The Valley News' Rural Roots

One of the perks that comes from writing about local history is that people contact me when they’ve got some to share. Recently, that happened when I received a package from the Minetto Historical Society’s Karen Rogers Capeling. Karen follows my Valley News column and thought I’d be interested to see some early issues of the newspaper. When Karen said early, she meant early.

Carefully wrapped in a clear plastic bag were a dozen copies of the Oswego Valley Rural News, the precursor to today’s Valley News. When I noticed the year they were published, 1948, I realized that I was holding in my hands issues published within the newspaper’s first year!

I was aware of our hometown paper’s birth date because I’d had the privilege of learning its history from someone who was there when it started: Vince Caravan. I met Vince, the longtime editor of The Valley News, in 2013, when the Fulton Library was launching its Memoir Project. The Project’s goal is to capture the bygone days of Fulton in the voices of those who made its history. Vince signed up to write his memories and in them he included information on how the paper got started.

“The Valley News was launched October 7, 1947, in the town of Granby,” Vince wrote. “Operations began in the cellar of the Colson and Beatrice Carr home on Route 8, fifty yards north of Route 3. It was a mimeographed sheet containing news about the local inhabitants and was named Oswego River Valley Rural News.”

Once I reread that passage by Vince, I took a closer look at the newspapers I’d been given. They were, in fact, a news sheet…actually, they were several sheets. Printed on legal size paper, the issues were a dozen or pages stapled together. It looked to me a lot like those “newspapers” kids used to create and mimeograph to distribute around the neighborhood: “Come to our carnival to raise money for the fight against Muscular Dystrophy!” “New kittens for sale. Cute!”

In fact, the early issues of Oswego Valley Rural News were a lot like those neighborhood bulletins. The issues I’d been given didn’t have much of what we consider news today. There wasn’t anything about the political scene. No sports scores were listed. And there wasn’t a wedding photo to be seen. To be fair, there weren’t any photos at all. Instead, there were sketches. Lots of them.

Drawings were over half of the newspaper’s content. Most promoted local businesses and reviewing them took me on a 75-year road trip back to a simpler retail world. Sunoco Gas & Oil used the silhouette of an
airborne deer to promote its product “for longer mileage and smoother riding comfort.” Along with their quality gasoline, Sunoco also offered tire & tube repair, batteries and accessories. They’d throw in a car wash, too. Now that’s a full service station.

Mott’s Furniture, with stores in Fulton, Cato and Hannibal, filled their ad with familiar brand names: Maytag, Westinghouse, Zenith, Hoover, RCA. Their sketch of a complete bedroom set looked appealing and you could buy one by calling the Fulton store’s phone number: 376-R; Cato’s number was even simpler: 68.

During the holidays, the Rural News offered a full-page ad from Oswego’s Gift Center on West Bridge Street. They were running a special on Christmas cards. Individual purchases started at a nickel and a whole box went for fifty cents. Stick on a three-cent postage stamp and you could send plenty of holiday cheer for a couple dollars.

There were advertisements for neighborhood grocers, car dealers and paint stores. Crop farmers even took out ads: Anthony Cocopoti invited folks to his Granby-Minetto Road farm, where a bushel of tomatoes went
for $3.00—your choice of ripe or green.

Surprisingly, there were a few businesses advertising that are still doing so today. Hudson’s Dairy offered milk, cream and ice cream, and the Midway Drive-In was playing “Copacabana” with Groucho Marx and Carmen
Miranda.

Based on its double-page ad, Lysander’s “Old Home Days” expected big crowds. The two-day event included a parade, church dinner and prize drawings. A boy’s quartet and the Community Sing group promised to send music through their village.

Every issue of Rural News ran the “Just What You’ve Been Looking For!” column, where people could find deals on had-to-have items: canaries (“Guaranteed singers,” the advertiser promised.), ladies calfskin riding boots, rye seed for planting, and plenty of quality hardwood to keep your house toasty warm.

A quarter-page was devoted to local churches, which the paper noted “improves your community.” Listed were the Bristol Hill Congregational Church, the Dexterville Seventh-Day Adventist, and Methodist Churches located in Bowens Corners, Granby Center, Little Utica, Vermillion and Clifford.

I’d never heard of some of those church locations, nor was I familiar with all the communities that the Rural
News served. Listed on its front page were some well-known areas: Granby Center, Bowens Corners, Mount Pleasant and Volney Center. But others, like Farm-to-Market Road, Suttons Corners, Eight Notes, Jacksonville Road and Cattrack-Cody, seem to have been lost to history.

But people who lived in those towns, villages or four corners cared about each other and the Rural News
took note of that—literally. About a third of the paper was short narratives of what neighbors were up to. Each community had its own reporter who tracked down the stories.

The sleuthing those reporters did must have worked because the paper thrived. At the bottom of the front page was this offer: You could subscribe to Rural News, which would be “mailed to subscribers every Friday anyplace in the United States” for $2.50 a year! The offer was appealing since the caption under the newspaper’s name boasted “5,000 Potential Readers.” Pretty impressive for a newspaper printed in
the basement of a country home.

