An Amsterdam police officer who died almost 45 years ago is well remembered by relatives and former Guy Park Avenue elementary school students.
Andrew C. Nelson was born in Amsterdam in 1893, the son of Andrew and Minnie Coons Nelson. He attended West Spring Street School and lived in the West End most of his life. He served in the Navy in World War I.
After the war, he worked at Bigelow-Sanford, one of the city’s big carpet mills. He married Edith Townsend of Tribes Hill in 1926.
In 1927, Nelson became a member of the city police force. Before switching to driving a police car late in his career, Officer Nelson rode police motorcycles. One of the cycles that Nelson used was a three-wheeler, another had a sidecar.
Nelson’s wife’s niece, Florence Orlando, now of Gloversville, recalled her aunt and uncle came to visit her family in Mount Kisco, Westchester County, with Andy in the driver’s seat of an Indian motorcycle and Edith behind him. Orlando still has Nelson’s nightstick.
Orlando recalled that people said Officer Nelson would give his own mother a traffic ticket.
Orlando said, “He was a big man, very gruff. You listened to him when he talked and were kind of scared of him. But he wasn’t going to harm you.”
Nelson is well-remembered for protecting children crossing Guy Park Avenue to get to the elementary school. One of those children was Peter Betz, who now lives in Perth. Betz, Fulton County historian, once wrote a story about Nelson arresting a yo-yo salesman at Guy Park Avenue School.
Guy Park alumnus Lawrence Spagnola recalled looking forward to seeing Nelson at school with his uniform and motorcycle.
Spagnola lived near the Nelsons on Carmichael Street in the West End. Spagnola said that neighborhood kids played football in front of Nelson’s home but he never chased them away.
“I don’t like admitting that from time to time we actually challenged him,” Spagnola said. “He was always understanding and just knew that it was nothing personal and he understood that we didn’t mean anything against him.”
Spagnola added, “Andy Nelson, as I remember him, was a person to always be respected.”
Nelson’s brother-in-law, Louis Townsend of Fort Johnson, said Nelson was very strict on the police force but was in reality a gentle man who loved children. Nelson and his wife had no children of their own. He enjoyed holidays and sometimes played Santa Claus.
Nelson retired in 1958 and enjoyed hunting and, especially, fishing, in his retirement, often accompanied on trips north by his wife. He died in 1965 while on a fishing trip in the Lake Pleasant area. Nelson belonged to city and county police organizations, the Masons, American Legion, plus fish and game clubs in Amsterdam and Tribes Hill. He and his wife were Methodists who worshipped at churches in Tribes Hill and Division Street in Amsterdam.
His Recorder obituary had the following quote: “Assigned to enforce the Motor Vehicle Law in the days prior to tire-screeching, mufflerless and public thoroughfare drag racing, Nelson was considered a tough cop who knew the law and enforced it without regard to his personal welfare.”
Veteran police reporter Wallace McBride Kimball once said if the city had four officers like Andy Nelson and Stanley Bush, another highly regarded Amsterdam cop, the rest of the police force could be dismissed.
TODAY IN HISTORY
From Frank Yunker’s Web site www.mohawkvalleyweb.com, we learn that on Jan. 30, 1923, Hylan A. Benton was elected president of the Amsterdam Automobile Club. In 1908, Amsterdam’s temperature was 10 to 12 degrees below zero through noon.
