Photo by Tom Rivers

ALBION – Village of Albion DPW workers Charlie Ricci, left, and Ron Ricker install a banner recognizing World War II veteran Karl Kast. They are on South Main Street near the railroad tracks.

The banner is one of 36 new ones that will be added in the next few days on South Main and West Avenue. The DPW needs to add hardware holding the banners on the utility poles.

The DPW in June put on the first group of 33 banners. There was more interest from the community and Mayor Eileen Banker, who is coordinating the effort, was able to order more banners.

She will do another order beginning in February. Family and friends of the veterans are paying the cost for the banners. For more information, send Banker an email at ebanker@villageofalbionny.com.

The banners will go up after the Strawberry Festival in June and remain in place to approximately Veterans’ Day in November.

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ALBION – The Board of Education voted on Monday evening to approve a 5-year contract with the Albion Teachers’ Association.

The labor agreement gives the 163 teachers an average salary increase of 3.1 percent annually over the next five years. The ATA has already voted in favor of the contract.

Teachers will also continue to pay 16.5 percent towards their health insurance plans.

The new contract is a year longer than prior agreements. The past two contracts were for four years each time.

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Students with symptoms could be out of school for a while with current state protocol

ALBION – School leaders say they are concerned about the impact on Albion families of a State Department of Health policy for students who are home sick or if they have Covid-19 symptoms.

Those students can’t return to school in-person until they have a negative Covid test and a doctor’s note saying they are OK.

That could slow down the return to the classroom for students, interim superintendent Scott Bishoping told the Board of Education on Monday.

“The biggest issue that I’ve seen us dealing with so far is the concern about what happens when we have a report of a student being ill, either from home or we have to send them home,” he told the Board.

The current DOH guidelines require a doctor’s note, a Covid negative test and no symptoms in order to return.

If parents call in, saying a child has symptoms or isn’t feeling well, the student can’t come back to school until there is a negative Covid test or a doctor’s visit. Students have to meet that same threshold if they are sent home from school, feeling sick or with Covid symptoms, even if it’s just a headache.

“It has to be difficult for parents,” Bishoping said. “We hope there is some adjustment to that.”

Linda Weller, a Board of Education member, said the current state policy will be a strain on families, who may have to pay for a test in the county and then pay to go to the doctor’s office.

“It is so unfair to the economically disadvantaged,” she said.

There are free Covid test options in Niagara and Monroe counties, but not in Orleans. The test results often take a week or more to come back.

Ideally, there would be a rapid test with the results known very quickly, but that isn’t an option for Albion students right now, Bishoping said.

Advocacy groups are pressing the state to change the policy, he said, to either require a doctor’s visit or a negative Covid test, not both.

“We want more chances for students to get those tests so they can get back to school,” he said about Covid testing. “Or there needs to be a change in the language.”

In other action at Monday’s BOE meeting:

• Discussed how public relations and communication services will be handled at the district this year. Albion has contracted with BOCES for PR and communication services for the 2020-21 school year.

Susan Starkweather Miller served in that role for many years, as well as being a grantwriter and managing the district’s internship program. She retired on Aug. 31.

The district will have BOCES do the communication piece, with a BOCES staffer on campus and afterschool, often on campus five days a week and sometimes on weekends.

Bishoping told the Board of Education one advantage with the BOCES arrangement is Albion also has access to other BOCES staff if there was a crisis situation and Albion needs those communication services.

The district will see how the arrangement goes and could switch back to hiring a district employee from the community, perhaps next year.

The district isn’t doing the internship program to start the school year and Mary Leto, the district’s assistant superintendent for instruction, handles most of the larger “entitlement” grants. Starkweather Miller wrote the applications and managed the “competitive” grants, but there have been fewer of those options.

“I don’t think we have enough to support a part-time or full-time grant writer at this point,” Leto said.

The BOCES staffer also is expected to help Albion roll out a more active district presence on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

• The board accepted the athletic trainer bid of $30 per hour from Karen Renner of Holley. The board said it needed to accept the lowest responsible bidder. Renner is a lower cost than Charlie Palmer’s proposal of $35 per hour. Palmer has served in the role in recent years for Albion.