An advertisement printed in The Oswego Valley Rural News, which today is known as The Valley News.

Ode to Greco's TV

Some of you know that, along with local history, I love to write about music; specifically the songs that were the soundtrack of my younger days. When I was a teenager, in the late 1960s, I almost always had a radio glued to my ear. Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 was my favorite and I kept a running list of my favorite songs. Thankfully, working as a stock boy gave me pocket money to buy those records and the best place to do that in Fulton was Greco’s TV.

I’ve been thinking about Greco’s lately, mostly due to the fact that there aren’t many places to buy music anymore. And by music I mean vinyl records: the 45s, those single servings of the latest hits, and albums, long-playing disks the size of a large pizza and, to me, just as satisfying. Sure, I’ve heard that you can buy classic albums on vinyl again, but today most people get their music without purchasing something you can hold in your hand. We store songs on computers or phones or, heaven help us, in something called a cloud.

All this got me aching for the days when I could walk into Greco’s with a dollar in hand, humming my new favorite song. I remember thinking that at Greco’s my money was as good as my parents’ or my teachers’. It was the first place I was treated as an adult and to a kid, that’s pretty special.

One of the things I miss about Greco’s was the way their records were displayed. I wished I could see the store’s layout again and, thanks to Tom Greco, I can! Recently, I talked with Tom about his family’s store and, along with some great photos, he shared how Greco’s TV started—back before it sold TVs.

“When my father, Leo, opened the store on July 1, 1948, he called it Greco’s Radio and Record Center, Inc.,” Tom explained. “Dad first worked at Johnson’s Warehouse in Fulton, then served in the military in 1945 and ‘46. After selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door, he met Morris Horowitz of Morris Distributing, which sold records and radios. Morris helped my father open the Fulton store.”

A few years later, TVs became affordable for the average family and Greco’s added them to its growing list of appliances and entertainment equipment. (They even sold toys, at one point.) “Television was new back then, “Tom said, “and most people in Fulton didn’t own one. One night, a big boxing match was going to be broadcast and my father set up a TV in our display window. By the time the fight started, a crowd was watching from outside our store.” 

I could picture that scene because I remember exactly where Greco’s store was located: 70 South First Street. After urban renewal, it moved to Cayuga Street, where Tom and his brother, Len, ran the store with Leo until it closed in1992. But Greco’s South First Street location is where I best remember it, probably because I went there so often.

I spent hours, and I mean hours, flipping through those 45s, weighing my options until I’d figured out which one deserved my dollar. I don’t ever remember the staff at Greco’s telling me to hurry along. They took customer satisfaction seriously. Let me explain.

Figuring out which record to buy was a challenge for me: Did I want the new Jackson Five record, the latest Beatles tune or Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water”?  Those were tough decisions, but Greco’s was there to help. Just to the left of the cash register was a turntable; you know, the kind with an arm to move the needle where you wanted.

Greco’s offered the turntable as a service to us finicky listeners. You’d hand the record to the staff person—it was likely to be Josie Hudyma, who worked the counter at Greco’s for many years—and she’d play it, the store filling with the sound of your hummable hit. Greco’s let you test drive two or three records, comparing songs. Where are you going to get that kind of service today?

As you might imagine, I was a regular customer at Greco’s and the staff got to know my favorite singers and groups and made sure to alert me when there was news of The Beatles breaking up or Diana Ross leaving The Supremes. But their attention to my interests went even further.

Record stores used to figure out what to stock from a weekly publication called Billboard. The magazine featured lists and information about new songs, predicting which were destined to be hits, thus alerting storeowners to order a large supply of them. I thought Billboard was pretty special, but I could never have afforded a subscription.

Before I knew it, Greco’s was saving their old Billboards for me. I’d take them home, flop down on my bedroom floor, flip on the radio and read page after page. I credit my math skills to spending so much time memorizing the charts, figuring out how many million records my favorite singers sold.

I’ve never forgotten that kindness from Greco’s and it turns out I’m not alone in my admiration. In a 1996 letter published in The Valley News, Craig McKinney, a former Fultonian who’d made a career of music, wrote about his trip back to town for a concert. While waiting to go on stage, Craig heard someone call his name. It was Leo Greco.

“We all have a person in our life,” Craig wrote, “who, in one way or another, has an impact on what we do throughout that life. Mr. Greco was that person to me. He gave me opportunities and learning experiences, both professional and personal, that I have carried with me throughout my life.”

Isn’t it interesting that a Fulton store selling entertainment could have such a meaningful effect on so many?

Greco’s TV was once the premier store to buy all kinds of entertainment, including our favorite records.

