Celebrity Corner
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Over the
years we've sold boats to and have had connections with a variety of well-known people and we thought
we'd share some of these stories with you.
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Morgan Freeman |
| We didn't actually sell a boat to Morgan Freeman....but it's such a cute story we couldn't hold it back. We had our boats at a craftshow put on by the Philadelphia Museum of Art....it's one of the country's premier craft events, merely being accepted to exhibit at the show is a large feather any craftsperson is proud to stick in his or her hat. |
| While standing in our booth, pressing the flesh and giving out literature, we looked up and saw Morgan Freeman walking down the aisle with a big smile on his face. He spent perhaps a half hour in our booth. He is an avid boater, a sailor, actually, on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, and had a keen appreciation for our boats. At the end of the half hour he said, "I'd better be going....if my wife catches me looking at these boats.....she's kill me." |
| So, we said our goodbye, shook hands all around and Morgan and Steve posed for a picture. |
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| Then, perhaps 10 minutes later, Morgan came walking down the aisle with an attractive woman on his arm. David smiled at him, pointed at the woman and said, "Is this your wife?" |
| He said that it was... and David started laughing." Morgan," he explained, "maybe a half hour before you came into our booth you wife spent maybe 20 minutes visiting with us and our boats. Then she said, "I've got to get out of here....if my husband catches me looking at your boats.... he'll kill me." |
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Adirondack Guideboats Arrive in
Primetime |
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Julie Chen is the co-host of The Early
Show on CBS and is the host of Big Brother, also on
CBS. She is seen here walking past one of our Kevlar guideboats
in the introduction to the show's 9th season. We don't yet know how
(or even if) the boat will figure into the season's challenges. What's
mostly been getting our attention is how to get those oars
uncrossed.
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Brian Rooney |
| Brian Rooney is frequently seen on ABC's nightly new as their Los Angeles correspondent. Brian has climbed a 180-foot redwood tree to interview a tree-sitter, he covered the tsunami in Thailand and Indonesia, the uprising in Baghdad, wild-fires and earthquakes in California and the bombing in Oklahoma City. One afternoon Brian and his friend, Al Freihofer, stopped in at our shop. |
| They admired our boats and hoped one day to be able to get one. |
| Then, a few days later, Al called and said, "For as long as I can remember, Brian has wanted an Adirondack guideboat." |
| We said, "Yes?" |
| Al said, "Well, 20 of us are going to pool our money and buy him one of your cedar guideboats for his 50th birthday. I'd like to place the order but I need you folks to promise that you will be able to deliver the boat on time. Also, you've got to promise to keep it an absolute secret." |
| We promised and wrote up the order. |
| As the delivery date neared, many phone calls went back and forth, just to make sure all the stars were aligned and that everything was going to happen as planned. |
| At the appointed hour, when Al and Brian's families were in from California and Maryland, Brian and Al themselves were sitting on a dock in their bathing suits, their feet dangling in Lake George. From Brian said, from out of nowhere, "You know, Al, the only way I'm ever going to get an Adirondack guideboat is if I build one myself." |
| At that precise instant, which no amount of planning could have orchestrated, David came rowing around the point with Cecile, Brian's wife, in the stern seat and Brian's two daughters sitting in the bow of Brian's new boat .The children were singing "Happy Birthday," Brian was utterly confused. (Part of the confusion came from the fact that Brian's birthday isn't till November and here we were in August.) |
| For perhaps a full two minutes Brian did not react at all. It was such a fantasy that he couldn't believe it was coming true. |
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| This is a photo of David and Brian.....Brian is holding a plaque with all the names on it of those who contributed to his present. |
| And this is a photo of David and Brian's dad, Andy Rooney. |
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John Cheffins |
| John Cheffins's name isn't likely to be a familiar one to most people. He's not a Brittney Spears or a Rod Stewart but he's a certain kind of rock star to us. When he stopped in at our shop David asked him what kind of work he did. He said, "I work for Rolls-Royce." |
| David said, "Really? That's interesting. What kind of work do you do for them?" |
| John said, "Well....I run the place." |
| It turns he's the Chief Operating Officer for Rolls-Royce Aerospace....which is far more than the little car company started by Charles Rolls and Henry Royce. The car company (which is no longer owned by Rolls but by BMW) gave birth to the much large aerospace and power generating business. They are one of the premier builders of jet engines and satellites in the world. They build power plants for supertankers and aircraft carriers. When we mentioned the sale of this boat to Willem Lange, another of our customers, he said, "The next time you speak to Mr. Rolls, tell him that as I am about to drift off to sleep when flying over the tundra, that I feel very comforted, looking out the window and seeing his company's RR logo on the jet engines." |
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| This is David giving John rowing instructions in his new boat. Later, at they were loading John's boat onto the car, John asked David, "How does the web work for you?" |
| David thought for a moment and then said, "Well, we caught you." |
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John gave a big hearty laugh, "Yes," he said, "you certainly did."
