Tango Fusion Dance Company Offers Free Online Dance Classes in Swing, Salsa & More
Governor: New Rules in Effect Friday
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has announced the state will institute limits on mass gatherings, directing events with 500 or more individuals in attendance to be cancelled or postponed.
Events, gatherings, or places of business with less than 500 individuals in attendance will be required to cut capacity by 50 percent, with exceptions being made for spaces where individuals do not make sustained close contact, such as schools, hospitals, public buildings, mass transit, grocery stores and retail stores. These new regulations will go into effect 5 p.m. Friday, March 13.
- Nursing homes: only medically necessary visits will be allowed at nursing homes. This policy will also be effective Friday at 5 p.m. The state is asking nursing homes to set up skyping and other online communication capacity so families can tele-visit their loved ones. Additionally, the state will require health screenings for all nursing home workers each day when they enter a facility and require them to wear surgical masks to guard against any potential asymptomatic spread.
In order to increase testing capacity, the State is contracting with BioReference Laboratories to run an additional 5,000 tests per day on top of what the state is already doing. These additional 5,000 tests per day will come online next week. This additional testing capacity is on top of that of the 28 private labs the governor announced are partnering with the state in the coming days and weeks.
Additionally, the Governor announced the first public drive-through testing facility on the east coast will start testing people (today) in New Rochelle.
- For all schools in communities with the highest rates of positive cases, the state will be taking proactive steps to implement protocols that limit mass contact. The Governor announced SUNY Albany will cancel in person classes for the rest of the semester after a positive case was confirmed.
Finally, the Governor confirmed 109 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 325 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 325 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
- Albany County: 1 (1 new)
- Broome County: 1 (1 new)
- Delaware County: 1 (1 new)
- Dutchess County: 1 (1 new)
- Herkimer County: 1 (1 new)
- Monroe County: 1 (1 new)
- Nassau County: 41 (13 new)
- New York City: 95 (43 new)
- Orange County: 1 (1 new)
- Rockland County: 7 (1 new)
- Saratoga County: 3 (1 new)
- Suffolk County: 20 (14 new)
- Ulster County: 4 (3 new)
- Westchester County: 148 (27 new)
Additionally, any business that cannot accommodate rigorous cleaning standards should contact Empire State Development at (212) 803-3100 for a close order.
Read Gov. Cuomo's statement in its entirety HERE.
Saratoga Arts Announces $123,010 for Arts Projects
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Saratoga Arts this week announced the recipients of our 2020 Community Arts Grants for organizations and individual artists in Fulton, Montgomery, and Saratoga Counties. Thirty-nine grants totaling $123,010 have been awarded to support community-based arts events taking place in 2020.
This year’s recipients and their funded projects offer their communities year-round opportunities to experience a wide array of free or low-cost artistic events highlighting talented local and regional artists. An estimated 24,000+ community members, 5,600+ youth, and 1,580+ artists will directly participate in these grant-funded events occurring throughout 2020.
With funding awarded from the New York State Council on the Arts, Saratoga Arts’ Community Arts Grants support artists, non-profit organizations, and government departments in Saratoga, Fulton, and Montgomery Counties, in partnership with qualifying organizations and artists, to present arts and cultural programs of high artistic merit in local communities.
