1952

"Upstate New York" is the northern part of that state—north of New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County. Once a mighty national manufacturing hub, the region has faded economically during the last 55 years. The winters are tough. Much of the manufacturing left for the South and what didn't go there has gone to China. Lots of the population has departed. But we have a dozen classmates living "upstate." We phoned a few and asked why.

Bob Cotson is a doctor in Buffalo—a city where the population has shrunk by a quarter in the last 30 years. Bob came to Buffalo in 1963 and still teaches internal medicine and hematology two days a week. With the rest of his time Bob works on his collection of 16th-to 19th-century books dealing with history, navigation and exploration. He has about 5,000 of them. He also collects antique sea charts. Bob ac-knowledges that the Buffalo winters can be difficult but claims they're not nearly the problem they are made out to be. In fact, like a lot of others, he finds his shrinking city to be very livable.

Chuck Liddle lives in Albany and still works minimally for the insurance brokerage he put together and built up. Chuck finds nothing whatever not to like about Albany. He lives in a downtown penthouse, drives to work in nine minutes and gets to Boston or New York in a couple of hours. It's also mighty handy that he is so close to the huge Adirondack state park where he has a "camp"—that's a cottage in upstate New York lingo. There are 46 mountains taller than 4,000 feet in the Adirondacks and Chuck has climbed them all, enabling him to be called a "Forty Sixer." Chucks wife, Nancy, died a couple of years ago and he deeply appreciated the many notes of sympathy he received from classmates.

Stan Smiley is retired in Webster, a Rochester suburb. He worked for Eastman Kodak for 33 years. Classmates will recall Stan as a track star and captain of the cross-country team. He kept at running for many years but ran in his last marathon three years ago. He hung up his running shoes without requiring knee replacement—an accomplishment in itself! Stan has two children living nearby, a summer cottage in Ontario, Canada, and also spends time in Hanover where he, a single man for 30 years, has a close lady friend.

Henry Williams lives in Scottsville, which is a small town near Rochester. Like so many lawyers in our class, Hank has not really retired. He just switched from litigation into trusts, wills and estates and doesn't work so hard at it. Completely embedded in Scottsville, Hank and Chris live in a 1820 house, which is appropriate because Hank's family has lived in Scottsville since 1807. Three of his children live there now. Hank sold his sailboat a couple of years ago but missed it so badly that he just bought a Niagara 35-foot cruising boat.

So that's the story. Classmates who are well content with upstate New York living. Check out our Web site at dartmouth.org/classes/52.

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