Skaters dance to life in Oneonta

By Ted Potrikus • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

Decades ago, the holiday season wasn’t complete without a trip to Oneonta’s Main Street for a look at the festive decorations in the windows of Bresee’s Department Store. Two pairs of mechanical skaters and mechanical elves took center stage, all of which came to Oneonta after being on display throughout the 1940s in the windows of Macy’s Manhattan flagship.

When Bresee’s decided to update its display in the 1950s, the Catella family of Oneonta acquired the decorations — and for decades later, displayed them for all to see in the front yard of their home.
“People would drive by the Catellas’ on Belmont Circle in flocks to see them,” said Carla Balnis, herself a lifelong fan of the family’s annual display. “Families, children, grandchildren. People took their dates to drive past.”

When Mr. Catella passed away, the family chose to mothball the display and keep the skaters in storage — until Mrs. Balnis enquired about their status.

“I got a call one day from the Catellas two years ago,” she said. “’Mom wants to meet you,’ they told me. It was almost like I was being interviewed, but I knew that they wanted to make sure their skaters would be in the right hands.”

As this newspaper has reported before in a story by Libby Cudmore, the dolls remained in good shape, but the mechanics had been destroyed while in storage. After Ms. Cudmore’s story, though, the Mechatronics department at the State University of New York at Delhi called Mrs. Balnis and her husband, Wayne.

“We had some meetings with the SUNY Delhi students and faculty,” she said. “We talked a lot about what the skaters used to do and how they operated. They looked at the old technology, got back to us, and said, ‘We can do this’.”

As with every story these days, it seems, COVID-19 intervened; when SUNY Delhi’s in-person education shut down, so, too, did the skater project. And since the first discussions with the college, Mr. Balnis passed away.

“SUNY Delhi called me in January to say they were back in session and wanted to pick up where they left off,” Mrs. Balnis said. “It was hard, but this was something Wayne and I believed in and wanted to finish.”

A donor — one who asked to remain anonymous even to the Balnis family — stepped in to pick up the cost of the project.

The skaters are back, then, to delight all who pass by the Balnis home at 30 Gilbert Street in Oneonta. They’ll be on display throughout the holiday season.

Mrs. Balnis, Mrs. Catella, Catella family members, Ms. Cudmore and her husband, Ian Austin, and the SUNY Delhi team all were on hand on Tuesday night to push the button and set the skaters in motion.

“This is history brought back to its original beauty,” Mrs. Balnis said. “These skaters began their show at Macy’s in the 40s, Bresee’s in the 50s, then the Catellas. I’m so happy to be the one to have them on display. I couldn’t have done this without the Catella family and their years of love and care, without Libby and Ian and that first story they wrote, and Mike Miller of SUNY Delhi and his whole team.”