Grants awarded specifically to Saratoga County include: Adirondack Center Stage, Inc. - Corinth, NY for 2020 Summer Theatre Workshop $5,000; Ballston Area Community Center - Ballston Spa, NY for Village of Ballston Textile Mural $4,500; Patrick Donovan - Saratoga Springs for A Whitman Sampler $2,500; Galway Public Library - Galway for Color Your Summer: Draw; Write; Dance $2511; Homemade Theater - Saratoga Springs for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time $5,000; Mary Kathryn Jablonski - Saratoga Springs for Compass: A Video/Poem $2,500; MK Narasimha - Saratoga Springs for Indian Classical Dances $2,500; Saratoga Automobile Museum - Saratoga Springs for Wheels, Women & Independence $5,000; Saratoga Shakespeare, Inc. - Saratoga Springs for Much Ado About Nothin $5,000; Saratoga Springs Arts District - Saratoga Springs, NY for 8th Annual Beekman Street Fair $5,000; Saratoga Springs Public Library - Saratoga Springs for Drum Circles for Seniors $750 and for West African Drum Circle: Movement & Rhythm for Adults with Special Needs $750; Senior Citizens Center of Saratoga Springs - Saratoga Springs for Lunchtime Concerts $4,537; Schuylerville Public Library - Schuylerville for Children’s Theater Camp $2,625; The Creative Place, Inc. - Saratoga Springs for An Agatha Christie World Premiere: The Man in the Brown Suit $2,500; Town of Ballston Community Library - Burnt Hills for Don’t Wait to Unmake a Bully, with filmmaker Michael Feurstein at Charlton Heights Elementary School $2,240; Town of Malta Parks and Recreation - Malta for Malta Cultural Arts Festival $4,721; Village of Ballston Spa - Ballston Spa for Third Annual Birdhouse Competition & Festival $5,000; Ulysses S. Grant Cottage Historic Site - Wilton for One Real American: The True Story of Ely Parker $500 and for Our Land: Stories & Songs from the Traditions of the Native Peoples of Saratoga Region $500 and for Photography/History with Clifford Oliver $500; Wilton Wildlife Preserve & Park - Wilton for Painting in Nature at the Wilton Preserve $1500 and for Blues for the Karner Blues $1,050.
This years’ grant recipients will be acknowledged and celebrated at the annual Grant Awards Reception 6-8 p.m. on Thursday, March 19, at the Arts Center, 320 Broadway. The public is invited to attend the free event to learn more about funded projects taking place in their communities and to enjoy light fare, beverages and live music performance by past grant awardee Byron Nilsson. Saratoga Arts asks that anyone who would like to attend, please register in advance by calling 518-584-4132 or online at saratoga-arts.org.
Condo Plan Scrapped for Pocket Park Downtown
SARATOGA SPRINGS – What once was an eyesore and is currently a vacant lot will soon boast a grass landscape with elderberry and perennials, a pair of picnic tables, Black Cherry and Japanese Dogwood, if Jason Letts gets his way.
The owner of the .31-acre site that stands opposite the Saratoga Springs Public Library has submitted to the city Planning Board a proposal for a pocket park on Putnam Street.
“We want to make it a place people can go to and have lunch or hangout, where they can walk straight out of the library and have a place to read,” Letts said.
The location had sited a commercial use concrete block building on-site the past several years. It was eventually revealed to be contaminated from its earlier use as a dry cleaning facility, as well as sustaining oil contamination from an offsite source. That contamination determined the existing structure could not be salvaged for re-use and the building ultimately demolished.
The land has been a focus for a variety of suggested uses, dating back several years. Proposals have ranged from a six-level robotic parking garage and banquet facility with 189 vehicle spaces and street-level retail in 2004, to a performance venue with a food service component in 2013. In late 2018, plans were on the table for the development of a six-story, 40-unit condominium complex called “Five-Three” – named for its location at 53 Putnam St. - to feature one-bedroom and two-bedroom units at a price range of $400,00 to $800,000, and a rooftop green space with a lounge area for residents. That mixed-use building proposal carried a price tag of approximately $30 million.
Currently, the 13,500 square foot site depicts a fenced-in lot marred by post-demolition sand and gravel. Ultimately, Letts says, he realized any large-scale development would require a long-term project, and decided a better current use for the lands would be something the entire community could use.
“We got into this – ‘we’ being my sons and my family – to find a way to make this site useable as soon as possible. The idea of having to wait however-many-years to finally get a building, and to have it just sit there wasn’t appealing to us,” Letts says. “Right now, we’re looking to get the site into a useable position, something that looks nice. An aesthetic transformation.”
