My friend Jack Leadley died April 4, 2018. He was 90 years old. I've known Jack for some 30 years. We first met during my first survey of folk artists working in the Adirondacks. Called "An Adirondack Legend," Jack was a skilled woodsman, hunter, and trapper. He was also an artist, writer, and snowshoe and ski instructor. He made beautiful pack baskets and rustic furniture. He flew a plane, giving me my first aerial view of the Adirondack Park, saying how handy it was for a quick trip to Maine to catch up with family over a lobster dinner, and be back in time to sleep in his own bed by nightfall.

Jack's love of the Adirondacks came early in life. In the 1930s his family drove up from Staten Island to spend summers in a rented cabin on Lake Pleasant in Speculator, New York. The mountain air helped his father's asthma. After serving in the Second World War, Jack returned to the mountains permanently, marrying his wife Joan and joining a family with roots that traced back to 1794.

He opened Leadley's Adirondack Sugarbush in 1949. He and his family tapped some 2500 maple trees each spring to make maple syrup to sell from the gift shop on Route 30, just north of Speculator. It is one of several buildings on the 115-acre Leadley compound, along with immediate family households, including those of Leadley's three adult children who are eighth-generation Lake Pleasant natives.

Jack's Adirondack pack baskets were second to none. He made them the old fashioned way, cutting black ash trees, usually in the spring when the bark peels off easily. He soaked and pounded every square inch of the log, causing the annual growth rings to loosen and separate. He then pulled the splints off the full length of the log. These he smoothed and cut into uniform strips, to create the raw material used to weave the basket.

Jack had carried a pack basket since the 1940s while running his traplines, and began to make his own when quality baskets were getting hard to find. He shared this knowledge wholeheartedly with anyone. He's noted as a strong supportive influence of many basketmakers, and I've found his interviews as far away as Maine. For me, he breathed life into the old, discarded pack basket hanging in the garage of my childhood, owned by my stepfather, who, according to a family story, was carried in it by his own stepfather across a frozen Saranac Lake. Jack carried his own young son in a pack basket of his making while hiking the woods near their home.

Jack also made rustic furniture. He is known for reviving the Whitehouse chair, originally made by Lee Fountain, a local innkeeper in the late 19th century. The chair has birch framing with woven seats of black ash splints and was an early addition to the Folklife Center's Folk Art & Artist Collection, available for view, along with his other work, on nyheritage.org.

A Hamilton County destination was the bark shanty that Jack built back in the woods of his family's compound. These small cabins, now rare, were once commonly used by woodsmen, hunters, trappers, and fishermen in the backcountry of the Adirondacks. He called it Camp Balsam and dedicated it to the memory of those "Adirondack pioneers who came here before us."

Its design was based on a shanty built by Jack's wife's great-grandfather, George Burton, at Little Moose Pond in the 1890s. His shanty was framed with poles and covered with sheets of peeled bark. The front door faced south to catch the winter sun, and the west wall had a window covered with deer rawhide, diffusing a warm amber light inside. A flat side of a granite boulder formed the north wall and the back of an open fire pit. Inside, smoke escaped through a small, covered wooden tower on the roof. The two pole beds lining the walls of the 8 by 10-foot cabin were filled with fresh balsam. He welcomed visitors, including a special road trip from Glens Falls, as a part of our kids' workshop series on "Shelters, Shacks, and Shanties."

Jack demonstrated his craft at our earliest Adirondack folk festivals and children's workshop series. He enjoyed these visits with us and with other venues like Fort Klock, Hanford Mills, and the Adirondack Museum. As he became more sought after, he began to limit these activities, as he recalled in a letter: "You and Crandall Library have always been special as I started going away from my workshop to demonstrate my work." But it was a two-edged sword. "Almost all my work is sold on order...I don't need more 'exposure'. Working alone with no power tools limits my production." He came to prefer staying on his own property in the woods, allowing folks to come to him: "My workshop is so complete for my production, I do not leave it much. July and August, there are visitors here every day. I like to be here as people interested in my work are an added benefit to meet."

What an incredible joy it was to share an afternoon with Jack in his own workshop back in the Hamilton County woods.

A mini pack basket made by Jack was gifted to my family at the birth of my first son. Jack's own son Rick carries on his dad's role of maker of traditional rustic furniture, and his daughter Lynn continues to make the pack baskets.

Jack was a kind-hearted man, so very talented and generous with his time and his knowledge. Indeed, he was an "Adirondack Legend." What an honor to have known him. Fare thee well, my good friend.

Todd DeGarmo Voices Acquisitions Editor Founding Director of the Folklife Center at Crandall Public Library

degarmo@crandalllibrary.org