May 29, 1944 – JSA to Jim Cawley

  • May 29, 1944 – JSA to Jim Cawley (Princeton, NJ)

Dear Jim,

I was delighted to receive your card and learn that you now have 3 wooded acres on a beautiful lake. Of course, Princeton sounds ultra intellectual and while I have always known you to belong to this class, I like best to think of you in a canoe with no books or papers to bother with. We hope the Cawleys won’t forget Lake George and also that all of you will someday come back and be a part of our community.

I am still grinding away on the water question and recently ran across the petition that you helped to obtain several years ago, all of which helps to make a good background for our intervenors. I am sure you will be amused to know that the Lake George Association became defendant intervenors with the mill owner and has since been spending a great deal of their time explaining that they were not in reality on the side of the mill owner, but only technically so.

We won a favorable decision from our appeal in the Appellate Division for a jury trial last month but understand that the I. P. Co. will make an appeal to the highest court next fall. Of course we expect all these ups and downs. In the meantime, we are strengthening our case with hundreds of photographs, including some movies I recently took of the north end of Fork Island. Because it is Kodachrome it shows a startling presence of muddy water as contrasted with the clear blue Lake George water.

Last fall by an unbelievable maneuver, I was able to get the official photographer of the Conservation Dept. to spend two days with me and the state boat taking pictures which incidentally disproved some testimony about the islands and my pictures by other members of the Conservation Dept. during Hearing last summer. The confused issue was more confused by the hearing, but we appear to be making some progress and some day I shall tell you how I became lost on Lake George for five days when the Investigating Committee were trying to find me to get my maps, charts, and photographs to show our opponent. In other words, while we were arranging our cards for a serious contest, the legislative Committee insisted that we show our hand to our opponent before the game began. I decided that we would not do this, hence a subpoena that didn’t work because I was lost on Lake George obtaining more data. Best wishes to you and your family and your new habitat.

Sincerely yours,

  1. S. Apperson