The proposed pocket park - titled the Rory & Blake Park – is named after Letts’ sons. “Although it is an expense, this is an opportunity to get more involved in the community where we live. And especially because we use the library so much, we decided we had to do something about it - so we hope this is something everybody will be able to enjoy.”
Letts said there are partnerships being formed with local places like Caffe Lena in the hope of staging organized activities in the park. A general timeline points to implementation by late summer.
“It’s been a long road with the DEC clean-up, which will be taking place this year,” Letts said.
The lot is currently regulated by DEC as a Brownfield Site. A Brownfield site is a property where a contaminant is present at levels exceeding the soil cleanup objectives, or other health-based or environmental standards. The goal of the Brownfield Cleanup Program is to encourage private-sector cleanups of brownfields and to promote their redevelopment.
The location may in the future site a housing or mixed-use complex, but that prospect appears to be several years away.
“Getting the resources together for a building (in the future) is going to take some time and will be long-term. We’re not so sure it will be condos - in fact that’s probably the least possible thing at this point given things like the market. But, whether it will be straightforward apartments, or some sort of affordable housing - that’s more what we’re looking at for that space,” Letts said. “That’ll be some time away. We just didn’t want to have it sit as it is.”
Neighbors: Chuck Vosganian AKA Rochmon
On the third Tuesday of each month, Chuck Vosganian AKA Rochmon, leads a live multi-media presentation about a classic album from rock ‘n’ roll’s heyday. There are stories. There are songs. There are trivia contests, the exploration of lyrics, and a timeline of culture in an iconic time. After relocating the monthly sessions to Caffe Lena nearly three years ago, Rochman is slated to return to the place of his origins at the newly reopened and remodeled Universal Preservation Hall.
Where did you grow up and how did you get to Saratoga?
I grew up in East Moriches, Long Island, in the middle of nowhere. Potato-and-duck country. Later, I lived in Chicago for 15 years then in Queensbury for 27 years before moving to Saratoga. Being in Saratoga, I wanted to live in a community where I could go out my door and walk around downtown.
When was the first Rochmon show?
September 2016. The first album was actually a movie: I played the Joe Cocker “Mad Dogs and Englishmen.” We had like nine people come. It was so much fun. So, I asked Teddy (Foster, of UPH) if I could do it again. I returned the next month with David Bowie’s “Young Americans.”
What other artists’ albums had you done at UPH?
We did Queen and Led Zeppelin, we did Deep Purple; the music was a little bit of harder rock over at UPH. We got folk-i-fied when we went to Caffe Lena, haha. But Lena’s did such a great job building an audience for me. I was there since April 2017 - and our audience - we had lines around the corner. Sarah Craig at Caffe Lena was great.
I have always been surrounded by smart women. Between Teddy Foster and Mary Beth McGarrahan at UPH, Sarah at Caffe Lena, my wife Karen, and my daughter Alyssa, they’ve really helped bring the show forward. I couldn’t have done it without any of them.
You’re assisted during the shows by your daughter?
My daughter Alyssa, who’s 28. She’s my youngest and grew up listening to this stuff. Now, doing this with my daughter is also a reach-back to my mom, who taught me how to deeply listen to music; to see the picture that the music was trying to paint. My parents were classically trained opera singers and performers. So when we listen to an album and I do the deep dig-in, it is part of that connection.
How many Rochmon Record Club presentations have you done to date?
Forty-seven. Forty-seven different albums. And every show evolves in an unexpected direction. Like Paul Simon’s “Graceland,” which we’re doing next week. (Ed. note: this presentation, along with all other shows at UPH have been postponed until April 12). Sound and pictures of Paul Simon - throughout his career, and people who played on the album, interesting instruments, the lyrics. We’ll talk about each song individually, the album cover, sales, and I also play some deeper audio drops; for instance, there will be a demo version of “Homeless,” and it’s nothing like the (recorded) song goes.
The entire album is played?
