The D & H Canal Museum, located at 23 Mohonk Road in High Falls, officially opens for the season on Saturday, May 2, its exhibits freshly spruced up. The featured show for 2015, to be unveiled on opening day, will focus on the life and career of an illustrious High Falls resident who died in 1992: Romeo Muller, a highly successful screenwriter best-known for his long collaboration with TV producers Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass.
Among Muller’s many products for the Rankin/Bass animation shop were what Wikipedia terms “the most popular holiday television special of all time,” Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), as well as Frosty the Snowman, Return to Oz, Puff, the Magic Dragon, The Wind in the Willows and the cartoon version of The Hobbit. By all accounts, Muller was a larger-than-life local character in High Falls, known for tooling around town in his red Cadillac convertible. It is rumored that the whereabouts of the classic car have been identified and that it might put in an appearance at the exhibition.
The D & H Canal Historical Society’s long-running Sunday Flea Market returned to Grady Park on Route 213 in the heart of the High Falls hamlet on April 12. Tickets are now on sale, at $35 apiece, for the organization’s annual Mothers’ Day Gala Dinner, to be held on Friday, May 8 at the Rondout Golf Club in Accord. To purchase tickets, contact board member Alice Schoonmaker at (845) 626-7103.
Other events planned for the museum’s summer/fall season include a lecture by Vernon Benjamin titled “Revolutionary Thinking: The Creation of D & H” on Friday, June 12; free tours of the nearby Five Lock Walk on Sundays, June 21 and September 13 and 20; and a Bel Canto Concert on a date in August to be announced.
Museum hours are from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays only, from May through October. Docent tours are scheduled for 11:30 a.m., 1 and 3 p.m. Admission costs $5 for adults, $3 for children. For more details on the schedule of upcoming events, membership and volunteering opportunities and other information, call (845) 687-9311 or visit www.canalmuseum.org.
Romeo Muller exhibition opening, Saturday, May 2, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., $5/$3, D & H Canal Museum, 23 Mohonk Road, High Falls; (845) 687-9311, www.canalmuseum.org.
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