A glimpse of the “new” 1932 Olympic arena. (Photo provided — Howard Riley)

I finally had a chance on Tuesday to visit the head of my research team, Michele Tucker, who conveniently happens to be curator of the Adirondack Room of the Saranac Lake Free Library.

Michele had retrieved a pile of ancient copies of the Adirondack Daily Enterprise for me, and there, on the sports page of Friday, Dec. 24, 1948, is a big headline: “Lake Placid Roamers Open 3rd Season Tomorrow Night.”

I get home, pick up my Enterprise and there on page one the headline reads: “Upgrades of Historic 1932 Jack Shea Arena Now Complete.” That famous arena where the Roamers packed the place every weekend. Talk about connecting the dots?

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A brief roamer story

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“Hundreds of Roamer fans who have been awaiting the opening of the Red Shirts [I never knew the Roamers had that moniker] season will swarm all over the Arena tomorrow night to get a look at the 1948-49 edition which will officially open the season’s play, meeting Valleyfield in a two-game series over the weekend.

[Just think — I was doing things in Lake Placid in 1948, only 16 years after the 1932 Olympic Winter Games! So now when I write about the 1980 Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid it seems like yesterday — not 42 years ago, as it will be in February 2022.]

“Little Ed McLeod who thrilled Roamer fans last year when with the University of Montreal will be in the nets and from the way Mac is kicking the rubber to all corners of the rink, he has improved over last year.

“Leith Dickie and Manny Benero from Saranac Lake are in great shape for the opening game backed up by the defense of Guy Langlois and Herb Butt who has been around hockey for a long time in the Canadian Provinces. He packs a terrific shot, knows how to body check, and seems to like it.

“Ollie Kolllevol, former Colgate football star and one of the finest hockey players ever to represent the university, will be another defenseman to watch tomorrow night. He is six foot three and weighs 225. Bernie Racine of the Verdun Maple Leafs, seems destined to team with Kollevol. Racine weighs about 190, likes it rough, avoids no one and packs a wicked shot.”

A couple of Lake Placid Roamer defensemen, when I covered the games, were big John Strack and even bigger Bern Farley. Never missed a game back then, back-to-back on Saturday and Sunday nights … so much fun.

Naturally we had attended events when Kate “God Bless America” Smith performed in Lake Placid, where she lived summers and where she is buried.

Ms. Smith was quite a husky woman. There was also another husky Lake Placid woman who attended many of the Roamer games. As teenagers are wont to do, we would quietly point her out to visitors as Kate Smith.

Then the poor woman would be wondering why people in the audience would be staring at her … oh well.

Later years, we spent so much in that 1932 arena with our kids playing hockey and figure skating; covering those Roamer games for The Enterprise and then getting a glimpse of Perry Como, Roy Rogers and other stars who were crowned “King of Winter at Lake Placid.”

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Dick Button is king

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Another big sports story in that ’48 edition had this headline, “Lake Placid to Crown Dick Button as King of Winter on Dec. 31.”

He won a gold medal in figure skating in the Olympic Winter Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland in 1948 [St. Moritz had also hosted the games in 1928] and he won gold again in Oslo, Norway in 1952.

So with that background here I was with my friend Nancy Kerr strolling down past the Olympic Arena in the summer of 1948 and Nancy turns to me and says, “Hey, that’s Dick Button standing there on the steps of the arena.” We went right up to him, introduced ourselves and congratulated him on his gold medal. He was friendly and gracious and only a year older than we were at age 18. He lives in Manhattan now and will be 93 in July 2022.

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LP skating club officers

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But “You Know What Else … ?” The next story on the sports page was about the officers and directors of the Skating Club of Lake Placid. I was on the Skating Club Board of Directors for a short while, but boy, the directors back then were all big shots in the area.

Here are the officers: president, Harold Durgan of Saranac Lake; vice-president, Mrs. Elverton Clark of Lake Placid and H. L. Garren, executive secretary.

Board of governors were: Mrs. W. Bowman, Mrs. Milford Dietz, Mrs. Gustave Lussi, Sylvester R. O’Haire, Louis Putrin, G. Carver Rice, Mrs. George Pettinger and Harold Soden, all of Lake Placid — L. M. Jeffrey, Irving Krinovitz and Mrs. Warriner Woodruff of Saranac Lake. The meeting took place in the arena lounge.

So many memories. Lake Placid Police Officer Bernie Fell used to stop and pick us up as we stood across from St. Agnes Church hitchhiking back to Saranac Lake. Bernie would give us a ride to the Sterling Game Farm at the top of Saranac Avenue, a site now owned by the Greg Peacock Conglomerate, Inc.

Bernie would tell us that it was against a village ordinance to hitch-hike in the village. What he didn’t tell us was that the village corporation line was shy of Howard Johnson’s, today’s ‘Dak Shack.

Who could guess that many, many years later, January 1973, reporter Riley would be riding across Switzerland in a train with Bernie Fell, Mayor Bob Peacock and other stars of the Olympic Bid team. I ended up on Bernie’s staff when he was President of the Lake Placid Organizing Committee of the 1980 Olympic Winter Games.