By Jason Emerson
editor
The Madison County Board of Supervisors last week announced the county’s acquisition of a 60-acre area with two waterfalls in Delphi Falls, which has been in private hands for more than half a century. The land will ultimately become a county park open to the public.
While public reports have mentioned the current owners have been at the property since the 1960s, the homestead and falls area has in fact been in private hands since the 1930s, when it was bought by one of the creators of the baking brand Duncan Hines, and visited by famous people such as Walt Disney and New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey.
Author Jerome Mark Antil grew up on the property, which was owned by his family from 1939 to the 1960s, and has done vast amounts of historical research on the area and said it is more historic than people know. He has actually written a series of historical fiction novels — “The Pompey Hollow Book Club” — that features life in that home (and area) during the shadows of World War II.
According to Antil, who spoke with the Cazenovia Republican:
“My dad, Michael Antil, Sr., bought Delphi Falls in 1939 for $3,500. It was an abandoned ‘private park and dance hall.’ His aim was to convert the pavilion into a home for his wife and eight children — who were at the time living on Helen Avenue in Cortland — in a three bedroom and one bath home.
“With the advent of WWII, the government was not permitting the construction of new foundations and was limiting all building material, so the structure had to wait until the war was over before becoming a home. My mother and father held ‘Round and Square’ dances there every Saturday and the local farmers would come in droves for some weekend relaxation.
“Around 1948, materials were once again available, and dad and mom finished the home and we moved there. I was eight when we moved there. I grew up there until I was beginning my senior year in high school. Our Fabius Central School basketball team the year before had won the regionals and my father built the barn with a regulation sized basketball court inside for me and my team to play in after school or summers.”
According to Antil, many people do not know that the town of Delphi Falls, in Onondaga County, was named “Delphi” and, in the 1920s, the U.S. Post Office expressed concerns between “Delphi” and “Delhi” and asked that they change the name. So the name was changed to “Delphi Falls.”
While the Antils lived at the Cardner Road property — which Jerome calls “84 acres of wonder for camping, swimming and fishing” — his father created the baking brand Duncan Hines.
According to Antil:
“Michael C. Antil Sr. — “Big Mike” — spent a 1929 summer month with Albert Durkee, who was his age, who was managing a local retail bakery shop in Homer. Albert told dad that the trolley was going to shut down and sell its electricity and, if he could buy a Peterson oven, he could start a wholesale bakery and make something of it.
“A Peterson oven was as large as a building and took three weeks to preheat. He asked my dad if he would partner with him. At the time dad was vice president of Hostess Cakes in Hoboken, N.J. They shook hands.
“In late 1930, dad returned to Homer to show two contracts for bread, pies and cookies — contracts he had gotten from the government to serve the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp) camps and the Army bases. They borrowed against the contracts, got the Peterson oven and from day one in 1931 produced 81,000 loaves of bread each and every day. They supplied grocers in several states, all the New York state CCC camps and Pine Camp, which is now Fort Drum.
“Today, the largest bread baker in the U.S. is in New Jersey. It does 110,000 loaves a day. By dad and Albert’s bakery doing this volume in 1931 (81,000 loaves) it may have been the largest bakery in the country. Upstate farmers converted from growing cabbage and tobacco to growing wheat as the bakery consumed three carloads a day. Since there were no trains in the area the wheat had to be trucked in. I was told the bakery consumed nearly every egg produced in Cortland county. Working with two other women my mother arranged for the first doctor ever to move into Fabius.
“A man named Roy Park and Duncan Hines came to my dad to try to ‘brand’ the Duncan Hines’ name. They had failed on seven or eight other tries. Dad created Duncan Hines bread, and it was such a large success Proctor and Gamble bought the brand name for baked goods less than two years later. We lived at Delphi Falls during that time.”
While the Antils lived there, Walt Disney came to the house to ask Michael to help create a Donald Duck bread, Antil said. Clarence Nash, who was Donald Duck’s voice in cartoons, also came to the house for dinner, “and brought a Donald Duck costume I got to wear at our school Halloween party,” Antil said.
Gov. Dewey also visited the Delphi Falls house and, although Antil does not know exactly why, assumes that, “as every grocer in the state knew my dad, Governor Dewey was asking for support in his run for president. I remember seeing both their silhouettes standing in front of the fireplace and talking.”
The Antils left Delphi Falls in the 1960s when his father sold his interest in the Durkee’s Bakery and announced his retirement. He made a bad investment in a new restaurant in North Syracuse and lost everything, Antil said. He took a job in Milwaukee Wisconsin with a bakery there.
“My dad told me that his attorney somehow got the [Delphi Falls] property for $17,000, and subsequently sold or transferred it in sale to the Allen family,” Antil said.
Antil, who attended Fabius Central School from grades two to 11, is the author of the award-winning series of novels, “The Pompey Hollow Book Club,” which started as bedtime stories to his daughter about what his life was like when he grew up.
“I took truths and stretched them into fun stories for her. When she was 13 she asked me to publish a book of my bedtime stories,” Antil said. “My first novel, ‘The Pompey Hollow Book Club,’ took place in 1949. I used real characters I grew up with, used their real names, with permission. It was named Book of the Year – Writers & Authors.
“In doing my research on my novel writing and of the area I grew up in, I remembered the characteristics of the place and the people there. My book series about Delphi Falls and the area are considered historical fiction as I take great care in having true backdrops. In the late 1940s or early 50s, there were 52 local farms managing a total of 3,200 cows — and any mother there could scold you and call your mom.”
Antil’s second book, “The Book of Charlie,” was based on the true story of his friend Charlie Pitts dying, Antil’s first summer job at the Hotel Syracuse and of the two men who tried to steal a piece of his family’s iron fencing for scrap medal. “My brother drove and we chased them up the hill towards Cazenovia,” Antil said.
Antil said he was pleased to hear that his childhood home will become a county park. “The Delphi Falls is a natural resource that should belong to the public,” he said. “I’m particularly pleased the park system is taking it over because, lacking a historical society of local accomplishment, making Delphi Falls a public park will help tell its marvelous story it has to share. Perhaps they would have a room displaying what was accomplished in that home.”
Antil’s four Pompey Hollow Book Club books are all available at the Cazenovia Public Library. More information on Antil and his books can also be found on his website at jeromemarkantil.com.
