Ice-making donors honored at start of second hockey game at civic center
by Dan McClelland
Thursday’s second hockey game at the Tupper Lake Civic Center this season opened with a ceremonial puck-dropping by the school district to commemorate and recognize the generosity of the three parties that made hockey and skating possible at the hometown arena this winter.
In the wake of the malfunctioning chilling vessel discovered earlier this fall which prevented the school staff from firing up the ice-making equipment to make artificial ice, three different parties came forward with generous donations to first fix the broken device and to provide the financial means to replace the 20 year old device with a new one at the close of this year’s civic center season.
Superintendent of Schools Jaycee Welsh was joined at center ice by guests Stanley Rumbough and Jill Trudeau, representing the new KOA Tupper Lake campgrounds at Moody (formerly Blue Jay), Franklin County Legislators Ed Lockwood, who chairs the board, and Nedd Sparks, representing the county and its tourism wing and Rick Reandeau, local manager of Adirondack Energy who works for the Monette family. Mr. Lockwood was actually wearing three hats that evening- one as legislature chairman, another as CEO of Adirondack Energy, and also representing the Monette family’s Adirondack for Kids foundation.
Superintendent Welsh applauded the amazing generosity of the donors and the organizations represented at the puck-dropping event. She said without that generosity there wouldn’t have been ice to skate on in the school district-owned arena this winter.
KOA Tupper Lake is owned by one of Mr. Rumbough’s companies and the manager is Ms. Trudeau. The new campgrounds and its owners contributed $60,000 this fall to repair the chilling vessel which was completed in recent weeks by the Rochester firm of Mollenberg-Betz, which put other jobs to the side to come here to replace the hundreds of copper pipes in the refrigeration unit.
Franklin County and its tourism and economic development arm, headed by Phil Hans, committed $50,000 to the purchase of a new chilling vessel to be installed this summer. The Monette family, which owns a number of North Country businesses, including Adirondack Energy and has a foundation to help causes which benefit children in the region, committed $100,000 towards the purchase of a new chilling vessel.