• Approved a bid for $41,820 from Lakeshore Property Maintenance LLC in Waterport to provide snow removal services on the district campus. The bid is up 2 percent from Lakeshore bid of $41,000 last school year.

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Photos courtesy of Constance Duggan

ALBION – Father Richard Csizmar, pastor of Holy Family Parish in Albion, blesses the Little Free Library constructed and donated to the parish by Rachel Duggan for her Girl Scout Gold Award.

The library is located on the grounds of St. Joseph’s church between the rectory and the church on West Park Street.

Rachel, 17, will start her senior year at Christian Brothers Academy in Syracuse. She spends her summers in the Albion area. She has been a Girl Scout for 12 years and is a member of Troop 10401 of NYPENN Pathways.

The Gold Award is the highest award given in Girl Scouting. Rachel built the library, took up donations for the books through a community newsletter and purchased a plaque that will locate the library on the internet through Littlefreelibrary.org. Take a book leave a book for all ages.

Rachel’s family ties to Albion go back to her great grandfather, born in Albion and baptized at St. Josephs in 1904. Her great-great-grandfather immigrated from Ireland to Albion in 1893. She has been a summer resident in Orleans County all her life.

There was a ceremonial ribbon untying today just before noon.

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Photos by Tom Rivers

ALBION – Julie Horton, left, and Hannah Donley of Iroquois Job Corps in Medina were among the volunteers this morning during a food distribution in Albion at the parking lot of the Main Street Thrift Store.

One of the delivery trucks was later than expected. Normally the distribution starts around 8:15 to 8:30, but didn’t get going until about 9. At that point some people had been waiting since 6 a.m. There was a long line of vehicles down Chamberlain Street, McKinstry Street, East Park Street, and down Main Street past the intersection with Route 31.

There were three boxes of food for each of the more than 300 vehicles. The event ended about 10:30.

Ashtin Fiegel of the Iroquois Job Corps Center sorts out boxes of fruits and vegetables. Most of the people received a box with grapes, strawberries, peppers, Brussels sprouts, apples, blackberries, raspberries, radishes and oranges.

The Job Corps had a team of volunteers and they were instrumental in getting the food sorted and set in the vehicles this morning.

The food distributions are made possible through a state-funded program called Nourish New York. This funding allows Foodlink to purchase local product.

On a federal level, the USDA has implemented a new initiative called CFAP (Coronavirus Food Assistance Program). In this program, distributors who would normally serve schools, restaurants, and municipal programs are able to pre-pack boxes of perishable product and deliver to distributions being done all over the country.

Kenneth McNeil, left, and Greg Gilman of Community Action of Orleans & Genesee get the pallets of food ready this morning after it was delivered to Albion.

The next food distribution will be in a week on Sept. 18. The location has been moved from Medina Central School to the Ridgeway Fire Hall, 11392 Ridge Rd.

The entrance will be on Horan Road and the line will be facing north towards Ridge Road, where vehicles will exit.

The events is promoted to start at 9 but could begin earlier if the delivery trucks and volunteers are in place.

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Laura Olinger is the new owner following her father’s retirement

Photos by Ginny Kropf: Laura Olinger and her dad David Bentley stand next to a Kubota backhoe on the lot at Bentley Brothers in Albion, the business she has taken over from David after he decided to retire.

ALBION – A family business started in 1925 will continue in Albion under a fourth generation of leadership.

David Bentley of Kendall announced earlier this year he was going to scale back his involvement in Bentley Brothers and turn the reins over to his daughter Laura Olinger.

Bentley Brothers was started in Barre Center by David’s grandfather Allen Bentley selling Cletrac machines for use on the muck. His sons Gerald (David’s father) and Walter (David’s uncle) came back from the war and started working there in the mid 1940s.

David Bentley and his daughter Laura Olinger chat in her office at Bentley Brothers in Albion, where she has taken over the business started by David’s grandfather in 1925.

Allen died in 1951 and the boys continued to run the business through the late 1970s and early 1980s. They were joined by Dave, his brother Doug and sister Donna. After Donna left in the late 1980s, Doug and David took over, with David as manager and Doug as mechanic.