I ask people: When was the last time you listened to an entire album? Ten years ago? Fifteen years ago? Today, the way we consume music is different, so you might listen to a couple of songs, but not the whole record. And the whole record is the complete work of art. It’s the Mona Lisa. And that’s how we connect around the album. We’re listening to the whole thing. I like to say we’re listening to the album again for the first time. And it gives us an opportunity to go back.
Now that you’re coming back to UPH, what are some future listening parties you are planning?
Later this year we’ll have “Led Zeppelin IV,” Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” “Chicago II,” Elvis Costello’s “My Aim Is True.”
How do the stories work?
A lot of it is just relating the story of the band and talking about what I loved about the music. I explain what I hear and discuss the connections. What’s really interesting is how the listening has evolved. In the beginning it was what the album meant to me, but years later, the way you hear it today changes from how you heard it as a kid. And that’s an amazing journey.
- Interview by Thomas Dimopoulos
The Rochmon Record Club presentation of Paul Simon’s “Graceland,” at UPH, on Washington Street was slated to take place March 17. All shows at the venue have been postponed, through April 12.
Curtains Up: UPH Unveils 700 Seat Theater
Universal Preservation Hall, a new 700-seat theater-in-the-round performance space, just prior to the first-night opening of the doors, on Feb. 29, 2020. Photos by SuperSource Media, LLC.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — “How do you like us now!”
Teddy Foster beamed beneath the sparkle of stage lights Saturday night, unveiling the grand room to the eyes of several hundred theater goers.
“I’ve been waiting to say that a long time,” said the newly named director of Universal Preservation Hall, which stands on Washington Street, one block west of Broadway. “A really, really long time.”
Foster joined the board at UPH in 2006, became its president three years later and has stewarded the grand old church building from the brink of obliteration to its present-day promise as a thriving performance and community center in downtown Saratoga Springs.
It was built in 1871 and served as a Methodist church for its first 100 years, as well as playing a role in the city’s civic life by providing a venue for visiting statesmen including Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, William Jennings Bryan and Frederick Douglass. But by the 1960s, it had fallen on hard times. Downtown Saratoga was in decline and the Methodist congregation relocated to a new building outside of town. The church sat empty for several years. A local Baptist congregation bought it for $18,000 in 1976 but hadn’t the means to preserve and restore the aging structure.
In 2000, the city condemned the building. Local preservationists organized a nonprofit group and reached out to the Baptist congregation to help save the structure. Donations paid for an initial wave of renovation work beginning in 2003. The building was stabilized but the restoration effort ground to a halt with the economic collapse of 2008-09.
The venue had housed a smattering of events in recent years – from fashion shows to First Night celebrations, and concerts by Colin Hay and John Sebastian. Max Weinberg – drummer of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, brought his 15-piece big band to UPH in 2010, and Brooklyn-based band Cuddle Magic performed a memorable mixed-media show at the hall with pianist Phyllis Chen and novelist and short story writer Rick Moody in 2014. Because the renovations were only partly completed, however, the maximum occupancy of the hall was severely restricted.
“I was smart enough to realize I needed either a plan to move forward or an exit plan,” Foster said, speaking about the future of UPH in 2015. “You’re remembered not for how you start something but how you leave it. I didn’t want to be remembered as the woman who let down Universal Preservation Hall. So, we got busy.”
In the summer of 2015, following three years of discussions, an operating alliance was created with Proctors, the historic theater in downtown Schenectady that has served as a performing arts destination in that city since the 1970s.
A $13.5 million renovation project followed. The original stained glass windows and the building’s pews have been restored. New seating descends from the rear balcony and, on the other end of the 7,000 square-foot room, ascend into the apse. Movable platforms allow the space to open up, depending on the requirements of any given performance. There is a new glass atrium entryway and elevator, and a state-of-the-art sound system. The architecture maintains its Gothic accents and re-opened to the public on Feb. 29, Leap Day.
