Displaying items by tag: sam aldrich

SARATOGA SPRINGS - The legacy of Alexander “Sam” Aldrich will be honored on Saturday with the dedication of a custom designed bench along the Geyser Creek Trail at Saratoga Spa State Park. It is a location that Aldrich enjoyed visiting with his wife, Phyllis.

Sam Aldrich was first cousins with Nelson Rockefeller and served as the then-governor’s executive assistant during the 1960s. 

Aldrich was dispatched to Washington, D.C. in 1963 – where he was up on the dais during Martin Luther King’s "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and was sent to Alabama two years later to join King on a historic 54-mile march from Selma to Montgomery.

The speech - “so moving and so peaceful, extraordinary," Aldrich told this reporter, during a visit to his Saratoga home in January 2012. "I think (King) knew that he was a symbol, that he was at risk and that he would probably die on this mission."

The bench dedication ceremony in honor of Aldrich will take place at noon Saturday, Oct. 27 at Creekside Classroom, Saratoga Spa State Park – located on the Geyser Loop Road in the south end of the Park. Aldrich died in 2017.