By the time Seidenstein took the stage to receive the Hall of Fame award from his old friend and PSC 1969 alumnus Paul Pillis, with nearly 50 people clapping him on, his nerves appeared to vanish. He leaned on the podium, dug a hand into his pocket, brought the microphone to his mouth and launched into a story. The inductees hadn’t been asked to prepare a speech, but Seidenstein has learned to adapt over the years. He calls it “on-the-job training.”

When he landed his job as an English professor at Paul Smith’s College in 1972, Seidenstein was fresh out of the U.S. Navy with a Bachelor’s degree in U.S. History. Colleges typically require professors to have a master’s degree, but he said the college had just lost three English professors and needed another replacement. He applied, got the job and took night and summer graduate classes from SUNY Potsdam to keep it.

“That was it,” Seidenstein said. “Forty-one years up and running.”

He taught history and English courses over the years, and he had a notoriously strict attendance and “no B.S.” policy.

Bob Seidenstein, at left, points to his brother Larry in a crowd during the Hall of Fame induction ceremony with PSC alumnus Paul Pillis looking on. (Photo provided — Lauren Yates)

“They were paying a lot of money and I wasn’t gonna be some bulls**t artist,” he said. “So I had an agenda and a deadline.”

He assigned daily homework, and if a student arrived late to class on deadline day, they got a zero on their assignment. Tough stuff, he said.

But behind his harsh policies was passion for his job. Outside of the classroom, it wasn’t unusual to see Seidenstein chaperoning for the college or driving students on a class trip. Though Seidenstein is known for his sense of humor, he took his job as an educator seriously.

His students recognized that. When student evaluations rolled in each semester, Seidenstein got good grades — around 90% positive reviews from the college’s student evaluations, he said. On review site ratemyprofessor.com, 22 of Seidenstein’s students gave him 4 out of 5 stars, with all of the reviewers saying they’d take his class again. Reviewers describe him as both “tough” and “one of the best professors I’ve ever had.”

“Not because of what he taught, but because of how he made you think,” one reviewer said.

Another simply wrote, “I owe him so much.”

Seidenstein said he was honored to receive his Hall of Fame award on Saturday — to feel the recognition of so many colleagues and students, and the culmination of “an infinite number of memories” he made at PSC. By the time he reached retirement in 2014, Seidenstein said he’d taught eight students who said he’d also taught their parents. And after more than 41 years of teaching, Seidenstein said he was still learning.

–

The Dope

–

Seidenstein submitted his first Letter to the Editor to the Enterprise in September 1996. He was commenting on an explicit misspelling of the word “dammed” in the photo headline of a previous edition of the Enterprise. In his letter, Seidenstein suggested changing the village’s then-slogan of “Pioneer Health Resort” to “Village of the Dammed.”

When former Enterprise editor John Penney personally apologized to Seidenstein for the error, Seidenstein laughed and floated the idea of writing a column. He knew nothing about newspaper columns, but he got the job.

“It was a total fluke,” he said.

Twenty-seven years of on-the-job training later, Seidenstein’s Enterprise column “The Inseide Dope” is an archive of more than 1,400 stories he’s written about the people, events and experiences that make up Saranac Lake. He’s known around town for making obscure cultural references, detailing conversations he’s had with people in this community — many of whom are the people he met and worked with during his decades at Paul Smith’s College — and peppering his prose with Yiddish phrases.

“I had to get myself a Yiddish dictionary of terms used in American language,” Pillis said during Saturday night’s Hall of Fame ceremony. He read the definition of “putz,” one of Seidenstein’s Yiddish favorites, and the crowd howled.

But as the laughter died down, Pillis said he believes Seidenstein’s columns — especially the ones about PSC staffers and faculty who’ve recently died — have also captured the spirit of the Paul Smith’s College community.

“If anybody understands the heart and soul of the people that have worked at Paul Smith’s, it’s Bob Seidenstein,” Pillis said. “He can say some serious heartfelt things about people and keep you laughing.”

The Inseide Dope has won several newspaper association awards over the years, including the 2021 New York News Publishers Association award for Distinguished Column Writing. Pillis also noted Seidenstein’s Saranac Lake Winter Carnival parade group, the Brothers of the Bush, as Hall-of-Fame worthy accomplishments. This past Winter Carnival, Seidenstein organized the new, scantily-clad bike race, “Blue Buns.”

–

Hall of Fame

–

Seidenstein’s columns have featured many of the seven other PSC alumni and staff who were inducted into the college’s hall of fame on Saturday, which included Douglas Browne, Joseph Kane, Donald Kirche, Nicolas Pendl and his grandfather Robert Potter, as well as James Zumbo and longtime staffer Doreen Stratton — who Seidenstein said he called “Dolly” for 30 years.

Saturday night’s inductees are the third set of people to be inducted into PSC’s now-84-member Hall of Fame, which was created in 2020 by 1972 PSC alumnus James Voorhies and former PSC Athletic Director James Tucker. Voorhies and Tucker organized the college’s Hall of Fame committee, which chose the first 33 Hall of Fame inductees in 2020. Voorhies said Saturday’s eight inductees were all nominated through the Paul Smith’s College community.

“These people have all made a significant contribution to the past and present success of the college,” Voorhies said.

The college’s Hall of Fame Committee is now accepting nominations for next year’s hall of fame inductees. People can find nomination criteria and nominate someone for the 2024 PSC Hall of Fame at paulsmiths.edu/alumni/hall-of-fame/nomination.