David had graduated from high school in 1974 and then worked part time at the business while attending Alfred State College. After graduating from there, he started full time at Bentley’s.

The business evolved during the years, from selling Cletrac, which was bought out by Oliver, then Oliver was bought by White and White was bought by Agco.

In 1980, David started selling Kubota, a company in Japan which began making farm equipment in 1972. In 1991 he moved the business from Barre Center to Route 31 west of Albion. In 2009, he purchased the Kubota dealership near Brockport.

Doug retired two years ago, and David, who recently turned 64, decided it was time to step back and let Laura run the business.

“I’ve been at this business 45 years,” Dave said.

He will continue for now to spend two and one-half days a week at Bentley’s.

Laura is joined by Brockport’s manager Darrell Morgan, who is buying into the business.

David has a son Kevin, who worked at the business growing up, but after college he wanted to become a state trooper.

David loves boating and hopes to spend more time on his cabin cruiser. He will miss taking care of the people, he said.

“Many customers have become friends,” David said.

Laura said the staff at Bentley Brothers has doubled in the past five years.

“Our goal is to always keep growing and to have what people want,” she said.

Laura has taken over at a challenging time, with the Covid-19 pandemic closing businesses, and having difficulty getting parts and equipment. In spite of that, she said business has been good. She thinks many people who couldn’t spend their money going on vacation are spending it on equipment and things for their homes.

Like her grandfather and uncle, Gerald and Walter, Laura firmly believes in being involved in the community. She recently joined the board of United Way of Orleans County. She also has joined many of her employees, helping at food distributions during the pandemic.

“I’m very fortunate to have a great family, although I work my tail off,” she said.

Three years ago, she married John Olinger, the Ridgeway highway superintendent, and they have bought the Cottages at Oak Orchard and marina at the Bridges in Carlton.

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Fruit grower was key leader for many local organizations

Photo by Tom Rivers; Bruce Krenning accepts an award for Lifetime Achievement in September 2014 from the Orleans County Chamber of Commerce.

ALBION – The Albion Board of Education on Monday began its meeting by observing a moment of silence for Bruce Krenning, who served on the board from 1990 to 1995, with four of those years as board president.

Kathy Harling, the current BOE president, said Krenning left a legacy of community service. He was “a lifelong advocate for agriculture, education and cultural issues,” Harling said.

Krenning, 76, passed away on Aug. 24. He was fruit grower and hog farmer in Knowlesville. He began his public service at age 30, when he joined the Lyndonville Board of Education.

He moved from Lyndonville, where he was an orchard manager, to Knowlesville to start his own farm. Krenning Orchards was decimated by a hail storm on Labor Day in 1998. Krenning was forced to go out of business.

But he remained a strong leader for agriculture, and was elected vice president of the New York Farm Bureau, an organization with more than 30,000 members.

Locally, he was chairman of the board for Orleans Community Health, seeing the organization through some difficult financial challenges. He also served on the board for the Orleans Renaissance Group, which started the restoration of Bent’s Hall in Medina and continues to run a farmers’ market and welcome musicians to the community, including renown tenor Ronan Tynan.

The Orleans County Chamber of Commerce in 2014 honored Krenning with a Lifetime Achievement Award for his many years as a community leader.

Krenning, during an interview with the Orleans Hub six years ago, said he struggled with self worth after the Labor Day storm and the loss of his business.

“I thought after the hail storm that life was over and nobody would want me,” Krenning said. “But that’s not true. I’ve had opportunities with great boards.”

Many of the local organizations reached out to him, wanting his wisdom and ability to build consensus. He was also battle-tested and didn’t shrink from a challenge. Those boards would often they pick him to serve as their leader.

Krenning found a new career as an insurance agent with the Southcott Agency. (When he was VP with Farm Bureau, he helped to get crop insurance approved at the federal level for fruit and vegetable farms.)

“I’ve been fortunate that people trusted me and with that trust I can build relationships and with those relationships you can get things done,” Krenning told the Orleans Hub in September 2014.

