June 10, band parents pledged $14,710 toward our $50K goal, and a couple weeks later the band played the first of many fundraiser concerts at the First Methodists’ Strawberry Festival.”

Along with parents’ efforts, a group first dubbed the “On to Vienna Committee,” and later renamed the “Bodley Band Boosters,” launched a full out fundraising plan. Committee members included Elon Rowlee, honorary chairman; Tom Bogaczyk, chairman; Shirlee Collins, co-chairman of the Fund Drive; Kenneth Woeller, treasurer; Laurna Hoffman, publicity chairman; Carrie Butler, secretary. Other members included William Camp, Joseph Campolieta, Merrill Hoffman, Roger Long, and Ernie and Mary Hamer.

Jo Ann spelled out the fundraising efforts: “Band members, along with friends and family, collected newspapers, aluminum and glass for recycling. Chocolate was popular in a city which boasted the first Nestlé plant, and band members sold 3,000 boxes of candy for a $1,100 profit. We sold tickets for raffles, including a VW Beetle donated by Fulton Volkswagen, a trash masher given by Angelo Mirabito and even a purebred poodle.”

Jo Ann admitted in her memoir that she would never be able to list everyone who contributed to the Vienna fund, but the months of fundraising efforts were all worth it. On June 21, 1972, with less than a month before the band was due to board a plane to Vienna, The Fulton Patriot headline read: “They Make it; $50,000!”

Jo Ann recalled the July 4 departure day: “At daybreak, a sizeable crowd gathered at the school to see us off. We were bused down to JFK airport, only to wait until after 10 p.m. to take to the air.” The group landed in Frankfurt, Germany, and got their first look at a whole new world when they spent their first night away from home in the medieval town of Rothenburg.

A week later, Jo Ann and her bandmates were performing, along with 200 bands from all over the world, at Vienna’s Schoenbrunn Palace. “We passed between giant stone sphinxes and granite columns topped with golden eagles, and found our place in the vast courtyard,” Jo Ann remembered. “The room could seat 1,800 people, but only the stage was brightly lit. The acoustics were amazing; the least accent or dynamic change was heard, but not echoed. Will our performance match this magnificent setting?

“We opened with Silver Quill, a brisk and brassy march, played with such brilliance that our performance was chosen to promote the 1973 festival. Incantation and Dance and Symphonic Movement were our group’s favorite pieces. Each is a fast-paced musical jigsaw puzzle which tests every player’s skill, and we attacked those pieces with gusto.”

The G. Ray Bodley band soon learned that they had earned a superior rating from the judges, putting them among the top performances. Dr. William Revelli, the festival director, congratulated Fulton on its “very stirring and virile performance … This organization is a great credit to its city, school and state. Congratulations to all.”

I hope you enjoyed revisiting Fulton High School’s glorious trip abroad. If you’d like to read Jo Ann’s full memoir about the trip to Vienna, contact the Fulton Public Library and ask if you can check out a copy of The Memoir Project’s first book, published in 2013, and titled Fulton: The Stories From Our Past That Inspire Our Future.

The 1972 G. Ray Bodley High School Band prepares to embark on its memorable trip to Vienna, Austria.

Fulton's Own Poet Laureate

I’m not sure I would have ever discovered my interest in Fulton history if it weren’t for poetry. Though I never considered myself well-read when it came to poetry – I never found anything I could relate to in the classic poems of high school English – I did consider some of my favorite songs from the 1960s and ‘70s as poetic. Of course, singers like Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Carole King and James Taylor had music to make their lyrics come to life, but they did help me see how words can stir our emotions.

I started writing poetry in the 1990s, which led to my first book of poems, Country Boy, a look back at my childhood growing up outside Fulton in farm country. That poetic collection led me to write a local history book, Of the Earth, which honors the muck farmers of Oswego County. These days I spend more time writing about local history than I do poetry, but it’s still true that nothing opens my heart like a poem.

That’s why I was pleasantly surprised to find out that, at one time, Fulton had its own Poet Laureate, an honorary position normally granted by a country or region. While visiting the Fulton Historical Society’s Pratt House, its Manager and Executive Secretary, Sue Lane, shared some history about this Fultonian, who, in 1975, was named our city’s Poet Laureate. The honored individual was E. Clayton Hazelwood, and his life story has a sort of poetry all its own.

