Members of the Lake Placid Volunteer Fire Department held a reunion for the Panthers firematic drill team on Saturday, July 22. Pictured here were some of the attendees, sitting underneath the tower at the tournament track. From left are: front row, Wayne Pelkey, Ken Foster, Dave Watson, Glen Mullarney, Gary Whittemore, Jim Dowie, Pudge Conway and Jim Wasson; second row, Randy Wells, Joe Smith, Karen Fountain, Bob Bell and Dusty Smith; third row, Steve Fell, Mike St.Louis, Chip Draper, George Smith and Dickie Smith; fourth row, Gavin Martin, Jessica Martin, Mark Meeks, Josh Wemette, Brian Woodruff, Jay Strack and Jerry Strack; and back row, Josh Favro, Steve LaHart, Ryan St.Louis, Laurieanne St.Louis, Peter LaHart, Scott Shipman, Corky Risley and Bobby Whitney. (News photo — Andy Flynn)

LAKE PLACID — The state Department of Environmental Conservation lists the panther — officially named the eastern cougar — as “extirpated” in New York. The federal status for the state is “extinct.” But in New York’s Olympic village, Panthers are alive and well — dozens of them.

More than 40 people attended the Lake Placid Volunteer Fire Department’s firematic drill team reunion on Saturday, July 22, enjoying a hamburger lunch at the pavilion, swapping stories of their glory days, looking at old photos and newspaper clippings and posing for a photo underneath the competition tower at the end of the track with one of the old race trucks.

The team — known as the Panthers — was formed in the summer of 1932, and it hosted its final firematic races in the summer of 2018. While there are plenty of Panthers in Lake Placid, the team no longer exists.

“People have a lot more going on now, and if something better comes up, they do it today,” said LPVFD Chief Mike St. Louis, who competed on the drill team for decades. “Back in the day, you knew we were racing the middle of May every Saturday and Sunday until the end of September.”

LPVFD volunteer Joe Smith, who was also a longtime drill team member, helped organize the reunion.

Joe Smith, left, talks to Chief Mike St. Louis. (News photo — Andy Flynn)

“It was beyond my expectations,” Smith said of the get-together. “Everybody told stories and had a good time.”

Smith also learned something new that day about his family. When he asked 100-year-old former fire chief Dusty Smith to identify the Panthers from a 1950 team photo, Dusty said one of the members was Merrill Smith — Joe’s grandfather.

“I was in a state of shock,” said Joe, who knew his father, Charlie, raced on the Panthers team. “(But) I never knew my grandfather raced.”

Joe called the Panthers a “brotherhood.”

“Everybody had everybody’s back,” he said.

The Lake Placid Volunteer Fire Department’s Panthers racing team poses in 1950. The driver is Pete Darrah. In the back, from left, are Merrill Smith, Donnie Shatz, Don Beaney, Johny O’Shea, Carl Gonyea and Earl Blinn. In the middle is Nick Valenze. In the bottom, from left, are John Fell, George Beuregard, Chris Carter, Stan Benham, unidentified man, Ed Livermore and Bernie Fell (far right). (Provided photo)

Firematic drill teams compete in a number of events. There are a lot of foot races, but the most exciting action begins after members hop on a racing truck and zoom down a track to begin a competition. Events include the three-man ladder, B Ladder, C Ladder, B Hose, C Hose, Efficiency, Motor Pump and Buckets.

“We dumped water at the top of the tower 25 feet high and filled a bucket,” said former Panthers driver Chip Draper.

In bucket brigade fashion, team members dip 5-gallon buckets into a trough filled with water, run them up a ladder to the top of the tower and fill a 55-gallon drum. Once emptied, the buckets are thrown to the ground to be filled again. When the drum is full, the clock stops, and the fastest team wins.

This was old-fashioned team building — for the competition and to fight fires.

“We did a lot of training. We worked a lot with the hoses. You worked a lot with targets,” St. Louis said. “And that’s what we normally do when you fight fires. You work with hoses, you work with water.”

Chip Draper sits in the driver’s seat of the old C truck from the Panthers drill team, which he owns. (News photo — Andy Flynn)

The team had a B truck and a C truck, which were both sold after the Panthers disbanded.

What happened to the A truck? “They never had one,” Draper said. “It’s called a fire truck, a C truck, because we run ladder races, we run hose races, and it was really good training for the fire department. It was guys you could trust. It was guys that you knew could handle hoses, guys that could climb ladders. We did a lot of ground races. It kept guys in shape.”

