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Longtime Potsdam mayor and current village trustee Ruth Garner turning 100 years old

Posted 11/15/15

Long-time village trustee and former mayor Ruth Garner reaches her 100th birthday Wednesday, Nov. 18. In November 2005, we spoke with Garner about her life as a woman and as a local politician to …

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Longtime Potsdam mayor and current village trustee Ruth Garner turning 100 years old

Posted

Ruth Garner was Norwood High School’s valedictorian in 1933.

Long-time village trustee and former mayor Ruth Garner reaches her 100th birthday Wednesday, Nov. 18. In November 2005, we spoke with Garner about her life as a woman and as a local politician to mark her turning 90. We publish the story again here as she begins her second century.

By CRAIG FREILICH

POTSDAM -- Mayor Ruth Garner steps down as village mayor next Monday, nearly 50 years after first became involved in local politics.

But she’s not going far. Garner is giving up her post as chief executive of the village, but will stay with the village board as a trustee. In truth, she says, she felt it might be time for her to take it a little easier, keeping in mind that she’s just celebrated her 90th birthday.

Garner first became active politically during the debate over a proposed bond issue for Potsdam Schools in 1956, before the construction of the elementary and middle schools. Potsdam High School was there, Garner says, but younger children often went to the Congdon Campus School, which was a “practice” school for teachers from Potsdam Normal School.

“It was women who got behind it. I felt there was strength in local schools. I remember talking to people and encouraging them to vote for the bond issue. It was a big step, because it was going to increase their school taxes, and there would be busing. But I felt it would be of benefit because it would mean an expansion of programs -- athletics, music -- not that there weren’t those things at Congdon, because those kids got a really good education, but I felt broadening it would be good.”

She also served as president of the PTA. “I think parents want the best for their children, and that parents have to be involved in their children’s education. And people have to work together with schools to get the kind of education they want for their children. I had six children by that time.”

Familiar With Controversy

And so began a long and at times controversial public life.

While Garner had no particular example in mind, the outspoken mayor admits to a few public moments she wishes could take back.

“Very often, you know, I think everybody’s subject to this. You’ll say something and you’ll think, ‘Oh, no, if I could only take it back.’ I’ve had a few moments like that.” But she was making no apology.

“I don’t know if it’s a weakness or not; I’ve always thought of it as a strength: I’ve always been a person that never lets anybody not know where I stood. At times I think it probably would have been better to have kept my opinion to myself,” and she chuckles. “It shocks people sometimes. I think often you make a remark that could be misinterpreted, which is difficult, because words are very hard to take back. You may feel so passionate about something that you just can’t stand it because people don’t know how you feel. I think you have to be judicious, and sometimes it’s very hard.

“When something is controversial, people tend to want everybody to agree with them, but people don’t. I’ve always found it to be a learning moment if you can keep an open mind and listen to others, because very often it does change your thinking, or at least shades it enough that it turns you in another direction, to be able to think, ‘Well, I never thought of it in that way.’”

She said she feels a little misunderstood over Wal-Mart’s first attempt at coming to Potsdam, several years before their effort to build on Rt. 11 began. The contractor representing Wal-Mart had chosen a site just outside the village on Rt. 56, Outer Market Street.

She was not “terribly against Wal-Mart. I’m against undisciplined growth in a community. The size of a thing like that changes forever what’s going to happen in this community. In a small community, there’s a certain number of dollars to go around. But I do think it will fill a need for some people.

“But you make a statement like that and it’s very easily misconstrued. It can be very emotional.

“People think, ‘You’re against Wal-Mart and cheap prices.’ That has nothing to do with it.

“It was not a question of saying to Wal-Mart ‘You can’t come in here.’ They wanted to have the village and the town put in water and sewer lines and put up a water tower. Now we were willing to do the water tower, but extending the lines meant $2 million put on the ratepayers of the village water and sewer. Why should our ratepayers enrich Wal-Mart? If Wal-Mart wanted that put in -- and they’ve done it in other places -- they could put it in themselves. We thought they had tentatively agreed to that. Then all of a sudden, they weren’t coming.

“I think you can voice your concerns without being against things,” Garner said.

“But if people think that Wal-Mart is coming here to benefit this community, with generosity and creating jobs, I am skeptical about that. Regardless, you make the best of what comes.”

Daughter of a Telegrapher

Garner was born Ruth Finnegan in Massena on Nov. 18, 1915. Not long after, her family to Montreal, where her father, Dennis Finnegan, was employed as a telegrapher and railroad station agent at Windsor Station. Her mother, Isabelle Dame Finnegan, had been a switchboard operator for a private telephone company in Potsdam. The switchboard was up over what is now the University Bookstore on Market Street.

