Hugo Freer Clearwater, 93
Hugo "Hugh" Freer Clearwater died December 20, 2024, in Saranac Lake. He was 93 years old.
He was born June 17, 1931, in Schenectady, New York, the son of Ralph Leroy Clearwater and Bertha Mary Louise Walker.
He attended schools in the Glens Falls area and the Mid-Hudson Valley. He graduated from the Arlington High School, Poughkeepsie, valedictorian of the Class of 1949. He majored in mathematics and physics at Union College, Schenectady and graduated in the Class of 1953.
While at Union he also served in the Air Force ROTC and was commissioned as a second lieutenant upon graduating. He was called to active duty and entered the navigator-observer school at Ellington AFB, Houston, Texas. After receiving his wings, he was assigned to a MATS squadron at Dover AFB, Delaware. He logged 2000 hours while flying in the North Atlantic, European and North African areas.
After being released from active duty, he completed a master's degree program in physics and-in science education-at-SUNY Albany.
In the fall of 1960-he began a teaching career at Arlington High School in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He was named science department coordinator in 1963 and continued in that position, in addition to teaching, until he retired in 1992.
Mr. Clearwater travelled widely both before and after he retired. He hiked and backpacked in all fifty states and most of the Canadian provinces. He especially enjoyed canoeing and took numerous wilderness trips in the Northeast and in Ontario.
In the summer of 1989, he travelled to the USSR as a participant in a program to improve relations between our two countries on a people-to-people basis. Contacts made during this program resulted in invitations to visit Russian families. Over the next twelve years he travelled to Russia nine times and spent a total of eight months there.
Hugo was married to Dianne Ada Armstrong in Altamont, New York, on June 26, 1976. His wife pre-deceased him on September 18, 2001.
He is survived by his brother, John Livingston Clearwater, Sr., a nephew, John, Jr., niece Kimberly, a grandnephew and niece, numerous cousins and his good friend, Adam Baldwin. He is a direct descendent of three of the New Paltz Patentees; of Samuel Fuller, a passenger on the Mayflower; and of the Rev. John Henry Livingston, ancestor of the Livingston family in the United States.
Funeral arrangements are in care of the Fortune-Keough Funeral Home in Saranac Lake. The interment will be in the New Paltz Rural Cemetery, New Paltz, NY at the convenience of the family. There will be no memorial service.