Those 14 hours in a car were the beginning of a 41-year run

Stefanik, colleagues sue New York because they don’t want you to vote by mail

By Ken Tingley

Forty-one years ago today I married Gillian Burgess.

I was a Connecticut kid and she was a Long Island girl. We grew up 38 miles apart, but stumbled into each other’s lives at college.

Nothing unusual about that except the college was in Kentucky and it was at a school neither of us attended. She was at the University of Kentucky in Lexington while I went to school at Eastern Kentucky University 25 miles to the south in Richmond.

We met at Berea College which is another 20 miles south of Richmond.

Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about the odds of this meeting happening. Such is the randomness of life.

The fall we met, she was interning with the National Forest Service and living at Berea College. Her roommate was my best friend’s cousin. I don’t remember much about that first meeting except I had drank a few beers before hand. Gillian said I wouldn’t stop talking, that I was a real “chatterbox.”

Later that winter, she started dating my best friend. I remember taking an instant dislike to her, but over four decades the reasons have faded.

I later dated her roommate (my best friend’s cousin) and we all spent time together.

We went sled-riding on a local farm, tried square dancing at a block party in front of Boone Tavern and played tennis (Gillian wasn’t very good).

My best friend and Gillian eventually broke up and it wasn’t pretty. I got to see her temper first hand.

During one of our breaks from school, Gillian asked if she could ride back with me to Kentucky at the end of the break. I grudgingly agreed and remember dreading the 14 and a half hour drive ahead of us. Gillian’s parents drove her to Connecticut and I remember being curt with them. I didn’t want them to get the wrong idea.

Fourteen and a half hours is a long time to be with someone you don’t like.

We drove straight through to Kentucky and only stopped for gas.

I finally let Gillian drive somewhere south of Morgantown, West Virginia and ordered her to keep the speed at 60 miles per hour because I wanted to get back to school as quickly as possible. (This was the “50 is thrifty” days after the gas embargo).

If you ever driven through the mountains of West Virginia at night, you know there aren’t many lights. There is just the lights on the dashboard and the quiet.

So we started talking.

We kept on talking and the hours flew by.

I guess we got to know each other for the first time.

Maybe that’s when we connected.

When those 14 and a half hours were done, my dislike for her had faded.

That spring, I graduated from Eastern Kentucky. My family came down from Connecticut and my girlfriend came up from Berea to see me walk across the stage. Gillian was there, too. For some reason, Gillian took most of the photos that day.

A week later I moved a few hours east to Ashland, Kentucky to take a sportswriter job. I lived in a trailer in Flatwoods and while I loved the job, I was lonely.

Gillian was working for the National Forest Service that summer getting water samples from strip mining sites in Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

She occasionally stopped by to see me in Ashland.

One day I came back from lunch and a note had been left in my typewriter from one of my colleagues. It said that “G” had called and she wouldn’t be able to make it that weekend. My colleague Pat then added, “Face it buddy, you blew it.”

Sometime that fall, I went back to Berea College to visit my girlfriend. She told me she was too busy studying for midterms and told me to take Gillian to the movies instead.

We talked some more.

We had a pretty good time.

We were enjoying each other’s company.

Gillian stopped to see me in Ashland not long after and kept stopping throughout the fall. One thing eventually led to another and I had to break up with my girlfriend. I don’t recall my girlfriend being that upset.

That December, there were cutbacks at the newspaper and the editor told me he had to lay off a sportswriter. I was actually thrilled. I did not like Ashland. I missed my family in Connecticut. The editor offered me a spot on the copy desk, but I turned him down.

Before I left, I called Gillian.

She wanted to know what was going to happen to “us.”

I remember saying something like, “There is an us?”

That was it.

I was moving on and was breaking off our relationship.

After being home a few days, I started thinking about Gillian. New Year’s Eve was coming up and I knew Gillian was home in Long Island.

I picked up the phone, then hesitated.

I knew if I made the call everything would change.

I made the call and she came to Connecticut for New Year’s.

Years later while going through my old newspapers from college, I found a scrap of a typewritten note from by Ashland colleague Pat.

It read:

“G called. She was going to stop by, but since you weren’t here, she decided not to. She said you wouldn’t be able to reach her because she would be on the road. She can’t stop by for the fourth, either. Face it, buddy, you blew it.”

I don’t know why I kept that piece of scrap paper all those years, but I later had it framed for Gillian. Or maybe I had it framed for me.

Maybe it was to remind me of that crossroads.

Or maybe I wanted Pat to know, I didn’t blow it after all.

Three years after that fateful car ride, Gillian and I were wed in a ceremony on Long Island.

Stefanik lawsuit

The Brennan Center’s report on election fraud in 2022 found that incident rates of election fraud were between 0.0003 and 0.0025 percent. That means for every million votes cast there are discrepancies of between 30 to 250 votes. And the vast majority of those discrepancies were clerical errors.

The Brennan Center gave context to its report by saying, it’s more likely an American “will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.”

A lot of people don’t believe that.

Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law last week a provision for voting my mail in New York. Other states already do this and considering the aging of New York’s population - especially in upstate and the North Country - this makes sense. We should make it easier for people to cast their votes.

In its review, the Brennan Center found mail-in voting just as safe as regular voting.

But not Rep. Elise Stefanik.

Immediately after Hochul signed the bill, Stefanik and and members of New York’s Republican delegation sued Hochul over mail voting becoming law.

“Kathy Hochul and extreme New York Democrats are trying to destroy what is left of election integrity in New York," Stefanik said. "Under Kathy Hochul’s failed leadership, elections are less secure and less transparent and will now be unconstitutional.”

Does that mean that Rep. Stefanik believes her own election is suspect?

That seems to be what she is saying.

Stefanik and the other Republicans obviously have not read the Brennan Center’s report.

When I searched for examples of voter fraud in New York, I found just two cases. Both were for Republican officials in Troy. Those cases are being prosecuted.

And Elise Stefanik is still lying to her constituents.

New furniture store

Kyleen Ward, who runs Finder’s Keeper’s in downtown Glens Falls, announced her new consignment furniture store is now opening next door to her current store.

She recently took some of the furniture from my sister-in-law’s estate so we hope she does well.

It is not only another business in downtown, but it contributes to the diversity stores there.

This was the 50th anniversary of the Adirondack Balloon Festival and it was just as magical as ever.

Balloon Festival

We don’t go to the balloon festival every year. Like so many of us here in Warren County, we take it for granted.

I suppose I’m still traumatized from those early years working in sports when attending the balloon festival meant getting up at 4:30 a.m. after a late night working in the sports department.

In recent years, it was often a spur of the moment decision to attend. That was the case Friday when we headed over to the airport at 3:30 p.m. for the 5:30 balloon launch. It was a beautiful day with little wind. We walked around for a bit, then watched as dozens and dozens of the hot air balloons took flight.

We were reminded of the wonder of the event.

How magical it can be.

We were reminded of how cool it is to have an event like this locally.

It took some two hours to get out of the airport - we gave up at one point and just went and got ice cream - and I admit being frustrated by the long line of cars not moving at all. I thought there had to be a better way.

It was after sunset when we got home and I was pretty tired.

But I eventually turned to my wife and admitted it was all worth it.