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CLARENCE CONKLIN - 6 April, 2004
Clarence Conkin called a "treasure and inspiration"
By NANCY CACIOPPO
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: April 6, 2004)
Former Sloatsburg resident Clarence Conklin drives 12 hours from his home in Ohio as often as three times a year to visit friends and share tales of growing up in the village with local students during Sloatsburg Elementary School's annual history field trip.
Mayor Carl Wright had high praise for Conklin, now 95, calling him "a valuable treasure and inspiration."
"He has a great deal of integrity," Wright said. "And, as a human resource, he has no equal when it comes to local history. He has accumulated such knowledge and enthusiasm and has the ability to relate to all age groups."
Conklin is writing his memoirs about life in Rockland at the turn of the 20th century. Yesterday, during his latest visit, he shared some of those anecdotes.
Born in Sloatsburg in 1909, Conklin was the youngest of eight children. He attended Sloatsburg Union Free School, which had no electricity and no indoor plumbing. Water was pumped from a well in front of the school, and everyone drank from a long-handled dipper.
He remembers taking trolleys from Suffern to Paterson and Palisades, N.J., and Hudson River ferry boats to 125th Street to visit his oldest sister, who lived in New York City.
As a high school student in the 1920s, Conklin worked summers delivering supplies to the Scout camps in the Palisades Interstate Park. It was there that he met Benjamin Talbot Babbitt Hyde — "Uncle Bennie" — a member of the Department of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, who founded the park's nature education program.
"He was telling the Scouts not to be afraid of snakes," Conklin recalled. "But I didn't want anything to do with them."
Conklin was 15 and attending Suffern High School on Washington Avenue — today's Suffern Village Hall — when the Lafayette Theatre was built in 1924. "Its first movie was 'Scaramouche,' " he said.
Drafted in 1943, Conklin served as an U.S. Army transport sergeant in Germany. After the war, he returned to work at Avon products in Suffern, from which he retired as a supervisor in the early 1970s.
Some years ago, several relatives approached him with information about their family tree.
Two of his grand-uncles served in the Civil War. One of them — Orville Dean Conklin — fought at Gettysburg and was wounded at Spotsylvania, "where a bullet creased his scalp and gave him a permanent part," Conklin said. And George Conklin enlisted in the 124th New York Volunteers in Orange County, who were known as the "Orange Blossoms."
With the exception of two years since he turned 80, Conklin has celebrated either his birthday or another important day every year by climbing Torne Mountain in Hillburn. He was a frequent visitor to the Torne as a youngster. And for many years, he continued the hiking challenge with his wife.
He remembered that his wife, who died in the early 1970s, would say, "This mountain gets steeper every year," and he added, "Now I know what she meant."
On his 90th birthday, 12 friends surprised Conklin with a birthday cake during their climb. Shortly thereafter, as they continued their walk, a Happy Birthday balloon that had gotten away from someone else came floating up the mountainside, and Conklin reached out and caught it. It's a memento he keeps to this day.
And what about those 12-hour solo drives from Ohio? Conklin, unfazed, makes it a rule to take a break every two hours. That way, he said, "There's nothing to it."
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