New York's Preparation for Nuclear War

During my 1961 summer break from law school, I took a position with the New York State Department of Health Office of Medical Defense in Albany.  The official in charge was James H. Lade, M.D., a longtime employee of the department whose previous position included syphilis control.  When I first came on the job, Dr. Lade explained that his office’s primary mission was to take charge of medical catastrophes in the event of a nuclear war.   The office had been created on July 29, 1950, during the cold war “to draw up plans for the mobilization of medical resources in the case of enemy attack.”  It was initially funded, in part, by the Defense Production Act of 1950.

 

One of my first jobs was to accompany another employee to a warehouse in Cohoes to inventory hospital equipment and medicine.  I was told that there were similar stockpiles throughout the state, some in state prisons.

 

Following the inventory, I questioned Dr. Lade why the stockpile of medicines had expiration dates of 1952 and 1953.  Dr. Lade replied that the Office of Medical Defense was created from the fear of a nuclear attack.  Hospital equipment and various Medicines and hospital equipment were quickly acquired and stored, but as tensions eased, the legislature did not appropriate funds to restock medicines or maintain or purchase updated hospital equipment.  I asked Dr. Lade when, after a nuclear attack, he would know when to come out of his bomb shelter to take charge of distributing the medicines and equipment.  He just laughed and told me that he had no bomb shelter, as he believed that no one would survive such an attack.  He said he didn’t even know if the hospital equipment would still work since it had been stored in various places and never routinely checked.

 

Now I wonder whether, later in this decade, there will be warehouses filled with obsolete ventilators, masks, gloves, and other Covid-19 paraphernalia that we are now acquiring but may be deemed unnecessary after a vaccine is invented and put into universal use.

May 13, 2022 Update:  We now have vaccines, but are warned that it is unlikely that covid variances will never go away, and there will likely be more pandemics in the future.

 

 

 

Junior's Business

On Thanksgiving Day in 1979, Peter Gibson and I formed a partnership to build a garage and office in the town of Hoosick, Rensselaer County, and lease it to Niagara Mohawk Power Corp, the local electric utility.  That was followed by similar deals in Saratoga and Essex County.  The partnership eventually became a corporation and later a limited liability company.  While we started out constructing the garage/office facilities, we soon ventured into land development, and over the years developed more than 200 residential lots in developments that we created from rural farms.  We also purchased other properties that we could divide and sell.

One such property that we purchased in the mid-1980s was a house and adjoining vacant lot located at the northeast corner of the intersection of Rte. 2 and Rte. 278 in the hamlet of Clums Corners in the Town of Brunswick, Rensselaer County.  We sold the house and set about to sell the vacant lot, which had desirable frontage on both Rte. 278, and also on a county highway.  The lot was zoned for commercial use but was subject to the town’s planning board approval process for any construction or development.

We soon found the ideal purchaser: Dake Bros, Inc. was a Saratoga County-based corporation that was developing an expanding base of stores similar to 7 -11 stores, called "Stewart's Shops" but featured its own brand of milk and ice cream, as well as some fast food items, cigarettes, candy, etc.  It had one other store in the town, which also sold its brand of gasoline.  We signed a purchase contract at a favorable sales price, but it contained a contingency that provided that the purchaser could cancel the sales contract if the Planning Board did not approve the installation of gasoline pumps.

Unfortunately, a garage that was located a short distance away that fronted on Rte. 2, and was owned by a local man, Mr. Hudson, sold gasoline in addition to its car service and repair business.  Mr. Hudson was against the impending competition, especially since the Stewart’s Shops sold gasoline at a discounted price.  As a local resident with family members who were voters in the town, he sought protection, and as a result the Planning Board, while approving the construction of the Stewart’s Shop, denied permission for it to sell gasoline.  As a result of this denial, the purchaser terminated the contract and we lost the sale.

Peter and I decided to fight back.  Since the lot was zoned for commercial use, planning board site approval was only required when the use included the construction of a building greater than 100 square feet.  We decided to open a tongue in cheek business on the site, which Peter named “Junior’s” after Junior Staples, a character in a country music/comedy show called “Hee-Haw”, that ran for about 7 years starting in the 1960s but had about 21 years in syndication.  “ In that show, the Junior Staples character was a used car salesman of questionable ethics. 

Peter had a small shack put together on the lot, together with a large sign that had removable letters.  A friend of his, who disliked the political establishment, was in the tent rental business and donated an old, torn tent that he erected on the lot.  Peter had an old rusty bulldozer and some wrecked cars brought to the sales lot, and every couple of days we would meet and change the sign.  The telephone number on the sign was one shown on the Hee-Haw show to call to purchase copies of the show.   This shows our “sales office” which was under the 100 square foot requirement for a building permit.  A tent was erected and a bulldozer brought to the lot.   The tent was not in the best condition, but it certainly was visible.

 Like a used car salesman on the Hee-Haw show, Junior needed some merchandise, which a local junkyard donated.

 




By this time the weeds were growing up and the site was becoming a real eyesore.  The building in the background is the high school, and there was a lot of traffic associated with it.  Clums Corners is on the main highway between Troy, New York, and Williamstown, Massachusetts.


The Brunswick town supervisor, Romeo Naples, controlled the planning Board and the town government.  We started calling the town government “Romeo’s Circus.”  

The neighbors were up in arms over what we had done, but many in the town (especially those who didn’t like Mr. Naples or the town government) were highly amused and supportive. People from other parts of the town drove by to see what changes were being made to the sign and what was being added to Junior’s inventory.  Even the local newspapers started carrying the story.  The rumor was out that we were going to bring some goats or sheep and stake them out on the site. 

Finally, either Supervisor Romeo or the chairman of the town Planning Board called Dake Bros, Inc., and asked them to buy the lot from us, with the promise that the Planning Board would promptly permit the sale of gasoline at the site.  The contract was reinstated, and upon closing of title, Junior’s went out of business. The Stewart’s Shops there does a thriving business.

                                        Flyers that were passed out