“When we saw it was possible to open on this day, we leapt,” quipped Proctors CEO Philip Morris on opening night. The Proctors Collaborative includes Proctors in Schenectady, Albany’s Capital Repertory Theatre and now UPH in Saratoga Springs.
The 700-seat theatre-in-the-round set-up is not alien to longtime regional theater goers, sharing the performer-audience intimacy of the former Starlite Music Theater - which began its life as the Colonie Musical Theater in 1958, before taking the more familiar Colonie Coliseum name in the early 1970s.
It seems fitting Rosanne Cash was selected as the debut performer in the re-christening of the grand hall. The eldest daughter of Johnny Cash was 9 years old when the Man In Black performed at the 5,000-seat Convention Hall on Broadway on a November night in 1964 in support of his then-new album “I Walk The Line.” One year later, Saratoga Springs’ largest indoor venue went up in flames. The emergence of UPH marks the return of a mid-sized, year-round venue to the downtown district. According to a statement issued in 2018, UPH will serve an estimated 65,000 visitors per year, with a $3.5 million annual economic impact as a year-round venue space.
As for parking, UPH is located within a few hundred feet from the four-level parking garage on Woodlawn Avenue. The structure, built in 2012, holds about 450 vehicles. The garage will provide easy access to a planned glassed-in entryway to the east of the hall’s current entrance.
Upcoming concerts at UPH include: An Evening with Chris Botti 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 6. $79.50 - $179.50; Capital Region Thomas Edison Music Hall of Fame Ceremony 6 p.m. Monday, March 9, $50; Howard Jones Acoustic Trio 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 14, $29.50 - $69.50; Irish Hooley with the Screaming Orphans 7:30 p.m. Sunday, March 15, $25.
Rochmon Record Club which began its monthly gathering under the guidance of music savant Chuck Vosganian, AKA “Rochmon,” will mark its return to UPH at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 17, when the offering will feature a presentation of Paul Simon’s “Graceland.” Tickets are $25.
Tickets for all shows are available by phone at 518-881-4500, online at universalpreservationhall.org or at the Box Office at 25 Washington St.
The Artemis Tour: Lindsey Stirling Returns to SPAC July 3
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Violinist and dancer Lindsey Stirling will hit the road this summer for a 36-city tour which includes her inaugural appearance at New York City’s iconic Radio City Music Hall, and her return to Saratoga Performing Arts Center on Friday, July 3.
Stirling’s self-titled debut album was released in 2012 and followed by “Shatter Me” two years later. “Brace Enough,” her third album, was issued in 2016 – a year which also saw the publication of her memoir “The Only Pirate at the Party.” An album of Christmas songs followed. Exhibiting a variety of talents, Stirling recently lent her likeness to a new comic book series called “Sparrow,” has competed on the TV shows “America’s Got Talent” and “Dancing with the Stars,” and counts more than 10 million subscribers on YouTube.
In 2018, she appeared at SPAC while on a co-headlining tour with Evanescence. “When I started writing my own music, I took a page out of their book,” she told this journalist in 2018. “I was doing dubstep and I thought: OK, how can I make this really edgy electronic music meld with my classical background? And so, a huge inspiration to me was Evanescence.”
Stirling’s memoir, which was published in 2016, has been largely hailed as an inspirational journey demonstrating her persistence, her humor, and as an inspirational tale, openly talking about her own struggles with anorexia - a life-threatening disorder due to the effects of weight loss and starvation on the body and brain.
She had played classical music since the age of six, making the leap to a more contemporary style as she matured.
“I thrive on creativity and so I think I had just gotten bored. So that’s why I strayed from classical. I thought to myself: I’m not going to quit, I just need to re-find my passion, play the kind of music that excites me, the kind of music that I love,” Stirling said, during the interview in 2018. “That’s why I started playing in rock bands and adding classical elements - not taking away from classical, but just adding my own vision to dubstep and pop and rock. It made it come alive for me.”
Touring in support of her album “Artemis,” Stirling’s Saratoga show will include special guests Kiesza, and Mako. Ticket price range for the pavilion only show are $29.50 - $129.50 and are available at www.LiveNation.com and Ticketmaster.
