“You can’t make this stuff up,” says Thomas Poelker of multiple events in his life including his days on a Florida-based bobsled racing team.
By Michael Ryan
WINDHAM - The next time the leaves are falling in Windham, perennial planning board member Thomas Poelker, too, will be leaving.
No specific date has been set and his retirement could be coming sooner, since he is currently going bi-coastal to attend meetings.
Local planners hold twice-monthly sessions. They were easy-breezy when Poelker was living in the Gem of the Catskills, tucked on a back road.
It was a do-it-with-his-eyes-closed drive from there to the municipal hall in the hamlet of Hensonville, and he’s done it for twenty-five years until listening to something his heart has always whispered.
“Relationships are the most important thing in life,” Poelker believes, and serendipity has stepped in when least expected - as it does.
Over the past few months, he has made 16 trips from the West Coast and Maui to be at planning meetings in the mountains, having met a certain someone of the feminine persuasion.
Loyalty matters to the once-a-Marine-always-a-Marine, but let’s not forget the travel wear-and-tear on his almost octogenarian human beingness.
So a decision had to come and it is “bittersweet,” says Poelker, who made his announcement at a town council gathering, last week.
“I’ve done the best I can. I’m proud of how I’ve been able to help this town,” said Poelker in who-knew-a-Marine-could-get-teary-eyed fashion.
He has helped by sitting on the planning board for that quarter century, most recently as its chairman with a reputation for getting feisty.
Poelker was also chairman of the town of Windham and Greene County Democratic Party and vice-chair of the State Democratic committee.
He has most definitely been in the middle of a political wrangling or two in his day. Through it all, what he also most definitely is, is thankful.
“I’ve been here since I was two years old,” Poelker told council members, on and off in the beginning with his visiting parents, of course.
He grew up as a self-described “water rat” on Long Island and recalls the old Point Lookout hotel, on the eastern outskirts of Windham.
“My mother’s aunt and uncle helped operate the place. I was a snot-nosed little kid. I collected the dimes people paid to climb up the tower to look through the telescope at the famous five state view.
“They’d see Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and on a clear day, New Hampshire, and they’d ask, ‘Where’s the fifth one?’ and I’d say, ‘You’re standing on it,’” Poelker says, laughing.
He helped train reserve officers at the Marine education center in Quantico, Virginia, between 1966-68, in the Vietnam era.
Returning to civilian existence, Poelker surfed and lifeguarded in hot, sunny, sandy Florida where he John Sieglinger, a grammar school classmate and Navy fighter pilot, tried out for the Olympics.
“You can’t make this up,” Poelker says. We called ourselves the Key West Bobsled Club. I used to push the sled on wheels. We had a few crashes but we did pretty well. We didn’t miss by much.”
Ultimately he got into the building trade, initially putting up A-frames for the Slutzky family in Hunter before branching out as a successful developer.
Somewhere along the way, somebody suggested the planning board in Windham could use a guy like him and, “now, here we are, twenty-five years later,” Poelker said.
“I thank this town board for allowing me to stay a part of this process,” said Poelker, lately present on computer Zoom when not in person.
“We’ve been involved in a lot of serious issues the past year or so. I want to see that through as much as I can, and with zoning coming in, that will hopefully help make many issues easier.
“I truly care about this town,” Poelker said. “Three of my brothers and my parents and grandparents are buried in Pleasant Valley Cemetery.
“I’m not here tonight to hand in my resignation, but the end of my term is coming so sometime this fall it will happen.”
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