Preserving the Red Chair Tradition
When we talk about historic preservation at Great Camp Sagamore, our minds often jump to the parts of camp built during the Durant and Vanderbilt years. But there are more recent parts of camp that, without them, the experience wouldn't be the same. One of those pieces of history is the Adirondack red chair.
The late Dave Smits is responsible for the many red chairs all around camp. As the story goes, Dave was a smoker and had no where to sit when he was outside smoking, so he started making chairs. He later quit smoking and just kept making chairs!
Dave and Betty Smits started volunteering among the black flies around 1989. By 2000, the year Dave passed away, three generations of Smits were volunteering. Since Dave started making the chairs, they have been a big part of spring weekend. According to Betty, "Dave cut out and sanded the chair parts and, every year, brought them to Memorial work weekend for the workers to assemble and paint. The chairs ended up on the Sagamore brochure, on the cover of National Historic Landmark magazine, and in almost every picture that is taken of Sagamore."
As for the chairs being red, Betty recalls that they were historically brown. When Dave brought his first group of chairs to work weekend, he and Beverly Bridger, the Executive Director at the time, couldn’t decide whether they should stay brown or maybe go to something brighter, like red. So the first year, they painted half of them brown and the other half red. Another volunteer, surveying the fleet, tipped his hat towards the red chairs and said, “How about red,” and so they were.
Ted Riehle, Great Camp Sagamore's Caretaker, is keeping Dave's legacy going. This winter, Ted will make parts for 26 chairs. By Memorial Day weekend, in keeping with Dave's tradition, the parts will be ready for painting and assembling . . . and then for all to enjoy.