2011, At Home in the Adirondacks edition
Chris Drabick spreads pine needles. Keith Desmarais remembers hundreds of first names. Veto Napolitano builds cedar railings. Elois Sanford did the laundry using a washing machine powered by an old car engine.
A century ago, the owners of the Great Camps depended on a battalion of servants to maintain their luxurious lifestyle in the back woods. Today, maids, chauffeurs and cooks have been replaced by “personal assistants,” drivers, and personal chefs, if they have been replaced at all, and the hired help is more equitably referred to as staff. But one aspect of camp life hasn’t changed, and that’s the need for a caretaker. Given the high maintenance of these places, with their private roads, multiple wooden buildings, extensive grounds, and fleet of boats, the job is as essential now as it was in 1910.
In the old days, the caretaker lived on site with his family, and his wife’s services were automatically thrown in as part of the employment package. Today, the caretaker is likely to receive benefits, commute to work and be on a first-name basis with the owner. However, some still live on the property, and the pay and expectations of camp owners, who usually are from the city, vary widely. One caretaker who did not want to be identified described his job as a combination of “babysitter, bottle washer, and boat driver. We take care of these people like they are our kids. They’re helpless.” But the job also comes with some very nice benefits, such as a free vacation to the owner’s Montana ranch.
The high degree of autonomy and light workload in the winter make the position highly sought after. Yet finding a good caretaker isn’t easy. Laziness and, unfortunately, theft can be a problem. In the past, some caretakers hired helpers from the local bar, a practice that often resulted in stolen property. Then there was the caretaker who was caught using the Great Camp as his private party house. The situation is improving, but few individuals have the diverse skills and work ethic necessary to do the job.
Caretaking requires old-fashioned virtues and mutual respect—qualities that in today’s cynical world of lowered standards shine more than ever. Drabick, Desmarais, and Napolitano are solidly grounded in the tradition of hard work exemplified by Sanford and her husband, Lawrence, in earlier generations, prior to their retirement in 1988. Because caretakers by nature are discreet and protective of their employers, they won’t tell all, but you’ll get a sense of what it’s like to work at one of these exclusive places—and how the legendary resourcefulness, independence and muscle power of the native Adirondacker continues to be a fact of life today.
Keith Desmarais
For the past 16 years, Keith Desmarais has been head caretaker at Big Wolf Lake, a 4,000-acre private preserve that encompasses a three-mile-long lake, three fishing ponds and approximately 90 buildings distributed among 31 camp owners. Purchased by Ferris Meigs in 1916, the property is today run by the Big Wolf Lake Association, established in 1960 by Meigs’ descendants. The camp owners hire their own caretakers, but that still leaves Desmarais with plenty to do: he maintains six miles of road, 14 miles of walking trails, the clubhouse, beach, common docks, two clay tennis courts, and eight-foot right-of-way marking the boundary line.
Desmarais’ salary includes the use of a house on the premises, where he and his wife, Carla, raised their three sons. He gets a raise every four years, based on the rate paid to state employees. In the early years, he worked seven days a week, but three years ago started taking off Sundays, with a two-week vacation during mud season. Carla initially cleaned a lot of the camps, but she stopped because it was like being “always at work” and now is employed at the local elementary school. Indeed, “since I live on the premises, I’m here on call 24/7,” Desmarais said.
However, from October 15 to May 15 the family pretty much has the place to themselves. Plus, there are some nice perks: Desmarais fishes for small and large mouth bass, walleye, brook trout and northern pike on the lake, one of the most pristine in the Adirondacks, and also has permission to hunt on the premises.
Desmarais’s father was a logger from Canada, and from age ten, Keith was splitting firewood. “We were raised to work,” he said. After a brief stint at Tupper Veneer, he worked in the woods, buying his dad’s small skidder upon his retirement in 1989. Carla’s brother worked at Big Wolf, and Desmarais occasionally helped him out. When the position of head caretaker became available, he applied but didn’t get the job. After working as the caretaker for several camps on the premises, he got to know people and landed the job when it became available again, in 1993, after an interview with Mary Clifford, who was then the association president (and wife of Obie Clifford, who subsequently co-founded and chaired The Wild Center, in Tupper Lake).
