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Forgetting ourselves

This four-page supplement about Saranac Lake is the oldest known copy of The Adirondack Enterprise, dated Feb. 21, 1895, on file in the Saranac Lake Free Library’s Adirondack Research Room. Even though it says “Vol. 1, No. 1,” there was doubt whether it was the actual first issue, partly because of a belief that the paper began in 1894 and partly because this is a feature supplement and not a regular newspaper. However, reports in other Franklin County newspapers at the time confirm that this supplement was inserted inside the Enterprise’s first news issue, published on the same day. (Enterprise photo — Peter Crowley)

To everyone out there who has had someone forget a birthday or anniversary — we’re with you. We’re also with those who have done the forgetting.

The Enterprise forgot its own birthday/anniversary Friday, and not just any birthday — 125 years since the first issue was published on Feb. 21, 1895.

Maybe that’s what we get for celebrating early. As many of you remember, in October 2019 we published a 32-page anniversary section full of stories about this paper, old and current. We also joined with the Lake Placid Film Festival in a party at the Hotel Saranac.

Also, we celebrated a bit more earlier this month at the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival parade. We had our first float in 15 years, celebrating “125 years of busting myths and covering legends,” in keeping with this year’s Carnival theme, “Myths and Legends.” It gave us an opportunity to dress up and make posters in honor of local characters: historical, mythical and both, including some from our own staff. We even won second place in the business float category, a minor honor to be sure. It feels kind of like pulling the Monopoly card that says, “You have won second prize in a beauty contest. Collect $10” — the smallest reward on any card in the game. But more importantly, we hope that float demonstrated our love for Saranac Lake, and our history here.

Nevertheless, we had planned to mark our actual anniversary somehow. What can we say? We were too busy?

Well, we weren’t sitting on the couch eating Cheetos. We were busy covering the 1980 Olympic anniversary, Saranac Lake Winter Carnival, preparing for a Job Fair, working on special sections like Weddings and Community Resource Guide, and keeping on top of hot issues like Lake Placid’s short-term rental laws, plus breaking news. As a local newspaper, we were busy covering others’ accomplishments and anniversaries and not focused on our own.

Still, that’s not a very good excuse. Everyone is always busy, but most make time for birthdays and anniversaries of family members and friends. We wanted to mark the occasion for you readers, whom we consider our family and friends.

Maybe this sloppy self-promotion is just part of this newspaper’s character. Until last summer, we thought the Enterprise began in 1894. Go back to the first issue of when it became a daily — Nov. 15, 1926 — and there in the masthead on page 4 it says “Established 1894. The paper celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1969 and its 100th in 1994.

In fact, that was wrong. Almost all early copies of the paper have been lost due to a tragic 1926 fire and an unwise 1953 purging of the archives, so for the anniversary edition we hired reporter Jim Odato, who worked here in the 1970s, to do a story on our spotty records. He and Saranac Lake Free Library archivist Michele Tucker discovered proof, from five citations in other North Country newspapers that covered the Adirondack Enterprise’s debut, that the first issue of the then-weekly newspaper came out on Feb. 21, 1895. The main portion of that first issue no longer exists, but a special supplement tucked inside it, celebrating the history and culture of Saranac Lake, is on file at the library. We had known that was the oldest existing copy, but we didn’t realize it was also the premiere.

We had already planned our anniversary section for last fall, and we stuck with that even after the revelation. And here we are, empty-handed on the big day.

Obviously, no person, business or institution is perfect. The Enterprise is far from it, but we are local and we are committed to this place and its people. We have served the Tri-Lakes area communities for 125 years, and we’re not going anywhere.

We might forget our own anniversary, but we won’t ever stop caring intensely about the people who live in this wonderful part of the planet.

To paraphrase the great Otis Redding song, we’ve been loving you too long to stop now.

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