WRIGHT — Thomas P. Snowdon, an Irishman who moved to the United States to work for General Electric as a mechanical engineer, died, after an extended illness, on Tuesday, June 25, 2019, at his Knox Road home in Schoharie County’s town of Wright. He was 81.

“A lot of these people have no family left — except for us,” says Jill Martin, speaking about homebound Hilltown patients. Martin is a nurse practitioner who hopes to open her own practice in the fall after her current employer, CapitalCare Family Practice Berne, shuts its doors at the end of this month.

Efforts to put Republican candidates on the Democratic line through a write-in campaign were unsuccessful, though write-in ballots made up a third of the votes in the Knox Democratic Primary.

Hébert Joseph, the new chairman of the town’s Democratic Party, said that he hopes to get more Democrats voting this year, such as by helping transport the elderly to the polls and encouraging young people to vote.

Dana Sherman, who is enrolled in the Independence Party, said he is campaigning to represent himself, rather than a party’s values.

The grant requires that some of the work to convert the stage in the auditorium at the Westerlo Town Hall into a records room be done by a woman or minority-owned business.

A meeting on Monday, June 24, will be held at the Helderberg Ambulance building on Cole Hill Road in Berne to discuss what options the community has after the only doctor’s office in town closes.

BERNE — Garry L. Porter, a lifelong Hilltown resident who worked as a surveyor, married his sweetheart and, with her, raised three children. He died peacefully on Tuesday, June 18, 2019 at the Grand of Guilderland. He was 75.

He was born in Westerlo on Aug. 25, 1943 to the late Robert and Esther (née Lee) Porter.