Born in Walpole, Massachusetts in 1903, Clayton Hazelwood’s challenging medical conditions during his youth most certainly opened the door to his love of poetry. While other children were outside playing sports and games, Clayton was bedridden with polio, a frightening and, at the time, incurable disease. While recuperating from his illness, Clayton developed an interest in reading and writing.

Eventually, through determination and improved treatments for polio, Clayton was able to lead a normal life. When he moved to Fulton in 1920, the teenager found work at Arrowhead Mills, where he met Ruth Bennett. The two were married in 1923, and while starting and providing for a family, Clayton continued to pursue his interest in literature and history, developing his talents as a poet.

Word spread of the new Fultonian’s poetic abilities, and in honor of the village of Fulton’s centennial in 1935 (not to be confused with the city of Fulton’s centennial in 2002), Clayton was asked to compose a poem. His thirteen-stanza tribute to the area was a history lesson in itself. It began with a nod to the Oswego River, describing its peaceful shores as the birthplace of Native American folklore. The poem introduces us to Chief Taounyawatha, who, according to legend, slayed an evil serpent that sometimes churned calm river waters. Clayton’s poetry also paid homage to French and English settlers who cleared the area for Fulton, delighting his readers with a poem so rich in history.

In 1936, Clayton published his first book of poems, “Poetry Portraits,” which he explained were based on his experiences in Fulton and the personalities of friends he’d made here. (Thank you to the Fulton Public Library for tracking down a copy of the book for me to review.) When he donated a copy of his second book of poems, “Secrets,” to our library, he inscribed it with this handwritten note: “To the Fulton Public Library. No matter where you travel, o’er the world both up and down, there is no place quite as beautiful, as the little old hometown.”

I wanted to find out more about our Poet Laureate and Sue Lane directed me to Donna Terranova, who had recently donated a collection of Clayton’s poems and other creative endeavors to the Pratt House. I learned that Donna’s mother, Joan (Thompson) Terranova, was also a poet; she’d contributed her writing to local papers from the 1940s through the early ‘80s. As a fellow poet, Joan had a special interest in Clayton Hazelwood.

“My mother followed Mr. Hazelwood’s career,” Donna explained. “His poetry was widely read in our area, including in our city’s Fulton Patriot. He also had a weekly poetry program on a Syracuse radio station.”

Donna then mentioned an interesting turn that Mr. Hazelwood’s career took: “At some point in his life, he started writing lyrics for country & western songs, some of which were recorded by Nashville singers. When he was accepted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Mr. Hazelwood left the Fulton area, eventually retiring in Florida. My mother and he kept in contact for many years.”

Toward the end of his life, Clayton was again challenged by a physical affliction. Over time, he lost his eyesight, but persisted with his writing, not only in correspondence with friends like Mrs. Terranova, but also his music lyrics and poetry. Many Fultonians never forgot Hazelwood’s contributions to our city and to the creative arts.  It was the bright memory of this man that convinced our city leaders that he should be honored.

In the 1975 proclamation naming Hazelwood Fulton’s Poet Laureate, read by then-mayor Percy Patrick, it was noted that “E. Clayton Hazelwood was one of those giving citizens, who despite his own personal adversity was able to communicate inner strength and hope to others through his poetry, his radio work, his songwriting, and books of verse.”

Though Mr. Hazelwood is no longer with us, in the wonderful way that words keep memories alive, a love for Fulton can be found  in his poetry. Though he never mentions his onetime hometown in the poem “Song of the Poet,” I believe he is describing Fulton with these words:

“Give me the light of the moon for my lamp;

Give me the ground for my chair;

Give me the lanes and the woods to tramp;

The flower-scented cool summer air.

Give me the love of old mother earth;

She’s ever so true and so kind.

Give me her rivers, her songbirds of mirth,

And leave all the false love behind.”

In 1975, this headline appeared as a Fulton newspaper.

A Memorable Fulton Doctor

You never know where surprising information about Fulton history might show up. It doesn’t always come by digging through piles of old newspapers or interviews with eyewitnesses. Sometimes it only takes a suggestion from a friend.

A few months ago, I got a call from a high school classmate, Tim Carroll, who said he had some paperwork about a prominent doctor from Fulton’s early 1900s. He wondered if I might be interested in reviewing it. When we met, Tim explained how he’d acquired the large box of newspaper articles, photos and personal correspondence. His mother, Natalie, was a next door neighbor and good friend with this doctor’s daughter, and when the woman passed away, Natalie helped close up her home.  While doing so, she found the box of paperwork, and from reviewing its contents, I have been able to learn about an extraordinary Fulton doctor: Albert Llewellyn Hall.

