About Tracy Ormsbee

Tracy Ormsbee is publisher of the Adirondack Explorer. When she’s not working – and it’s not black fly season – you can find her outdoors hiking, running, paddle boarding or reading a book on an Adirondack chair somewhere.

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  1. Joel Rosenbaum says

    The grandfather of David Fadden, Ray Fadden, was always talked about with a great deal of respect in my family, where I grew up in Massena, N. Y., not far from
    the Native American reservation (Akwesasne) in Hogansburg, N. Y. I was born in
    Massena in 1933, and my father owned a clothing store there since the 1920s. Many of his customers were from the St Regis reservation and he became friends
    with many of them, especially those who were the steel workers constructing high-rise buildings in New York City. They would come into his store and purchase clothes after working for weeks in the city. If necessary, he would allow them to purchase on credit, and often they would pay him back by taking him fishing on
    the reservation on the St Lawrence River. Many of my friends in high school were from the reservation, and my older sister was a friend of Lawrence Lazore. My mother had many friends who were nuns from St Josephs in Malone who taught
    on the reservation. Most could speak Mohawk. After my dad died, and she was living alone in Massena, these nuns often visited her.
    Having grown up in this environment I became interested in Native American history and while in Syracuse at the university I spent time in Nedrow (Onondaga)
    going to different ceremonies in their long house.
    My hobbies were beadwork, both on looms and on leather (lazy stitch). I also made baskets, and I continued to do the latter up until my old age (now 88). I have
    contributed some of this to the Native American Cultural Center at Yale University
    from which I have just retired as a professor of biology. When I first came to Yale
    over 50 years ago, there were very few Native American students; there are now
    several hundred! That is a lot of progress!

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