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John Thain |
| At the New York National Boat Show David noticed a man looking at our wooden boats. In the lapel of the man's coat was a pin with two crossed flags. One of the flags was the American flag....the other David didn't recognize. He asked what it was and the man said, "The New York Stock Exchange." |
| David said, "Oh. Do you work there?" |
| The man said that he did. |
| David said, "What exactly do you do?" |
| The man paused for a moment and then said, "I run the place." |
| He was John Thain, the President and CEO of the New York Stock Exchange. Before taking that job he was the President and CEO of Goldman Sachs. |
| A few weeks later, as David was setting up for the Miami Boat Show, he got a call from the shop saying that John had called in an order for a wooden guideboat. |
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This is John rowing his new boat. |
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| And this is John rowing our Vermont Packboat, one of which he also purchased. |
| John converted the New York Stock Exchange from a non-profit organization to a for-profit company. The night before the Exchange's IPO, David sent John an e-mail, saying, "I keep hearing your name on the news, about you taking the Exchange public and I'd like to offer my congratulations. You must be both pleased and proud." |
| A few minutes later David received an e-mail back, John writing to say, "Yes, I am pleased and proud. But, to tell you the truth, I'd rather be out rowing my Adirondack guideboat." |
| (Which we don't believe.....but it was nice of him to say so.) |
| If the name John Thain sounds familiar to you....well, his name has again been in the news. In salvaging the mess left by the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, John accepted the positions of CEO and Chairman of the Board at Merrill Lynch, the world's largest brokerage firm. When that news was announced, David sent the same e-mail, "...you must be pleased and proud of what you've accomplished." |
| John wrote back, saying, "Thank you....the message is the same, I'd still prefer to be out rowing my Adirondack guideboat." |
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Which we still don't take to be true....but again, it was nice of him to
say so.
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John Walsh |
| John is the host and producer of America's Most Wanted. He met Steve at an Antique and Classic Boat Show in Skaneateles, in the Finger Lakes Region of Upstate New York. John admired the boat for a couple of years and finally said, "Could I put it in the water?" |
| Steve said, "Sure," and that was that. |
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Jim & Marilyn Rockefeller |
| One summer we were doing the Maine Boats and Harbors Show in Rockland, Maine. For many reasons this is one of our favorite shows. A particularly nice aspect of this show is....our booth is next to the boat launch and we can put people out on the water with just a few seconds notice. One year we were doing demos for three couples simultaneously. Dealing with one couple at a time is difficult enough....three couples was like herding butterflies. Finally, one of the women turned to another and said, "Well, we're going to get a boat....what about you?" |
| The second woman nodded her head and said, "Yes, absolutely." |
| They both turned to the third woman (they were all strangers, mind you) and she said, "Of course." |
| We could hardly believe what was happening. It was only when that last check was written that we accepted the fact, yes, we really did sell three boats at the same time. |
| When David looked down at the third check he saw that it was signed by "James Rockefeller." |
| He looked up at Mr. Rockefeller and said, "One of them Rockefellers?" |
| Mr. Rockefeller shook his head no. |
| Mrs. Rockefeller nodded her head yes...she also had sort of a pained expression on her face, as if to say, "He always does this." |
| They arranged for delivery and when David went to drop the boat off (a Vermont Fishing Dory) Mr. Rockefeller said, "I've got a project for you." |
| David said, "I don't want a project." |
| Mr. Rockefeller said, "I think you'll want this one." |
| David said, "I'm pretty sure I won't." |
| Mr. Rockefeller took David up to the attic and, sitting there on the floor was an absolutely beautiful....but horribly neglected and horribly repaired.... cedar guideboat. It was so small it was almost the size one would build for a child.....which it was. Mr. Rockefeller's grandfather had it built for his daughter, Mr. Rockefeller's mother, in 1908. |
| Mr. Rockefeller said, "Some moron tried to repair it," then he pointed his thumb to himself, adding, "I'm the moron." |
| Mr. Rockefeller asked if he thought we could restore the boat, yes, David said, he thought we could. The photos below show the before and after of the same portion of the boat. And the third photo shows Mr. Rockefeller coming to the Maine Boatbuilder's Show to collect his mother's boat....which now resides in the Maine Museum of Transportation. |
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And one last note....Mr. Rockefeller was right, he did have a project in
which David was interested.
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Jon Stewart |
| John and his family stopped into our booth at the New York National Boat Show. David asked if his little girl might like to take a ride in a boat, she nodded her head, yes, she would.....and Dad and Dave played with the little girl in the boat for perhaps a half hour. |
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| David Hellewell |
| David Hellewell is the Head Coach of the British National Canoe Team. He drove past our shop on a vacation to America, saw a familiar shape in the yard, hit the brakes and made a U-turn. We spent an hour at the shop, talking boats....and then a couple of hours out on the water, rowing boats. David has an amazing set of boating experiences and he was delighted to add a new style boat to his vocabulary. |
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Bob Sullivan |
| Bob Sullivan is an editor at Vogue. He is one of the most interesting and entertaining people we've ever met....(how he got to be an editor at Vogue...that we can't understand. How he got his article on our boats published in Vogue, that we also can't understand.) |
| When last we heard from Bob, it was on NPR's Fresh Air with Terri Gross. They were having their 25th anniversary program week and, as part of the celebration, each of the program's producers got to select their favorite segment. One of those segments was on Bob Sullivan. On another segment Terri interviewed him following the publication of his book, Cross Country. He brought his two children along with him to the interview and they told stories of their endless trip across America. Music, being a central part, of their trips, Terri Gross persuaded the kids to sing and play the instruments they played while driving across America. All this while we were listening, ourselves driving across America. A big smile on our faces. |
| Bob's books include , |
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Alan Jackson |
| A customer with a Vermont Fishing Dory wrote from Nashville sent an e-mail saying, "I was out rowing my boat on the Tennessee River. I passed another boat and Alan Jackson leaned over the rail, studied my boat for a good long time and said, "Man....that's a neat boat! Where'd you get it?" |
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