The movie "South of Tahiti" was playing at the Strand Theatre on East Main Street in Amsterdam when it was interrupted as the news broke that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.
Radio coverage was piped into the theater and dazed patrons left the building.
A soldier who grew up on Northampton Road in Amsterdam was among the 2,390 Americans killed in the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941.
William E. Hasenfuss, Jr., died when Japanese airplanes shot up the B-24 bomber Hasenfuss that his ground crew was working on at Hickam Air Field in Hawaii.
Two Amsterdam cowboys
Amsterdam country music performer Dusty Miller, whose real name was Elmer Rossi, Sr., had a band called the Colorado Wranglers.
Miller’s day job was stocking cigarette and other vending machines. In later years, he delivered medicines from John Tag’s Guy Park Avenue pharmacy to local customers.
The Colorado Wranglers had a long run at Amsterdam's Bob's Tavern. Miller managed to fit an Amsterdam radio show into his schedule well into his eighties.
"I like country music because it shows life as it is," Miller said.
When he died in 1998, Miller was buried in his colorful cowboy clothes.
Recorder editor remembered
Stanley Silvernail was born in Otsego County in 1917. He worked for the Amsterdam Recorder for 41 years. In 1970, he became managing editor, and in 1978, the editorial page editor. He was a graduate of Syracuse University and a veteran of the U.S. Army Air Corps and U.S. Air Force. He married Wilhelmina Anna Phillips. They lived on Black Street in Vail Mills.
Their son Jeff recalled, “We had a private line before anyone on Black Street because people were always calling for him usually with things that no one wanted to share on a party line.”
More than a waitress
When Orsini’s Royal Restaurant at East Main and Liberty streets in Amsterdam opened in the 1920s, there were curtains on the booths. Customers who were not Italian didn’t know how to eat spaghetti. They closed the curtains when dining on pasta. The Board of Health ordered the curtains removed.
Anthony Orsini, an immigrant from Abruzzi, and his wife Julia Richitelli, born near Naples, started the restaurant, also known as the Royal Lunch. It was a family business.
Anthony’s daughter Genevieve was a founder of a high school sorority for Italian girls. After graduating, she worked as a waitress.
When Judge Robert Sise was a youngster, he went to communion at St. Mary’s Church, then stopped at Orsini’s for breakfast before school. Sise’s parents told Genevieve to supervise. Sise wanted chocolate doughnuts but Genevieve made him have toast or oatmeal, “Bob was a little annoyed with me.”
Historic markers at Fairview
Amsterdam’s Fairview Cemetery was built on a 110-acre parcel of land once owned by Revolutionary War surgeon Dr. David Shepard on a hill overlooking the Mohawk River Valley.
By the late 19th century, the land was purchased by Warren K. Nibble of Troy. Nibble decided to use the land for a cemetery.
The project was laid out by landscape engineer G. Douglas Baltimore. The chapel and mausoleum were completed in 1901. A gateway of stone and iron was erected on Steadwell Avenue as the entrance to the cemetery in 1902.
Many of Amsterdam’s prominent citizens were buried at Fairview: the Shuttleworth family, who founded the factory that became Mohawk Carpet Mills; the Chalmers family, who operated knitting and button mills; and manufacturer John R. Blood, among others.
In 2024, two historic roadside markers were placed at the front entrance on Steadwell Avenue. One marker is dedicated to Fairview Cemetery itself and the second is for the Admiral Dahlgren cannon, located in the Veterans Section.
