Thank you for being a valued part of our Historic Red Hook community. The ability to gather together again this year at the Elmendorph Inn and share our passion for local stories has been uplifting. Your participation continues to support our goals of preserving, promoting, and safeguarding Red Hook’s history for generations to come. Please consider making a gift in support of local history, or become a member today.
When Patsy (Braig) Vogel-Hansen, former Historic Red Hook trustee and current collections committee and archives volunteer, was in high school, she recalls students being let out of classes early because of bad weather. It wasn’t a snowy nor’easter. Rather a major storm line threatened the town’s apple crop. The severe winds and hail would mar the yet-to-be harvested fruit. Students along with parents and neighbors and others in town converged on the orchards to help the farmers pick their produce and save the apples that fall. That story, to me, is the essence of Red Hook.
We know the saying that it takes a village to raise a child. In Red Hook’s case it takes two villages (Red Hook and Tivoli) plus three hamlets (Annandale-on-Hudson, Barrytown, and Upper Red Hook) to make a town. (Commercial break here: Historic Red Hook has beautiful merchandise in sticker form illustrating this and available to purchase.)
The people of Red Hook (and of Milan and Germantown and Clermont and Rhinebeck and surrounding environs) love this town. Many community organizations work alongside each other. Our goal? To see Red Hook succeed. Red Hook Responds, Red Hook Together, the Red Hook Library, our churches, the Bard College community, the Ascienzo Family Foundation, the Community Center, the town’s Audubon certification project volunteers, the Red Hook Central School District and its faculty, staff, administrators, students and parent groups, the Red Hook CSD alumni group, the fire departments, the sports teams, the retired teachers, our art community, the garden clubs, the veterans’ groups, the service organizations, the various village and town representatives and committee volunteers, the Rotary Club, the local businesses and their boosters, and many others I’ve forgotten to mention in this moment: all want to make Red Hook stronger.
Together we work hard to help our town be its best self. We all can (and should) contribute in a myriad of ways. Reach out to any of these groups, and you’ll be welcomed. And you’ll be making history in Red Hook. Maybe your story will become part of Historic Red Hook’s archives.
We at Historic Red Hook want to thank all of you for the support and work this past year to help us continue to be a community gathering place and to enable us to preserve and tell Red Hook’s stories. A tremendous thank you goes out to all of you on our committees that maintain our buildings, plan and carry out our programming, preserve our collections, improve our bottom line via fundraising, manage our finances, create our media outreach, and support us through donations and gifts of time and money. Please accept our gratitude for your help in making Historic Red Hook even stronger.
If you would like to join us (or any other community endeavor, for that matter), there are many opportunities for you to support our efforts. Please, become a member of Historic Red Hook if you aren’t yet or renew your membership if you are. Join a committee and volunteer at an event. Help us ensure Red Hook’s stories, like the one about the apple crop being saved, will continue to be told.
(And a personal thanks to everyone assisting me as I’ve served as president of Historic Red Hook this past year. I truly appreciate you!)