Beat This: From Bernstein to Kerouac, Legendary Composer Returns to Saratoga Stage March 8
SARATOGA SPRINGS — David Amram has played the French horn in the legendary jazz bands of Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie and Lionel Hampton. He created and performed in the first ever Jazz/Poetry readings in late 1950s New York with his friend Jack Kerouac, and worked with Allen Ginsberg in the film “Pull My Daisy.” He has composed the scores for “Splendor In The Grass,” “The Manchurian Candidate” - the original film – and served as the Composer and Music Director for the Lincoln Center Theatre. When he was named the first Composer In Residence for the New York Philharmonic, it was Leonard Bernstein who made the appointment.
On March 8, Amram will be featured in a panel discussion about the Beat Generation, as well as a concert during which he will read selections of “Beat” poetry and present historic photography of the legendary faces and places of the mid-20th century movement which changed the face of America.
Locals may recall Amram’s recent appearance at SPAC with Willie Nelson at Farm Aid, or his emotionally stirring performance at the Lake George Jazz Festival in September 2001, when in the immediate days following 9/11, Amram brought together the T.S. Monk Sextet and Glens Falls Symphony Orchestra for a musical collaboration in Shepard Park that marked, for many, the first public event they attended in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The collaborations of his storied career have included the likes of Arthur Miller and Johnny Depp, Hunter S. Thompson and Bob Dylan.
The events take place Sunday, March 8 at Zankel Music Center at Skidmore College, and are as follows:
Sunday, March 8 • 3 p.m. A pre-concert panel discussion on the “Beat” generation with David Amram and Joan K. Anderson, choreographer and co-director of the School of the Arts at the National Museum of Dance, moderated by Charles Peltz. Admission to the panel discussion event is included with concert tickets.
Sunday, March 8 • 4 p.m. The Glens Falls Symphony’s 2020 Alfred Z. Solomon Colloquium Concert “Dance! Beats!”
The concert features tango music of legendary Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla; David Diamond’s Rounds for Orchestra; Bela Bartok’s vibrant Rumanian Dances with a special performance by ballet dancers from the School of the Arts at the National Museum of Dance, choreographed by Joan K. Anderson, co-director of the School of the Arts.
Plus: Greenwich Village Portraits by David Amram - composer of the “Beat” generation - performed by world-renowned saxophonist Ken Radnofsky.
Amram will read selections of “Beat” poetry and present historic photography of the legendary faces and places of the “Beat” generation.
Tickets: $30 Adults | $10 Students. Available online at www.theglensfallssymphony.org, call the Symphony office at 518-793-1348 or stop by the office upstairs in the LARAC Gallery building: 7 Lapham Place in Glens Falls. Office hours are Monday – Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Proctors, Capital Rep Announce Lineup for 2020 - 21 Theatre Season
SCHENECTADY — Proctors Collaborative leadership on Feb. 24 unveiled a series of shows that will be staged at Proctors, and at Capital Repertory Theatre (theREP) during the 2020-2021 season.
Highlighting the list of touring Broadway productions coming to Proctors is the Schenectady premiere of Mean Girls (Feb. 2-7, 2021), as well as the celebrated Lincoln Center Theater production of the classic My Fair Lady (Nov. 10-15), Aaron Sorkin’s critically acclaimed adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird (Dec. 29, 2020 – Jan. 3, 2021), contemporary Broadway hit The Prom (March 30 – April 4, 2021) and the dazzling production of Pretty Woman: The Musical, Dec. 2-6.
Rounding out the subscription series, and continuing the trend of productions choosing to tech and launch tours in the Capital Region, are Hadestown (Oct. 13-18) and a new production of Elton John and Tim Rice’s award-winning Aida, March 16–21, 2021.
