“As a father, he was just always there and always supportive and had all the answers,” Scammell’s daughter Liz Murray said on Friday, Sept. 20. “He was always our go-to guy for advice.”

Whether it was his daughter Kelly Humphreys asking for advice on where to get good food while traveling, watching a baseball game with his son and best friend Donald, island camping with his stepdaughter Nicole Todd or shaping Murray’s work ethic with his avid volunteerism, he was an influential part of their lives, Murray said.

Scammell was born in Ogdensburg and lived around New York for school and work before deciding to make his home in the Tri-Lakes in the 1970s.

After four years as a radar technician in the U.S. Air Force and several more as an avionics specialist for Grumman Aircraft, he was working as a salesman for Schaefer Brewing Company on Long Island and found he was really good at it.

In 1969, he was promoted to manage the distributor’s upstate New York territory and fell in love with the Adirondacks when he moved to Saranac Lake. Two years later, another promotion moved him to Syracuse. But when he was offered another promotion and a move back downstate in 1974, he resigned instead.

He wanted to stay in the Adirondacks. So he bought two local distributing businesses and started his own company in Saranac Lake.

Saranac Lake native John Morgan gave the eulogy at Scammell’s services on Thursday at St. Agnes Church in Lake Placid. He said he tried to make people laugh because “that’s what Don did.”

“He was a great friend of mine, a great mentor and a special friend of the Morgans,” Morgan said.

They met at Morgan’s parent’s Saranac Lake restaurant — the Dew Drop Inn — and their families have had a special relationship ever since.

“He’d do anything for you,” Morgan said.

When Morgan started his career as a sports marketer, one of his first events was bringing a bike race to Saranac Lake in the 1970s. Scammell was his first sponsor, putting in $200 to get him started. He became a regular sponsor of local events.

“He volunteered for everything,” Morgan said. “He did a lot of great things for the Adirondacks.”

Scammell was a founding officer of the Saranac Lake Boys Club; vice president of the Saranac Lake Ski Club and a supporter of Mount Pisgah; a member of the Saranac Lake Elks Club, American Legion and Rotary Club; and an advisory board member for the Saranac Lake Federal Savings Bank.

In Lake Placid, he was a member of the Lake Placid Center for the Arts, the Lake Placid-North Elba Historical Society, Adirondack Bank board of directors, vice president of the Lake Placid Sinfonietta and chairman for the Essex County-Lake Placid Visitors Bureau, the precursor to the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism.

He would spend hours in the cold measuring for World Cup ski jumping and World Cup freestyle aerial competitions. He was part of an effort to bring the Winter Olympics back to Lake Placid in 1980 and was a member of the town’s 1994 Winter Olympic Bid Committee.

In 1988, Scammell was named “Citizen of the Year” by the Saranac Lake Chamber of Commerce for offering free taxi rides home on New Year’s Eve in five Adirondack villages.

This was before there was really a service like that around here.

“He was a responsible beer guy,” Murray said.

Scammell became an integral part of the Saranac Lake and Lake Placid communities.

“He always wanted to be a local,” Morgan said. “It’s tough to be a local in Lake Placid and Saranc Lake. You know, people look at you and say, ‘How many generations are you?'”

Through volunteering and marriage, he became a “local local,” Morgan said.

In 1978, Scammell married Judy Rand, the love of his life for 46 years and part of a large Lake Placid family.

Judy actually saw her future husband on the sidewalks of New York City years before they even met. When her brother introduced the two of them in Lake Placid, she remembered him. She even remembered exactly what he was wearing. Morgan said Scammell was always “impeccably dressed,” and he must have made an impression.

“She just said, ‘This is the most handsome man,'” Murray said.

Murray said it is hard to talk about her father since his death happened so quick. Her father was a massive influence on her — her passions and her personality.

On Thursday, Murray said the priest said Scammell was always blunt but honest.

“The apple didn’t fall far from that tree,” she said with a laugh.

Her first paddling experience was with him on Lake Colby, and she’s an avid paddler now.

Murray became this year’s Saranac Lake Winter Carnival queen for her volunteering spirit around town, a spirit she said she inherited from her father and following in his footsteps.

He was always a great storyteller and cook and an avid reader, she said. He also loved the outdoors, racing his J24 sailboat on Lake Champlain and camping on the Saranac islands. Morgan said Scammell and his camping group bought so much gear, their island resembled an L.L. Bean store.

Scammell was passionate about baseball, a love he shared with his son. Murray said her father visited every major league and minor league ballpark in the U.S. and several in Canada.

Though Scammell was a Red Sox fan and Morgan a Yankees fan, they found ways to get past their teams’ rivalry to share their love of the sport, swapping history tidbits with each other over text several times a week.

Scammell had a large and tight group of friends, Murray said. For more than 25 years, eight of them in the “Bear Club” would meet in his barn every Tuesday night for a poker game, wearing old Chicago Cubs hats and sharing time together. Los Angeles Rams defensive tackle Merlin Olsen even sat in on a game once.

Morgan said these games had a “beautiful camaraderie” that created lifelong friendships.

“I’ll miss his announcing the game,” he said of Scammell.

Morgan said he could always tell when Scammell was bluffing because he was such an honest guy.

These weekly poker games stopped in 2005 and resumed last year.

“The game will go on as Don would have wanted it to,” Morgan said.