Draper bought the C truck from Wes Moody and brought it to the reunion for the group photo.

“The main reason I bought this was to keep it in the area,” Draper said. “I want to be able to put it in parades for the Fourth of July, take it to car shows so people don’t forget what we’ve done in the past, what has built this team, why we did it. I want people to remember the Lake Placid Panthers. … I miss it every day.”

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The Lake Placid Volunteer Fire Department Panthers drill team competes on the home track in June 2010. (News file photo)

Panther cubs, 1932

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Members of the newly formed Panthers drill team completed their first tournament truck in time to march it in the Northern New York convention of Volunteer Firemen’s parade in Alexandria Bay in early June 1932, according to the June 10, 1932, issue of the Lake Placid News.

The firefighters who traveled for the occasion were George Hare, C. J. Ortloff, Frank Fay, S. T. Otis, John Crowley, Ray Bryant, Albert Spiking, Charles Law, George Edgley, John Shatz, George Anson, Earle Barton, H. Crossett, Clarence Bisson, James Jewtraw, James Stanton and George Doray. While the “shining tournament truck” was featured in the parade, the Panthers did not compete.

“Owing to a delay in the completion of the car, the local team has had no opportunity to practice,” the LPN stated. “Upon their return, a team to be called the ‘Panthers’ is to be organized and regular practice will be undertaken to prepare for the events in the State Association convention here in August.”

Former Lake Placid Volunteer Fire Department chief and Panthers drill team member Rusty Smith, at 100 years old, poses next to one of the fire trucks on Saturday, July 22 during the Panthers reunion. (News photo — Andy Flynn) (News photo — Andy Flynn)

The tournament truck was painted scarlet, lettered in gold, and had gleaming hand rails, and lamps and fixtures of chromium nickel.

Seven members of the “untrained racing team” competed in the Fourth of July field day in Tupper Lake, taking third place (LPN, July 8, 1932).

Even though they prepared to race in the Firemen’s Association of New York State convention in Lake Placid in August, the Panthers were not among the 16 teams that competed. With the races held on Sentinel Road between Wilkin’s corner and the residence of Rollie Kennedy, the Tigers of Mamaroneck took first place. The Lake Placid team, however, did put on an exhibition for the crowd in the Class B Motor Hose No. 1 event. Lake Placid fire Chief George Hare was the grand marshal of the parade on Main Street.

By September 1932, the team was beginning to compete with the best teams in the North Country.

“Healthy cubs in their infancy, the Lake Placid Panthers, local fire department squad team, demonstrated to more experienced teams competing at Lowville last Thursday that a period of intensive training was ample preparation to win prize money,” stated the LPN on Sept. 23, 1932.

They brought home three firsts, one second place, one tie for second and a third place. The team captain was George Anson. They were awarded an honorable mention in the parade and received prize money for the company that traveled the longest distance.

During this time, the Lake Placid Volunteer Fire Department was located on Main Street. Constructed in 1912, the old firehouse — a brick building — is currently occupied by Cunningham’s Ski Barn. The fire department moved to their current location at the corner of Old Military Road and Mill Pond Drive in 1985.

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Family time

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By the late 1970s, familiar faces on the Panthers — such as fire driver Ray Wilson — were leading the team. He was the coach when the current LPVFD chief, Mike St. Louis, joined the department and the racing team. A 1974 graduate of the Lake Placid High School, St. Louis studied criminal justice at SUNY Oswego, graduating in 1978. After he came home, he turned 21 years old, then became a part-time fire driver in the fall and became a volunteer firefighter in March 1979 — the same year he joined the Panthers drill team.

“On the old application, it said, ‘Can you report to fire calls at nighttime?’ ‘Can you climb ladders?’ ‘Can you leave your job?’ … And on the last one, it says, ‘Will you join the race team?’ And I guarantee you, if I said no, I probably wouldn’t have gotten in the department,” St. Louis said. “But that was the first question I remember answering. ‘Yes! I will join the race team.'”

In 1979, the Panthers were rebuilding. About one-third of the team members were first-year rookies (LPN, June 21, 1979). There were 17 members in all: Ray Wilson and Bob Wilson, co-captains, Russ Burgoyne, Joe Smith, Mike St. Louis, David Watson, Raymond Watson, Rich Boyer, Jerry Strack, Tommy Shipman, Alan Mills, Joe Lamb, Barry Miner, Francis Strack, Glen Mullarney, Wayne Fagala and Randy Wells.