Honoring Fulton Wrestlers on Veterans Day

As Veterans Day approaches, I am devoting this column to a Fulton youth organization which has seen several of its members enlist in the United States military. The Fulton Wrestling Team, now in its 60th year of record-breaking success, trains hard, fights for every victory and supports each team member—all important qualities of those who serve our country. At last count, since September 11th, 2001, twenty-five former wrestlers have enlisted in our armed forces. Here are a few of their stories.

In my April 2017 column about Fulton Wrestling, I included comments from team member Eddie Van Buren, a 2001 G. Ray Bodley graduate. Eddie, who grew up without many extras in life, credited the wrestling program and its coaches as being “the core of everything I’ve accomplished.” Eddie said that wrestling “teaches you that no matter what you look like, what your body type is, or what your skill is, you can train harder to achieve…In Fulton, success is always about the team.”

Eddie brought that team spirit into his college and military careers. After serving in the Army, including a fourteen-month Iraqi tour, Eddie returned to the States to command three companies, became an assistant professor of military science, earned his Master’s Degree and is currently working on his Doctorate. When he reflected on why he joined Fulton wrestling, Eddie explained, “I was looking for a challenge bigger than myself; I wanted to be a part of something truly special.”

Derrik Wise understands how being part of the Fulton Wrestling Team can be special. When he gave six years of his life to the United State Army, Derrik brought the lessons he’d learned in wrestling with him.

“Self-discipline is a key characteristic that many in the service possess and wrestling is the only sport that accelerates the discovery of how disciplined someone truly is,” Derrik explained. “When I wrestled, our entire team understood that discipline induced perseverance and toughness; we understood that if one teammate failed, the entire team failed.”

Derrik feels fortunate to have further developed those characteristics in his Army career. “I was confident that each soldier would be dedicated and self-disciplined enough to accomplish his or her own individually assigned task(s) in order to accomplish the mission.”

Former Fulton wrestler Matias Garcia, who served the United States in the elite Airborne Infantry Regiment of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, experienced how soldiers, like wrestling teammates, must depend on one another. Matias described one mission that reveals how deep that dependency goes:

 “Our mission was called Operation Dab Sar, [which was designed to] disrupt the movement of Taliban fighters in the Dab Sar Valley. My platoon was moving up the mountain on foot. There were Afghan houses in the rock face and we could see caves just above them. Once we got past the village, a second platoon came up on a suspected weapons cache in a cave and they fired their rocket launchers into it. That set the whole thing off. Instantly, the enemy opened fire on us from three sides.”

Fighting alongside Matias was his buddy, Cook. “We were a team, Cookie and me,” he explained, “and we were as close as combat buddies could be. I would tell him about my family, friends and Fulton. Cookie told me about his home, Hungry Horse, Montana. We would argue about which place got more snow. [We were both wrestlers and] we would tell each other about our teams and tournaments we had been to... Together we talked about our dreams and hopes for the future, and what we were going to do when we get out. At that moment, on that mountain, we were fighting for each other.”

Matias described the hour-long battle he and Cookie fought. They alternated firing guns; one standing up from behind the boulder for a few seconds, firing a quick burst, then dropping down to take cover while the other one stood and fired. As Matias described it, “Enemy fire seemed to be coming from everywhere. I went down to reload and Cookie stood up and pulled the trigger. That was the last time I saw my friend stand.”

Giving your life is the ultimate sacrifice a soldier can offer. Matias saw it in his closest military buddy, and the city of Fulton felt it when Specialist Ken Haines was killed in action in Iraq on December 3, 2006.  Ken was serving his second tour of duty within the war zone. Just 25 years old, he died when an improvised device exploded near his vehicle. 

Ken left behind an admirable Fulton Wrestling career. When he graduated from Bodley, in 2000, he represented Fulton Wrestlers at the Empire State Games and as a member of Fulton’s Section 3 Championship wrestling team. One of his coaches, Mike Conners, remembered Ken:

"This is the kind of kid you want representing your country, because he's a man of honor and loyalty. He showed that as an athlete. A lot of people talk about team, commitment, wanting to be part of something. Ken lived it.”

The United States honored Ken’s service by presenting his family with the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, the Army Commendation Medal and the Combat Action Badge. He was also awarded service medals for Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Global War on Terrorism. Here in Fulton, his wrestling team found their own way to remember Ken, naming their annual holiday competition The Haines Memorial Tournament.

Along with Ken, Matias, Derrik and Eddie, these Fulton wrestlers have served our country since September 11, 2001: Noah Keib, Eric Smith. Connan Ingham, Miah Richardson, Victor Garcia, Tomas Garcia, Chris Woods, Garrett Hilton, Derek Shue, Matt Elliott, Toby Bartlett, Paul Slaver, Clint Hutchinson, Bill Filipkowski, Roy French, Adam DeMauro, Jake May, Joe DeMars, Jacob Bailey, Dakota Diezel, Devon Viscome.

On Veterans Day, each of them deserves our praise and thanks.

Each year, on Veterans Day, the Fulton Wrestling Team honors our city’s veterans with a run through town and stops at Veterans’ Memorial Park and the War Memorial.