He and his wife of 54 years, Diane, have four grown children and 14 grandchildren. Their son Adam was the agriculture teacher and FFA advisor for Albion Central School. He is now the school’s athletic director and varsity football coach.

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Photos by Tom Rivers: Dee Robinson, a reference librarian at Hoag Library in Albion, meets with Albion teacher Tim Archer for a YouTube video on some important local artifacts at the library, including a letter from George Washington, a sword from Civil War and a brick with the name “Newport.” That was Albion’s name before it was Albion.

ALBION – Tim Archer, an Albion Middle School service learning teacher, likes to take groups of students on field trips in the community each year.

They stop at historic sites, such as the Courthouse Square and Civil War Memorial (Mount Albion Tower) at Mount Albion Cemetery. They visit with historians to learn about local history and other interesting artifacts.

But there won’t be any field trips to start this school year, or guest speakers to classrooms.

Archer still wants his sixth- and seventh-grade students to feel a deeper connection to the community, learning about its history and some notable leaders and characters from the past.

He decided to bring the field trips to the class. He plans to visit many of the sites that would normally be on the outings, and make videos of the locations with short clips from historians and other speakers.

Tuesday was the first stop. Archer met with Dee Robinson, the reference librarian at Hoag Library and a long-time Gaines town historian. Robinson has been the caretaker of the archive room at the library.

She often will host Archer’s students on field trips. On Tuesday, she made a video on the library’s YouTube channel, showing some of the interesting artifacts in the collection.

Archer will share the video in the his classes, and students will need to answer questions from the presentation.

The two highlighted maps from Orleans County in 1852 and the village in 1857. In the county, map, there is no Town of Albion. At that time, the Town of Albion was part of Barre. The village, however, was Albion.

Albion, however, almost wasn’t “Albion.” The village officials initially were pushing to name the community “Newport.” Robinson has a brick with the Newport name. But state officials rejected that name because the U.S. Postal Service didn’t want two places with the same name in the state. There was already a Newport.

Robinson isn’t sure which building or site the Newport brick is from. The state government nixed the idea of naming Albion “Newport” because there was already a Newport in Herkimer County and the U.S. Postal Service balked at having two in the state.

Albion was also derisively referred to as “Mudport” by many people in Gaines. The village streets tended to get muddy, especially down the hill on Main Street near Bank Street, before the Erie Canal.

Robinson, in her YouTube talk, also showed a sword given to Albion man as he was departing to fight in the Civil War in 1862.  The sword was presented to George Hutchinson by the local Masonic Lodge.

Robinson also discussed Grace Bedell, an Albion girl who wrote to Lincoln during the presidential campaign of 1860. She suggested that he grow whiskers “because his face was so scrawny,” Robinson said.

Bedell thought a beard would increase his chances for election. Lincoln took her advice and won. Bedell wrote that letter when she briefly lived in Westfield. Lincoln would meet her on the train in Westfield when he headed to Washington, D.C.

This book by Fred Trump in 1977 highlights Grace Bedell, a girl from Albion who urged Abraham Lincoln to grow a beard in 1860, when he was running for president.

Robinson also discussed other library treasures, including a letter written in May 1784 from George Washington. He wrote to Jacob Morris, who delivered a package for the general to Marquis de Lafayette, a French military officer who fought with Washington in the American Revolutionary War.

An Albion native, Noah Davis, received the letter from a friend who won it in a poker game, Robinson said.

The library also has the pen used in 1867 to sign bail bond for Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. The pen was given to Rufus Bullock, the governor of Georgia and an Albion native.

Davis was captured in Georgia on May 10, 1865. He was taken to Fort Monroe, Virginia. Although he was accused of treason and plotting in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, he was never brought to trial.

After two years in prison, he was released and lived out the rest of his life in relative peace in Biloxi, Mississippi, at the Beauvoir plantation. He died in 1889.

Bullock donated the pen to the Swan Library, which opened in 1900 and soon was taken in important artifacts because there wasn’t a museum in the county to be serve as caretaker of the items.

“It’s cool that these things that are so significant to our national history are right here,” Archer said.

To see the YouTube video of Robinson’s presentation, click here.

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