Especially because the property is so isolated, the job has its hazards: once, when Carla was away, Desmarais was driving a four-wheeler ATV in freezing rain that slid off a bridge into the creek, pinning him beneath it. He managed to escape and had to walk three miles in the rain before reaching the house, narrowly averting hypothermia. His skills as a logger came in handy after the blow-down of 2005, when, with the help of three other guys, he stayed up after midnight clearing the road of downed trees with a backhoe.
Desmarais is assisted by two high school kids, but otherwise does most of the work himself. That fact is rather remarkable considering that four years ago, he lost a leg when he hit a deer while riding his motorcycle. Waking up in the hospital at Burlington three days later and unable to speak, he rallied when he saw his oldest son, Justin, sitting on the bed crying. Justin has cerebral palsy, and “I thought, if he can deal with that crap, I can deal with this,” Desmarais said. Also in the hospital that day was Charles Buck, then the president of the association, who’d flown up from Florida. “He said, ‘you have enough to worry about. Don’t worry about your job,’” Desmarais recalled. “The people here are so good to me.”
Desmarais is able to do most of the work he did before because of his high-tech prosthesis; it contains a computer that reads his gait and causes the titanium hydraulic piston in the “knee” to bend accordingly. About the only thing he no longer does is climb trees. However, “the boss [current association president Bob Underhill, a great-grandson of Meigs] doesn’t like me climbing ladders. He knows I can’t stop.”
Desmarais builds furniture in the winter months from wood he harvests on the property. (Each year, he gives his wife a new piece, and the hand-made, rustic shelves, end tables, and TV console in their comfortable home are evidence of his talents, as are the framed photos of Adirondack scenes; Desmarais made the frames and took the pictures.) He also constructed cedar railings for some of the camps as well as three lean-tos, crafted from white cedar.
In general, the budget is tight: when a new backhoe was needed last year, the association bought a used one for significantly less and sold the old one. “It gets more difficult each year. When I need tools I get turned down because they don’t want to raise the budget.” Desmarais said that taxes have nearly doubled during his tenure for the association members. “Some are struggling to keep up,” he said.
He added that the association is dedicated to preserving the wilderness ethos established by Meigs. No camp owner can build more than 8,000 square feet. Boat motors are limited to 60 hp, and jet skies and party barges are banned. Every boat that’s launched into the lake must first be cleaned by Desmarais, to prevent the spread of milfoil.
Desmarais said there are probably 700 people who visit Big Wolf, counting all the relatives, and he knows them all. He clearly loves his job, but he’s also discovering a new talent: public speaking. Through a connection forged by the doctor who fitted him with the prosthesis, he has spoken to students at the physical therapy school at Clarkson University as well as at James Madison University, in Harrisonburg, Virginia. As a former logger and father of a child with cerebral palsy, his story is compelling. “Those kids got so much out of it,” he said. “Maybe I’ll do it for a living some day.” But for now, he’s got his hands full, keeping things ship shape at Big Wolf.
Veto Napolitano
The 45 camps ringing Upper St. Regis Lake form an exclusive community composed of some of the wealthiest individuals in America, and landing a job as a caretaker here is a coup. “There’s not a lot of turnover,” said Veto Napolitano, pointing out the camps of a Texan real estate magnate and several current and former CEOs on a recent tour of the lake. For the past 13 years he has worked as a caretaker for a camp owned by a family from Philadelphia, consisting of 14 buildings. He commutes to his job from Lake Clear, where he and his wife, Gail, live in a house he built on 23 acres. “At the end of August, the owner gives me a couple of pet projects to do. Otherwise, I have free reign,” said Napolitano. “I treat it as my camp,” partly predicated on the fact that the owner “likes my taste.”
Napolitano does all the maintenance and repairs on the wooden buildings, which date from the 1920s, in the off season; when the family is up at camp, he isn’t there—although they have his phone number if there’s a problem. He and his wife sometimes travel to auctions and estate sales for the antique store they own in Lake Placid, called Forest Home Furnishings, and if he’s away, the owner has a list of names of people who can help out in a pinch. The owner “knows our antique business is important. He’s very fair. Whenever he wants to come up, he’ll say ‘can I come up?’ We have a great relationship.”
Napolitano spent part of his childhood in the southern Catskills and attended Albany Business College, working as a new accounts clerk for Merrill Lynch in Poughkeepsie after graduation. It wasn’t his cup of tea—“there were no windows in the place”—and so he left to work in construction. He ran a swimming pool installation business for a number of years, but the “Hudson Valley was getting too crowded,” so he and his wife went to Alaska in 1983. A year later they moved to the Adirondacks. A friend who lived in Lake Clear hired him to do construction, and after helping out a caretaker on Upper St. Regis Lake, he started doing jobs at camps around the lake. When he heard a friend’s father was retiring as caretaker, he sent in his resume and was hired.
