There has been a holiday tradition going on since the 1920s in Oneonta, and it's still going strong, weather permitting, of course.
It's a week off from school. Generations of kids have gotten a pair of ice skates as one of their holiday gifts. So it has always been a time to go skating at Neahwa Park.
It was sometime around 1920 that the D&H Railroad dug the pond in the park, which we know today as Hodges Pond. Much of the land in the park was swampy, so an effort was made to drain these areas. The pond was dug to contain excess water. However, the water wasn't sufficient to come to the level of the area. So a pipe was laid underground from what was then the Elmore Milling Co. millrace to the pond.
The pond was later named Hodges Pond after Norbert Hodges, a longtime city employee, who died in December 1981.
First use of the pond by skaters came in late December 1922, or near the new year. According to The Oneonta Star of Wednesday, Dec. 20, the skating pond had been considered useless.
"Circumstances beyond the control of the park commissioners are depriving devotees of the opportunity to skate on the new skating pond at Neahwa Park. Just when preparations were being made to flood the pond that the rough ice may be refrozen, the heavy snowfall came, with no facilities for clearing the surface. It is expected that before many days the pond will be in condition for use by the eager boys and girls and their just as eager elders," the article stated.
Skating soon began, as by Jan. 5, 1923, the Star reported that the park commission ordered a snow scraper to be made in a local shop for the use of skaters on the pond. "The snow of the past few days has hampered the large numbers which are daily using the facilities," the paper wrote.
Skaters could clear their own space in a short period of time with the new scraper, the commissioners felt. Skating has always been free in Neahwa Park, though there were some times that free skating was in jeopardy.
In December 1926, boys at Oneonta High School were concerned about a possible fee for their wintertime exercise, so much so that many of them gathered after school one day to hear a talk by James J. Byard and M.G. Keenan about difficulties the city had in providing free skating. They said if the boys would clear the ice, the free skating could continue. They did, for that year.
As well as always being free, skating has been popular at the pond. A small skatehouse was built sometime before 1930 on the site of today's David W. Brenner Recreation Center. The skatehouse had an addition put on sometime in the mid-1970s. Fire destroyed that building Apr. 8, 1990. It had been named the Lewis Laskaris Skatehouse, after a longtime employee in the City Parks and Recreation Department.
At the time of the blaze, Vito Molinari recalled the early days of the pond. He was once an engineer on the D&H Railroad.
"In those years "¦ the D&H wanted to do things for the little communities along the line for good will," Molinari, who was part of the pond's designing process, said.
Former Oneonta mayors James Georgeson and James Lettis headed a fundraising drive to raise money for a new skatehouse and recreation center. They were able to raise $50,000 of the $200,000 through donations.
Groundbreaking for the new recreation center took place in late August 1991. It was officially opened Jan. 25, 1992. It was later named after David W. Brenner, the city's mayor at the time.
The Parks and Recreation Department has kept statistics on the number of days skating was held on Hodges Pond, dating back to the 1955-56 season. The greatest number of open days was in the 1978-79 season with 84. Several other years had numbers in the 30s and 40s, compared with two consecutive recent years, 2004-05 and 2005-06, with zero. The average per season is about 28 days.
This weekend, the claim of the first basketball game ever played in Springfield, Mass., is contested locally.
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City Historian Mark Simonson's column appears twice weekly. On Saturdays, his column focuses on the area during the Depression and before. His Monday columns address local history after the Depression. Write to him at The Daily Star, or e-mail him at simmark@stny.rr.com. His website is www.oneontahistorian.com.
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