Jim Maloney was in need of a job. He had met his wife, Betsy, while she was interning with the New York City Parks Department and he had followed her back to Oneonta where she grew up and where her family still lived. Working part time for SUNY Oneonta, Maloney happened upon a help wanted ad for a part-time city of Oneonta firefighter and decided he’d give it a try. “It was around 1995. There was a fire in a large Victiorian house on Grand Street and I found myself in a room with a falling ceiling. There was fire above me and flames coming out of the basement windows. I said to myself, ‘This is crazy. I love this.’”
Crazy, I can understand. Loving this, however, would be a stretch for me. “It’s a manageable risk,” Maloney went on. ‘It was great because everything was different every day and it was lots of great stimulation. It’s sort of an art and a science — you have all this physics you can apply to a problem in which there are a lot of variables that are different every time.”
Now retired, how does Maloney cope with not being able to run into burning buildings? “I go sailing on Otsego Lake in the fall.” Firefighters are a different breed and I am thankful they exist. I also enjoy sailing on Otsego Lake in the fall, however, my need for risk ends there.
Having retired as assistant fire chief after nearly 30 years with the Oneonta Fire Department, Maloney now spends his time as the president of the Community Arts Network of Oneonta. We met for breakfast at Latte Lounge so I could ask him about his transition from firefighter to arts promoter.
“I got liquored up at a Chili Bowl and a woman, who was running the place single-handedly, asked me to join the board. UCCA (Upper Catskill Council of the Arts — precursor to CANO) had just disintegrated and CANO was in distress.” Was this a similar impulse to running into a burning building? “Kind of, but I have always been interested in the arts,” he said. Growing up, Maloney had an uncle who was an artist who would take him and his cousins to art galleries. He recalls “sitting around the kitchen table, as a kid, talking and arguing about art. It was great. I love hanging out with artists because their brains work differently than mine and that’s the whole idea of art — it changes your perception of the world around you. Artists challenge you to change your perception so I am always learning.” Maloney’s personal favorite? Abstract art. “Every time I look at it, I see something different,” he said.
I asked Maloney how his first act as a firefighter helped prepare him for his second act, leadership at CANO. “I am not an artist. I am good at saying, ‘Let’s go left; let’s go right. If there is a problem, we will figure it out and change direction if we have to.’” With his leadership, CANO has been reinventing itself. “We are a lot better off than ten years ago,” Maloney tells me. With the help of a strong volunteer board and the hiring of an executive director, finances have stabilized; events have expanded to include more performing arts; the Carriage House reopened for classes; membership is up and most events remain free and open to the public. Located at the Wilber Mansion on Ford Avenue in downtown Oneonta, CANO hosts monthly art exhibits and writers’ salons, live music, discussion groups, art classes for both adults and children, and much more.
Maloney says he is in Oneonta to stay. His wife, Betsy Bloom, a professor at Hartwick College, has told him she never wants to leave Oneonta and Jim agrees that there is nowhere he would rather be. He recalled his early days in Oneonta sitting on his porch. People would wave at him as they walked by. “They didn’t know me but they waved at me. They didn’t do that in Brooklyn.” I will bet the folks who walked by Maloney’s house, decades ago, never imagined the positive impact those waves would have on the future of the Oneonta community.