The place wasn’t in great shape. Napolitano’s building skills were put to good use as he began repairing rotted sills and siding and replacing skylights. He also upgraded some of the interior, for example replacing a jury-rigged electrical outlet put in by a previous caretaker with wiring inserted behind the wall. (“You can’t blame the guy. That’s what he would do at home,” Napolitano told the owner.) He constructed all new doors and windows as well as rustic-style cedar railings and most of the kitchen cabinets. He also oversees the maintenance of two antique inboard mahogany motorboats, plus two sailboats, three outboards, several canoes and kayaks and a guideboat. The vintage motorboats need to be tied up when they are first put in the water so they don’t sink; it takes a week for the lapstrake sides to swell up enough to make the boat watertight.
Napolitano brings everything over by boat and when a machine is needed, transports it by barge. Currently he is assisted by two other people. In the winter, after a big storm, he’ll ski across the lake to the property to make sure there’s no damage.
Napolitano has time off between the end of November and the first of May. In January and March, he and his wife travel to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where they recently bought a house. Not everybody is cut out to be a caretaker, he noted. It requires self motivation and a strong work ethic. “There’s so much to do. I have to be there at eight in the morning. It’s not for everybody, but it’s a rewarding job for me in that it gives me time to do my own thing.”
Chris Drabick
Most caretakers are in their 40s and 50s, given the responsibility and required skills. Chris Drabick is the exception. Only 24 years old, he is the caretaker at Kwenogamac, a historic Great Camp on Long Lake that utilizes green energy. Camp owner Mary Elizabeth Winn said she and her husband, Richard, went through nearly a dozen caretakers before hiring Drabick a year and a half ago.
While his predecessors often didn’t get to work until 9 am, Drabick is there on the dot of seven, working ten hours a day five days a week. Although he commutes from his home in Tupper Lake, he is available 24/7, including weekends when there’s a camp showing—the place is on the market—and he needs to turn on the lights, light the fires in the numerous fireplaces and be on hand to answer questions from the prospective buyer.
Drabick grew up in a large family that valued work, he said. After completing tenth grade, he worked as a laborer, mixing mud for a friend who was a mason. He learned the trade and meanwhile made the connection with Kwenogamac through the friend, who constructed several of the fireplaces.
The owners live at the camp year-round, so Drabick is on the job 12 months of the year.
Because the camp is for sale, he is especially vigilant in ensuring the five-building complex—consisting of a historic Great Camp, built in 1902 by New York surgeon Dr. Arpad Gerster, and kitchen room, new guest lodge, rebuilt boathouse (which has a great room on the second floor), and ice house (now an office)–looks spotless, regularly wiping down the outdoor furniture and using a blower to sweep the decks, porches, extensive covered walkways, and lean-to floors.
Besides the usual responsibilities of maintaining the grounds, buildings, and driveway, Drabick oversees the solar energy system that supplies the electricity. He checks the fuse boxes and each week has to pour distilled water into the batteries to keep them charged. In winter he has to shovel snow off the solar panels. He also is on call to fix the back-up generator if it breaks down.
The guest house and great room over the boathouse are heated in winter by a wood-burning furnace. Drabick said the toughest job is cutting 50 cords of firewood each year, which he takes from trees on the property. On the lighter side are transplanting flowers from a nursery onto the grounds and distributing pine needles, which the owners purchase in bags, around the base of the large trees. During the summer, he and a helper daily scoop up the muck from the lake bottom with pool nets in the 50-by-30-foot swimming area. He also keeps the beach raked, carefully piling up the stones. Yet another job is picking up meals precooked by a chef in Long Lake a couple of times of week. He also scares off woodpeckers that peck at the bark-covered historic camp by shooting off a shotgun.
Drabick is allowed to borrow one of the boats to go fishing before work or at the end of the day, and he’s also used one of the canoes to paddle from the camp to Tupper Lake. He and the other caretakers employed at the neighboring camps along the stretch of gated roadway are allowed to hunt on property across the road, which is collectively owned by the camp owners.
Drabick said he wishes he could be at Kwenogamac all the time. “When I first started here, I said ‘build me a house and I’ll live here,”” he said. He now has a baby boy and would be happy to bring his new family to Kwenogamac. “I love being outdoors,” he said. “It’s pretty neat.”