This upcoming season will feature the first full year of programming hosted in theREP’s new state-of-the-art facility at 251 North Pearl St. in Albany. The series kicks off in September with a behind-the-curtain look at Albany’s Democratic political machine in The True, Sept. 25 - Oct. 18. Subscribers will enjoy an eclectic slate of shows, including a production of The Wizard of Oz featuring actor-musicians, the world premiere of 2017 ‘NEXT ACT! New Play Summit’ winner The Way North, the powerful story of the Tuskegee Airmen in Fly, and the continuation of the summer musical tradition with the toe-tapping hit, Jersey Boys.
In addition to the shows featured on both venues’ subscription series, subscribers will have priority access to this year’s exclusive title – the highly anticipated Capital Region return of Disney’s The Lion King, April 15 – May 2, 2021. Subscriptions also include a cross-venue ticket, allowing patrons to visit their sister venue for a performance of their choice.
Subscriptions for the 2020–2021 Key Private Bank Broadway Series at Proctors and the 2020–2021 Season at Capital Repertory Theatre are on sale at the Box Office at Proctors, 432 State St., Schenectady, and by phone at 518-346-6204.
Golf Legend, Speed Skater, Entrepreneur: Gail Purdy Brophy was “World-Class”
SARATOGA SPRINGS — A simple sign is fixed to the glass at the entryway door where Gail Purdy Brophy operated her business for a generation. “In remembrance of Gail,” reads the sign inside the Congress Street Plaza, “we honor her lifelong dedication to Purdy’s and the local community.”
Decorated golfer, accomplished speed skater, longtime Spa City business owner and community member Gail Purdy Brophy died Feb. 23. She was 77.
“I’m just honored to have known her and to have been her friend,” said Kent Tarkleson, owner of Tark’s Indoor Golf Club in Wilton. They’ve been friends the past 15 years. “Such a wonderfully generous person; she’s going to be immensely missed.”
For more than a half-century Brophy operated Purdy’s Discount Wine and Liquor store, sited at a number of locations throughout the city - including Caroline Street for seven years and Broadway for 26 years, before moving to Congress Street Plaza in 1997.
She was born in Glens Falls in 1942. Her career as a businesswoman launched in the fall of 1963, when she quit college and returned home to run her father’s liquor store after he became ill. A few years later, she married James “Bud” Brophy to whom she was wed for 28 years, until he passed away at age 79 in 1998.
Across the decades, Brophy has employed more than 200 employees, generated millions of dollars in sales tax revenue for the city and county and has supported more than 1,000 local charity events.
Brophy had been a member of Saratoga Winter Club speedskating since she was a teenager. She won more than 100 titles in the northeast, including winning several Eastern States Championships, New England Championships, Eastern Seaboard Championships, New York State Championships, and the Lake George International Silver Skates. She won seven National or North American divisional championships.
At age 16, she competed in the first U.S. Olympic Trials for speed skating women in 1959, and in 1964 competed in the U.S. Olympic Trials for the Olympic Games - in both cases narrowly missing the Olympic team by one spot. One year later, Brophy secured the top prize in 1965 North American Indoor Short Track Championships, as well as being crowned champion at the Diamond Trophy Indoor in Lake Placid.
Perhaps her greatest athletic achievements came as a golfer - participating in the U.S. Women’s Open in 1960 and 1961 and emerging as the New York State Women’s Amateur champion in 1961, the youngest at the time to ever win that championship.
When she left college to run the family business, she put her sports career on hold. In 2006, she returned to the golfing world and won the New York State Super Senior State Championship in 2007 and 2008.
For the past eight years, Brophy dealt with pulmonary fibrosis, but refused to let that hold her back.
“No matter what she was going through, she kept practicing, kept working on her game. She just loved it so much she didn’t want to give it up,” Tarkleson says. “She was more passionate than anyone I’ve ever known. Dedicated and determined to succeed. As she started to struggle, she would still practice and she would tell me: I may not be getting any better, but I’m not getting any worse. That says it all.
“She was tough, she was gritty and absolutely a wonderful person. She was world-class.”
