In Appreciation
New York State regional author Thomas C. O’Donnell, formerly of Boonville, tapped upstate history for his four books published in the late 1940s and 1950s. His works are a gold mine of local lore, characters and funny stories – the kinds of books that you can read straight through without stopping, which is about the highest praise I can offer any writer.
During his retirement he began to develop a sixth book. It was to be his personal recollection of
growing up in a family-owned logging camp. Mr. O’Donnell recorded stories of his father’s lumber business and the hardships his mother faced living in the woods, and he wrote with nostalgia about his adventurous youth and how his brother and he mastered their ABC’s in a backwoods log-cabin school house and lived as children did before the dawn of television. The tug of his boyhood years was strong, as evidenced by the reflective narratives left in O’Donnell’s unpublished memoir.
I would like to acknowledge, posthumously, Thomas C. O’Donnell. Special recognition goes to grandson Thomas A. O’Donnell, who gave permission to reshape his grandfather’s unfinished manuscript where needed, always with an eye to capturing Tom’s distinctive voice, which is clearly evident in his uncompleted work.
“Life in a North Woods Lumber Camp” is much more than the history of the O’Donnell family business. Although the logging industry was a huge part of American history, to see it from such an up-close-and-personal perspective is both a privilege and a delight.