THE "QUAD SQUAD" COMES TO TOWN
Carole Osterink
ccSCOOP Editor
03-14-09 - Representatives of the Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial Commission were in Hudson Thursday morning delivering Quadricentennial flags to Columbia County.
Actually, the Quad Squad had arrived the night before. Their van, emblazoned with the Quadricentennial logo and sporting a mini Quad flag on the antenna, was spotted on Wednesday night, parked beside the Country Squire Bed & Breakfast on Allen Street. Led by Tara Sullivan, Executive Director of the Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial Commission, the four-woman Quad Squad was on a mission to deliver flags to participating counties on both sides of the Hudson River. They had started out in New York City earlier in the week and would wind up in Albany later that day. |
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Tara Sullivan (right), Executive Director of the Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial, presents the official Quadricentennial flag to Phil Williams (left), Deputy Chairman of the Columbia County Board of Supervisors, while representatives of municipalities and organizations throughout the county look on.
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In the ceremonial presentation, which took place at the county office building at 401 State Street, Livingston Supervisor Phil Williams, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Supervisors, accepted the flags on behalf of the county. Supervisors Roy Brown (Germantown) and Betty Young (Taghkanic) were there to accept the flags for their towns; Alderman Ellen Thurston, chair of the Quadricentennial Committee for Hudson, represented the City of Hudson and received its flag, and Sally Alderdice, director of the Claverack Library, was there to collect the flags for the county’s twelve libraries. Also present to receive their flags were Gary Schiro for the Hudson Opera House; Bob Burns for the Olana State Historic Site; Bob Ihlenberg for the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse; Joseph Gatti, Livingston Town Historian; and representatives from the Martin Van Buren National Historic Site.
After making the formal presentation of the flags, Sullivan talked about River Day, the major Quad event that retraces the route of Henry Hudson up the river and involves river communities along the way. River Day has been described as “the premier and linear event in the valley to commemorate 400 years of history of the river, boats, ships, and friends.”
River Day features a Relay Flotilla, led by the Half Moon, the replica of the Henry Hudson’s ship; the Onrust, a replica of a 1614 Dutch ship—the first ship built in New York; and the Hudson River sloop Clearwater. The festivities are scheduled to begin in New York Harbor on Friday, June 6, with the Blessing of the Fleet at Battery Park. On Saturday morning, June 7, the flotilla will set out from the Statue of Liberty with boats from the boat clubs and yacht clubs of New York City following the heritage flagships around the Statue of Liberty and on up the river. As the flotilla moves north, the boats from more northerly boat clubs will sail out to join the Relay Flotilla.
The flotilla will sail into Columbia County’s stretch of the river on Thursday, June 11. The flagships are expected to arrive at their overnight docking places by 6 p.m: the Clearwater in Hudson, the Onrust in Athens, and the Half Moon in Catskill.
River Day will also feature a reenactment of a flyover of the river that took place during the lavish Hudson-Fulton Tricentennial Celebration of 1909. For that event, the State of New York hired Wilbur Wright to fly his half-ton plane called the Flyer over the Hudson. It was only the fourth flight Wright had ever made, and for it, the State of New York paid him the handsome sum of $128. The Quad Commission, said Sullivan, has seen the cancelled check.
In the hope of replicating this spectacle, Sullivan and her colleagues went to the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome to see if they could do a flyover on the river in vintage biplanes. They were willing—but insisted on being paid. The amount they requested: $128. |
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The "Quad Squad" van, parked in front of 401 State Street in Hudson on Thursday morning
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