Dr. Hall was born in 1855 on a farm outside Central Square. He attended local schools and graduated from Cazenovia Seminary, which functioned like a prep school for high-schoolers. Later, Hall taught school for several years and then served as principal for Parish, Cleveland and Constantia schools. But his purposeful life was just beginning.

In 1874, Hall, who had a growing interest in the health field, won a Cornell University scholarship to study medicine there. Four years later, he continued his studies at Syracuse University, graduating in 1879. The new doctor opened a practice in Fair Haven, where he served 20 years as a general practitioner. By this time, Dr. Hall had developed a specific medical interest which would earn him a measure of fame.

Hall’s area of concentration, forensic ballistics, wasn’t something I was familiar with, but a quick Google search revealed the doctor’s specialty as the science of analyzing firearms used to harm or kill people. Much like actors on detective shows trying to crack cold cases, Hall became an expert in identifying firearms that factored into murder trials. A few of them sound like plots for those TV shows: the 1897 case of Charles Allen, charged with murdering two women in Sackets Harbor; and the 1898 trial of George H. Smith, charged with his wife’s murder in Churchville, New York.

During Hall’s groundbreaking work in forensics, he and his family moved to Fulton, where he began to turn his medical attention from brutal deaths to improved health. He became an active member of our community, including his offer to advise Fulton’s municipal leaders in their creation of a water purification system, an important matter for a new city in the early 1900s.

In May 1904, Dr. Hall earned his place in Fulton’s history by serving as the first doctor at our city’s new hospital. The medical facility, actually a house on West Fifth Street, was so new, in fact, that it was not yet fully furnished or officially “open for business.” Nonetheless, when its first patient arrived – a man who’d suffered a near fatal injury at a local mill – it was Dr. Hall who amputated the man’s arm, saving his life.

Twenty-five years later, Dr. Hall was still researching ways to ease pain and save lives. Local papers heralded his development of a less-complicated procedure for removing fish hooks from unlucky anglers, which doesn’t sound life-threatening until you consider how serious a bad infection was before the discovery of antibiotics. Hall developed his method while working on a Fulton boy, spraying the boy’s finger with ether to numb his pain, forcing the hook until the barb was in view, snipping it off and then pulling the remains of the hook back and out of the skin. The “operation” could be performed in a doctor’s office, eliminating the need for hospitalization to monitor for signs of infection.

All of Dr. Hall’s accomplishments are noteworthy, but there was one in particular that I found inspiring. While working to fight disease and illness, Hall was also professing theories for a long life. Among the paperwork I reviewed was this medical essay: “When Are We Old? When Should We Be Old?” An early Fulton newspaper, The Observer, covered his 1914 presentation of the paper to our city’s social club, Borrowed Time. The club, for men who’d lived “three score and ten years,” would have been particularly interested in Hall’s longevity theories.

In the early 1900s, while Hall was promoting his theories, the average human life spanned 55 years. At the time, there were about 5,000 known cases of a person living to be 100, which Hall considered “a remarkable fact.” He compared “the growing years” of a human (from birth until age 18) to the growing years of animals, some that lived five times as long as their growing years. If humans could be more like animals, Hall theorized, they would be able to live to age 125 or even 150.

Here’s how Hall justified his “prescription” for a long life: “By the close of the present century [the year 1999], man will not be regarded as being old at 70 years, but on the contrary, he will be active and energetic…He will conserve his energies, regulate his working hours, improve his living conditions and, above all, he will find time for a proper amount of recreation. He will live with the hope of being active at 80 years of age and not old until the century mark of his life has been reached.”

Dr. Hall’s predictions of a long life weren’t far off from the 2018 norms. Today, the average American female lives to age 81; males to age 77. The 5,000 centenarians who broke records in Hall’s day have grown in number to over 50,000. Though Hall himself only reached the age of 76 when died at his home in Fulton in 1931, his meaningful life, which was devoted to educating and healing people, is a feather in Fulton’s cap. The next time I reach a milestone birthday, I’ll take a moment to remember one of our city’s first doctors.

Dr. Albert Llewellyn Hall, one of Fulton's first doctors, had an intriguing prescription for living a full life.