My first and last days at LPC | News, Sports, Jobs

When my job ended as the writer of official reports for the 1980 Olympic Winter Games, I went looking for the next biggest game in town.

That big game was the Lake Placid Club. It had fallen on hard times following the 1980 Games; some wag suggested that the $4 million loan they received from Key Bank before the games was all spent on the distinctive Pine Cone carpet which seemed to cover acres of those huge, rambling buildings.

The club was sold to John Swaim. He appointed a group of local people who acted as a sort of steering committee for his new venture.

One of the committee members was Tom Stainback, president of Paul Smith’s College and a friend; so I asked him about getting a job at the club. He gave me the name and phone number of a Madison Avenue Public relations firm, Weintraub & Fitzsimmons. I called them, went to New York City for an interview and was hired.

The Lake Placid Club in its heyday …
(Provided photos)

Hired, despite the fact that my foot-in-mouth disease, which I have suffered with for years, almost did me in. During the interview they asked me to read and comment on a press release they had sent out for some business. I read it and said it wasn’t very good, pointed out some flaws and then was informed it had been written by Ms. Fitzsimmons.

The first headquarters for the Empire State Winter Games was at the club. Club General Manager Jim Wilford, one of the nicest guys you could ever know, told me to meet with Empire Games head guy Mike Abernathy and “give his group anything they needed.” Mike and I became friends and that first Empire Games (I think it was the first?) was a great success.

The PR firm and our relationship struggled a little because I was a newspaperman and had never tried my hand at PR releases. Mr. Swaim was paying then $6,000 a month.

A few months later, Mr. Swaim called me at my office and says, “you wanta have some fun, come down to my office (a few doors away) at noon.”

I walked in and was in shock when I saw Mr. Weintraub and Ms. Fitzsimmons sitting there. He fired them with me sitting in the room; a few awful minutes later I exited and went back to my office. Swaim hired me as PR man for the Club, despite a “non-compete” clause in my contract with the PR firm.

Before that firing happened, I knew Mr. Swaim and Mr. Wilford only slightly. I think what happened next really cemented our relationship. After an event in Placid one Sunday evening, I stopped in the club for a beer and much to my chagrin discovered Swaim and Wilford standing at the other end of that very long bar. I believe my friend Sue Ortloff Cameron was tending bar.

Wilford asked, “Where you headed?” and I replied “I’m heading home.” He says, “Let’s go to town and have a beer.” We go out, get in my 1964 Ford Station wagon, and I could tell they were quite impressed. When I pulled into the parking lot at the cottage (it was January), there were no concrete logs in place and the front wheels slid over the edge of the parking area. When Swaim stepped out of the front seat, the rocker panel was resting on the ground. Swaim turned to Wilford and said, “Where the hell did we get this guy?” More than once after that Swaim asked me to go to town for a beer. Jerry Strack pulled the car to safety the next morning.

At Swaim’s request I set up a dinner with me and Art Devlin and Swaim. It was a great meeting and Swaim was thrilled to get acquainted with Art, as anybody would be.

Things went very well for a while. We booked some big conventions, advertising in Montreal and New York paid off, and the rooms and most of the cottages were full.

Now, just my humble opinion, I believe when the decision was made to go into the Time-Share business, started things going south. By the way, it was the first Time-Share operation in New York State.

Jumping ahead: There had been hearings in Florida concerning Mr. Swain’s real estate dealings. He could not come back to New York state and Jim Wilford was running the club. Then Jim called me over to his office one morning — he had just heard from his doctor that he had cancer. I was the first he told and we sort of talked for a while before he went home to tell his wife.

The general manager slot was turned over to another gentleman they had brought up from Florida months before. He didn’t do much and the club was having a tough time. One morning, at a department head meeting when we still had hundreds of employees, the new GM (who wasn’t ever around very much) was at the meeting. When some important subject was brought up, he said, “I haven’t heard about this before.”

I replied, “Maybe you would have if you would come to a meeting once in a while.” The meeting ended shortly after, and he started berating me as I headed back to my office, which seemed like it was a 4-mile walk. Arriving there we got into a terrible argument and he fired me. (I admit it was not right to call him out in the manner I did.)

The next morning I went in to to clear out my office and saw the other guy — who will remain nameless — walking down the stairs from his office carrying a box full of stuff.

I called Jim Wilford (who eventually died of cancer) to tell him what happened, but he already knew what happened. He said, “You are now the general manger. I fired that guy yesterday, and please send security over to make sure he is out of that house today.”

I closed the employees’ dining room (they were entitled to one meal a day depending on their shift), and rented all the empty cottages on the property, trying everything I could think of to stave off the inevitable.

Jumping ahead again: The inevitable was Key Bank taking over the property. Before anything was made public, Debbie Allen, branch manager of Key Bank in Lake Placid, called and asked me if I would discreetly show her the property. Debbie didn’t do this without advice. She asked her then-husband, Denny Allen, a good friend of mine, how she might get to see that giant property to understand what they were getting into. He simply replied, “Call Howard Riley.” I took Debbie on a two-hour tour of the property.

When Key Bank took over they kept me as GM because someone at the bank suggested that “I knew here all the skeletons were buried.”

Debbie called me to come over to a meeting at Key Bank where retired State Supreme Court Judge Harold Soden was being appointed “Receiver” — a vague legal description would be “an appointed custodian of a property to secure assets and manage affairs.”

I was shaking in my boots; Judge Soden had been a Provost Marshall in the Marine Corps, Essex County D.A., etc., etc. and known as a tough guy.

I arrive at the meeting with one empty seat at the end of the table. Debbie introduces me, and Judge Soden immediately says, “Mr. Riley, let’s get one thing straight, I’m the boss.” I got it Judge. Leaving the meeting I think to myself, “oh, s***, this is going to be fun.”

I quickly had a nice office ready for him with various documents he had asked for. He arrives at work and says, “Howard have a seat.”

Immediately I was talking to one of the nicest men I ever met. He said, “Now is Key Bank paying you the salary you are supposed to be getting? Can I do anything for you; anything you need to do your job?”

Nothing sir, I answered. I learned so much from him in the year I worked for him. Writing reports for him from incidents that happened at the club, turning the reports into affidavits, digging out old reports and history records of the club. It was a happy, delightful year for me.

The last chapter following the Receivership, the Club was ultimately turned over to the then Federal Savings and Loan Association. It engaged the late Joe Brooks of Lake Placid who managed it until it was sold at auction to Placid Gold, LLC, its present owner.