In 1919 they moved to Norwood where her father was a telegrapher at the Norwood depot, “which was a big junction for the railroad. Five different railroads came into that junction. It was a very, very busy place.

“The railroad station was like a community center. If you wanted to send a message, you would go to the Western Union office. We didn’t have a telephone, and nobody else did either. It was mostly businesses at that point. So if you had a dire message to send, why, you’d wire them through Western Union.

“A lot of the news came over the wire, too. I can remember when there was a big prize fight, or elections, the station would be full of people waiting for the news to come over the wire. The telegrapher would come to the ticket window and announce the results.

“There were a lot of passenger trains in and out, Pullman trains. It was a busy, busy place.”

Garner graduated from Norwood High School on Prospect Street in 1933. She was valedictorian of her class. She went to nursing school at Champlain Valley Hospital in Plattsburgh. “I finished my course work but never took the boards. I came home because my mother had fallen and broken her hip and had complications.

“So I came back and was a manicurist and hairdresser, and eventually had a shop of my own for many years on Prospect Street in Norwood.”

Mother of Six

Soon she and George Garner decided to marry. “George and I went to school together. I met him when I was in the sixth grade. We married in 1939 in Potsdam. We had six children. We established the Garner Funeral Home in 1945, at 10 Lawrence Ave., while I still had the shop in Norwood. Then I worked in the funeral home as office manager, plus many other duties that you might find yourself doing in a 23-room house with a big family.”

Over the years she has not let her education lapse. “I have taken many courses at SUNY, mostly in history, women’s studies, and languages -- whatever was offered when I could get there during the late afternoon or evening. I’ve always been a reader, ever since I discovered the Norwood Library as a child.

“My father was a great reader. He was always interested in the children’s furthering their education. And we always discussed the affairs of the world. He always insisted we read the newspaper. He never ran for any office, because of his work. But he felt we had civic duties like voting, and knowing why you’re voting the way you are. It gave me a social sense, and a sense that you have to be involved in your community if you want it to be better.”

At the same time, her father held views that were conventional then but would not go over too well now. “He would say, ‘You don’t have to learn how to drive because your husband will drive you.’ Well, as it turns out, my husband didn’t want to drive. But it seems so silly now, that you would buy into things like that.

“My father also used to say, ‘Don’t complain unless you have a better solution.’”

She has tried to live up to that advice.

Interest in Planning and Zoning

“One of my main interests was in planning and zoning. For instance, in my lifetime I’ve seen beautiful homes, for instance like Benjamin Raymond’s house -- he was practically the founder of Potsdam -- torn down and a gas station put up. Afterwards, I got to thinking, ‘My gosh, why did they do that?’ I think people weren’t aware of the historic effect of many of the fine old places. I think of the grist mill on the corner near the river that has such historical importance to this community. People just didn’t think about it. Other places have. They provide a stability to your community, and once they’re gone they’re gone.”

The impact of traffic downtown was also an interest. “I was always interested in getting the bypass built. It had been developed by the planning board shortly after World War II, but nobody could get it through because there was such concern from the economic interests, stores and things, which was legitimate, about traffic going by their places of business. In trying to balance the two, you never could get everybody together.”

And then there was urban renewal in the 1970s. “People might not remember that downtown was decimated. We thought urban renewal would mean progress. But we found that many times progress doesn’t always lead to good results.

“Businesses that had been next to each other for years were dispersed, and it was when the first local mall was being built. All of these things have some effects on business that aren’t always visible at the time. You can’t always predict what is going to happen. That was one of the things I was very interested in when I went on the village board. I had been on the urban renewal board and some people at that time didn’t believe in public meetings. It was a great controversy.”

Lost by Two Votes

Those things inspired Garner to run for village trustee, and she won a seat. “Well I was on the village board and after the first year you think you know everything, so I ran for mayor that next year and was defeated by two votes.”

Then in 1977, when John Hayes decided not to run for mayor again, Garner ran again, this time “on the promise that we would try to finalize urban renewal and get the bypass. It was a wonderful board and we were able to get those things done.”

Garner says she felt people becoming politically energized in Potsdam.

“It was just the beginning of many people becoming interested in having a say in what was happening in their community. I think a lot of good came out of it.”

Aside from broader community involvement, Garner says, the success of the bypass project and finishing the urban renewal program had other benefits for Potsdam.

“These things made us eligible for community development funds, which has benefited Potsdam greatly, and in turn made us the recipient of a lot of grants that we ordinarily would not have been eligible for, but we got because we were able to prove that we use money very well to benefit the community, and saved many downtown businesses and buildings.”

She left the mayor’s seat in 1981, but ran again in 1993 for the first of four consecutive terms.

“I have great trust in citizens’ ideas,” she says. “You can’t think of everything yourself. You have to depend on others. They may not all be great ideas, but they’re usually something you can build on.”