St. Louis worked for the Lake Placid Olympic Organizing Committee during the 1980 Olympic Winter Games and then joined the Lake Placid Police Department in December of that year, retiring in 2007.

For St. Louis, the fire department — and the Panthers racing team — was a family affair. His uncle James worked full-time as the head driver at the fire department.

“It was a family thing, it really was. One big family,” he said. “It was a part of our life, the backbone of the department for many, many years.”

But it wasn’t just the Lake Placid families that got involved, with last names such as LaHart, Strack, St. Louis, Fell and Smith. The firematic community throughout northern New York — and the state — was one big family.

“That’s why my son Ryan got into it,” St. Louis said. “We dragged him along when he was 5 years old, and he wanted to be on the race team. Of course, when he turned 18 (he joined the department). Actually he became a junior fireman when he was 14 when we had the Explorer program back in the day.”

St. Louis enjoyed the camaraderie and going away and meeting people every weekend.

“You have so many more friends,” he said.

That’s a sentiment Panthers echoed over and over during their July 22 reunion.

“The friendship, the brotherhood, the camaraderie, just family,” said Chip Draper, who joined the fire department in 2001, left for a few years and rejoined in 2016. He was on the drill team from 2006 to 2013.

The Panthers were a successful racing team, especially from 1993 to 2013 when they brought home 15 northern New York titles. The most recent championship years are listed on the banner at the fire department’s pavilion: 1968, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2010, 2011 and 2013.

On July 22, Charlie Terry of the Wilmington fire department arrived at the Lake Placid tournament track (with fellow volunteer Guy Stephenson) so he could take photographs of the reunion, including the group shot beneath the racing tower.

People posing for the photo were Bob Bell, Pudge Conway, Jim Dowie, Chip Draper, Josh Favro, Steve Fell, Ken Foster, Karen Fountain, Peter LaHart, Steve LaHart, Gavin Martin, Jessica Martin, Mark Meeks, Glen Mullarney, Wayne Pelkey, Corky Risley, Laurieanne St. Louis, Mike St. Louis, Ryan St. Louis, Scott Shipman, Dickie Smith, Dusty Smith, George Smith, Jay Strack, Jerry Strack, Joe Smith, Jim Wasson, Dave Watson, Randy Wells, Josh Wemette, Bob Whitney, Gary Whittemore and Brian Woodruff.

For Steve Fell, the fire department and Panthers were also about family. In the same 1950 team photo where Joe Smith saw his grandfather, Fell saw his father, Bernie Fell, kneeling in front of the tournament truck. Bernie joined the fire department in 1945 and was the chief from 1950 to 1954, according to his obituary. There was also a John Fell in the 1950 photo — Bernie’s brother, Steve’s uncle.

The Panthers were inactive from the mid-1980s until 1987, when Steve joined the fire department and the team at age 24. He was a volunteer and a Panther until 2005.

“There was a whole bunch of people around my age, and in 1987 we started the team back up. We practiced that whole year and then in 1988 we started full competition,” he said.

Steve remembers being gone for much of the summer — at least one race every weekend and three weekends when they raced Saturday and Sunday.

“The kids around here always called it the redneck Olympics, but it was exciting,” Steve said.

The Lake Placid Volunteer Fire Department Panthers drill team competes on the home track in July 2011. (News file photo)

Steve Fell looks at old photos and news clippings. (News photo — Andy Flynn)

Charlie Terry, of the Wilmington fire department, rides the bucket on the ladder truck with Craig Perryman in order to take a group photo of the Lake Placid Volunteer Fire Department Panthers drill team members during their reunion on Saturday, July 22. (News photo — Andy Flynn) (News photo — Andy Flynn)

At the bottom left, Charlie Terry, of the Wilmington fire department, takes photos of the Lake Placid Volunteer Fire Department Panthers drill team members during their reunion on Saturday, July 22. (News photo — Andy Flynn) (News photo — Andy Flynn)

Steve LaHart signs a piece of one of the old racing trucks. (News photo — Andy Flynn)

Craig Perryman, left, serves Jim Wasson a hamburger. (News photo — Andy Flynn)