Elois Sanford and Basil Cheney
Elois Sanford, who grew up on a farm at the northern edge of the Adirondacks, was 21 years old when she went to live with her husband, Lawrence, at the Kildare Club, a Great Camp located on a 10,000-acre private preserve. It was 1944, and Kildare, which was built by the two daughters of Emmanuel Lehman, founder of the financial firm Lehman Brothers, back in 1882, was to be the couple’s life for the next 44 years, a tenure that bridged an old way of life with the new.
They lived in the caretaker’s house at the end of a 14-mile-long private road, traveling once a week to Tupper Lake in the Model T Ford for supplies—a trip that took over an hour and necessitated boarding their daughter with a family in town during the school year. Lawrence, a Finnish carpenter who had suffered shell shock during his recent wartime service, relished the isolation, Elois recalled. Kildare was a veritable time warp of an earlier, more glamorous era: People dressed for dinner and brought servants with them from the city. Yet because of the isolation, conditions were primitive. There was no electricity, central plumbing or refrigeration. A carbide plant sunken in the ground, which had to be recharged every couple of days with water and carbide, provided gas lighting. There was a gravity-fed water system, requiring a worker to pump water from the lake into the large tank on a hill.
Scrub boards and a primitive washing machine–Lawrence had rigged it up using a gasoline engine–were used to wash clothes. Much of the food was supplied by a large garden and farm animals on the premises. Elois, who was responsible for feeding the five or so men who boarded with the couple during the summer, “canned everything.” “I would get up at 6 am, put my feet on the floor and keep going until I went to bed at night,” she recalled. After the cook was fired for imbibing too much, she also cooked for the owners for many years.
Basil Cheney, a relation of Lawrence’s who worked as a chore boy on weekends when he was still a teenager, remembers cleaning the burners of 100 gas lights, carrying drinking water to the camp in pails suspended from a yoke and fueling up the basement water heaters, which heated the water for the seven bathrooms, with coal. Men cut ice from the lake and put the blocks in the massive ice house, where vegetables were stored, covered in sawdust. Equipment to maintain the road was minimal; workers dumped gravel from a dump truck and leveled it with shovels and rakes. A grader pulled by horses was used into the late 1940s, he recalled. “Everybody who worked was using their muscles,” he said.
Throughout his life, Cheney, who ran an electrical supply store in Potsdam with his brother from 1965 to 1990, spent much of his vacation time at Kildare, prior to replacing Lawrence as superintendent, when he moved there full-time–until his retirement in 2000.
Both Cheney and Sanford became intimately acquainted with the owners, who included Ralph Friedman, a New York financier, and Joseph F. Cullman 3rd, CEO of Philip Morris. (Currently there are four owners, descended from the two branches of the family.) “They were very nice people and treated us like human beings,” said Sanford, now a spry 89-year-old who lives in Tupper Lake. “Mr. Friedman was the most educated, smart man I ever knew in my life. Mrs. Cullman broke the code of the Japanese during World War II and spoke seven languages.”
The Sanfords and Cheneys were invited down to New York City for birthdays, weddings, and funerals. On such trips, “we were treated royally,” said Sanford, recalling she and Lawrence were shown the sights of Manhattan in a chauffeur-driven car. Norma Cheney, Basil’s wife, recalled shaking hands with Tom Brokaw at a party. Today, the children of the Friedmans and the Cullmans—and their children—still stay in regular touch with Sanford and Cheney, visiting Sanford at her home in Tupper Lake when they’re up at camp and speaking to the Cheneys, who live in Parishville, by phone.
Despite the bond of affection, in the early days it was hard work for little pay, reflecting the attitudes of the times. Elois and Lawrence were paid as a couple by the month, and the small amount they received from their boarders was hardly enough to cover the food costs, which the Sanfords had to absorb. To make ends meet, “I’d buy in bulk,” Sanford said. Gradually conditions improved. “As the younger people got more involved in running the place, things changed,” she said. Not only did they do away with formal attire, but they also paid Sanford a daily wage for her job as cook, as well as unemployment and Social Security.
After awrence retired, he missed the place terribly, Sanford said. Cheney said he also yearns for Kildare. During his years as superintendent, “I just loved it. It was peaceful and quiet. I saw twin fawns being born one day. I’d give anything to be young again and go back there.”