The trail that Bob Blais-ed

By Mark Frost, Chronicle Editor

For the first time in 52 years, Bob Blais — now 86 years old — is not running in the March election for mayor of the Village of Lake George. (Current trustee Ray Perry is unopposed to succeed him.)

Mr. Blais has won 13 consecutive four-year terms, but that’s not the full extent of his winning streak.

As a teenager, “at Saratoga Springs High School, I was president of my freshman, sophomore, junior and senior class.

“And I went to BU (Boston University), I was president in my freshman and sophomore year, president of my fraternity my junior year (Sigma Alpha Epsilon).”

“I always ran and I was never defeated. That’s one of my proudest things.

“I ran for administrator at the United Methodist Church in Hudson Falls when I joined. I won that. And then I just ran for treasurer of the Caldwell Presbyterian Church, and I got that too. So I’m still running. I won’t run again, because I’m worried I’m gonna get beat.”

A combination of ambition and fortunate opportunity has marked Mr. Blais’s life.

He said he was born in Holyoke, Mass. “We moved to Saratoga when I was six.”

“My mother’s family owned Brown’s Beach on Saratoga Lake. She was a Brown.” He said his father was janitor at the Algonquin Hotel on Broadway, the grand building which stands just south of what is now the City Center. Mr. Blais recalls as a 10-year-old helping his father shovel coal into the furnace, and on wintry days, helping him shovel the very wide sidewalk in front of the building.

“When I went to Saratoga High, the principal John Sexton was a graduate of Boston University.

“And I was playing ball, and he saw the need. I couldn’t go to college. My parents didn’t have any money. So he called up somebody at Boston University and invited him over to a ballgame. I guess they saw what they liked and they offered me a full scholarship.

“And that summer, I had an automobile accident, fell out of a car and hurt my back.” His collegiate basketball and baseball career pretty much ended before it started. “But they kept my scholarship.”

He started in journalism but moved into “SPRC — the School of Public Relations and Communications. Now it’s the College of Communications.”

Mr. Blais is a tall man. He notes that his mother was 5’8” and his father was about that size, too. “I’m 6’6”.

The Chronicle swallowed the bait, asking, where did the 6’6” come from?

“The milkman was six-foot-nine,” Mr. Blais replies, smiling. “That’s what my mother told people. Either the milkman or the Freihofer bread man.” He asks, “Do you remember when they delivered bread?” (This reporter remembers.)

In summers as a student, “I worked. I was working at the Saratoga bottling plant where the car museum is now…

They asked me to fill in for the janitor, he was on vacation — walking around the buildings and punching a clock.”

Then, “I got hepatitis. I passed out in one of the buildings. They found me in the morning, laying on the floor.”

“I was in the hospital for three and a half weeks,” he said. “It was infectious hepatitis, it was very serious. I thought I was gonna die.”

“I got out of the hospital and I had to stay home for two weeks to recuperate. And now my job was gone at the plant. They had to hire somebody else to take my place.

“I had to work. I said to somebody —I don’t know who it was —I got to find a job. They went, ‘Take a ride to Lake George, they’re always hiring in Lake George.’

So “I drove to Lake George and walked in the police station, which was also the village hall, figuring these people were going to know, and Chief Bill O’Reilly was there….”

Mr. Blais says he told the clerk he was looking for work. The clerk turned around and told the chief to look at the 6-foot-6 guy who just walked in.

“He offered me a job right away. He said, ‘You have a black or navy pair of pants?’ I said I did. ‘Do you have a white shirt?’ I said I do. ‘A black pair of shoes?’ I said I do.

“‘Report to work tomorrow,’ he said, ‘I’ll give you a tie and a badge and a cap.’”

“I didn’t know they were gonna give me a gun. And they did…

“I was only 20 years old. And I didn’t tell him, he never ever asked me.

Mr. Blais said, “I never made an arrest the first summer. But I liked it so much, I encouraged my classmates to come back with me the second summer and about six of them came. We all got jobs” — two for the police. “One became a bartender at Sky Harbor, one became a bartender at the Canteen Inn.

Mr. Blais said three weeks into the season, in a diner he met Warren County Sheriff Carl McCoy, who offered him a better job as a deputy sheriff.

“Are you kidding? In a car rather than walking on the street, and directing traffic? So I said absolutely,” Mr. Blais said.

He finished the season there, and next year, new Sheriff Bob Lilly hired him again.

In ensuing years, Mr. Blais worked for the village police, the county sheriff, even a town police force which he founded.

But while at BU, he was still and thinking he’d pursue a corporate career.

He was set to work at Liberty Mutual after graduation, but their training class didn’t start until the fall.

So he returned to Warren County yet again, working as a deputy up until the last day before the class started in Boston.

“The last day [at Liberty Mutual] the chart went up on the board where everybody was going and Blais was going to Brooklyn. Oh my god,” he said.

He went to Brooklyn, “For two years. I couldn’t stand it. It was dangerous. I was an arson investigator. We worked in pairs. And the other kid with me was from Maine. I mean, we were terrified.”

After two years, Mr. Blais wrangled an insurance job in Albany, “but in the summer, I drove up Route 9 every night and continued to work for the village police department.”

They offered him a full-time job. “I wanted to get back to Lake George. So I took the police job, got married.

In that job he stayed, until Judge John Dier told him he had a client building bowling centers around the Capital District, and needed a general manager for the Lake George location and its restaurant.

It paid more than the police did. “So I took the job and then got promoted, the regional director.”

His business pursuits burgeoned, leading to owning an ice cream shop and an arcade. And it coincided with his police and political careers.

“Actually two summers I did general manager of the Bowl, trustee of the village, Cookies and Cream ice cream, FunWorld arcade, and chief of police in the town,” which no longer has its police.

Mr. Blais’s fateful step was running for mayor in 1971, in the aftermath of late 1960s riots that gave Lake George a black eye. He says he disagreed with tactics of the mayor and police chief who doused revelers with a firehose, only further inciting them and attracting more.

Mr. Blais ran, won, kept winning. He steps down 52 years later, proud to say he remains undefeated.

Bob Blais favorite Red Sox is Ortiz

Lake George Mayor Bob Blais is a Boston Red Sox fanatic. Who’s his favorite Red Sox player of all time?

“David Ortiz. I met him personally in Saratoga. And, of course, I told him I knew Mr. Morse [co-owner Phil Morse, who made his fortune in medical devices in Glens Falls].

“And he was kind enough to talk to me for a while. I was able to have my picture taken with him and he gave me an autograph.

“Then it just so happened that I was at a Red Sox game. I don’t remember which one it was. But it was the bottom of the ninth inning and the Sox were down. I think it was five to three. There’s two men on base, bottom of the ninth, one out, hit a home run. And that made my trip worthwhile. Otherwise, it would have been a terrible trip.”

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