Monday

It's Garbage Day!

45 degrees!

• Monday: Mostly cloudy with scattered rain showers. High: 50, Low: 42
• Tuesday: Partly sunny and very warm. High: 61, Low: 45
• Wednesday: Rain developing. Chance of a thunderstorm. High: 47, Low: 30

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It was last Thursday morning when the search began for 47-year-old Greg Williams, of Stafford Avenue, who had been missing since New Year's Day when he - according to a note left for his family - said that he was going to go coyote hunting. They presumed that he meant on Tassell Hill - where he'd gone before. That's where the search began, but - over the weekend - it took in more and more territory and involved more and more searchers. At first, the Forest Rangers turned away volunteers, not wanting more footprints than necessary, but then they said "Yes!" and by yesterday one man estimated that there were three hundred people looking for some sign of Greg.

Parking lots at the Fire House and Municipal Hall were filled, and cars were parked on both sides of Barton Avenue and along one side of White Street.

Buses from the Waterville Central School District were transporting searchers to various starting points ..........

....... and Waterville's Fire Department apparatus was all outdoors while, inside, the Red Cross served hot food to search and rescue teams.

Yesterday afternoon, one team was working their way, methodically, along a hedgerow near Osborne Avenue .............

............. while another headed southward along the railroad tracks near the Bowling Alley.

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Not everyone in Waterville knows Greg Williams or his wife or children and while we can offer our concern for them and try to empathize, saying that we understand their fear and worry, most of us really can't. But there is one thing that a great many in the community ARE feeling, and that is a truly enormous sense of gratitude to the three or four-hundred who have come to help.

Yesterday afternoon I picked up a hitchiker - probably for the first time in my life! - a young man in orange search gear who was trying to get to the Fire House as fast as he could because he needed to be in Barneveldt. His name was Brian Davies and I asked if that was where he lived - "No," he said, "I actually live in Remsen. I belong to the Search and Rescue Unit covering the southern Adirondacks. There's another Adirondack Unit here, too!"

Thank You for coming to Waterville!