SARANAC LAKE — This year’s Saranac Lake Winter Carnival grand marshals are Bill Madden III and Heidi Holderied.

The couple is involved with several local volunteer groups, including Winter Carnival. For several years now, they’ve offered a grant program through the Adirondack Foundation, giving out grants to people who need a little money to make their Winter Carnival vision a reality.

Madden is a fourth-generation native of Saranac Lake. Holderied grew up in Lake Placid.

Madden is an active member of the Saranac Lake Volunteer Rescue Squad’s dive team and a past member of the Saranac Lake Volunteer Fire Department. He served as Saranac Lake village mayor, trustee, and on the Saranac Lake school board and BOCES board. He’s also volunteered with Habitat for Humanity.

He donates his time and moving van to Santa’s Helpers and helps Historic Saranac Lake move the cure cottage on wheels around town for various local events. He donates and stores the judge’s bandstand for the Carnival parade in addition to providing storage space for the Carnival committee year-round. He’s also been a leading member of the Ice Palace Workers 101 since his early 20s, before the IPW even existed.

Holderied talks up her husband.

“He’s the real volunteer,” she said, adding that he inspires her to volunteer.

Holderied is a volunteer for High Peaks Hospice and Mercy Care and is an Adirondack Health Foundation board member. She dutifully collects and sorts film plastic from her family’s Lake Placid business to contribute to the Trex community bench recycling program in Saranac Lake.

She worked as a hotelier, and now works as a physical therapist for Essex County and provides home health services to the homebound elderly.

Madden said, growing up in Saranac Lake, volunteering is a way of life. He doesn’t have second thoughts about getting involved in things. It’s how things happen in the community, he said.

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The fund

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Madden has often heard from people who said they’d get more involved in Carnival, but it would cost too much. The idea to start a fund and grant program came from their whole family.

“My inspiration to start the foundation came when I was in Sylvia’s (Tailoring Shop and Boutique) once and saw a bunch of young ladies having their Winter Carnival Court dresses altered,” Holderied said. “I thought … ‘Who has to pay for all this stuff?’ So I went home, talked to my family about the idea and they were all on board.”

The fund distributes around $2,500 each year, usually five $500 grants, to fund floats, costumes, concerts and shows.

“A lot of groups have taken advantage of it,” Carnival Committee Chair Jeff Branch said “It really helps the parade.”

Holderied said it’s always great to see these things come alive at Carnival time.

“It makes us sure we did the right thing,” she said.

They always have more requests than they can give out. All the grants were granted before December this year and next year is already booked up. Madden said sometimes Holderied puts in money from their own pockets for events or floats. To learn how to apply for a grant, or to donate to the fund, contact the Adirondack Foundation.

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Ice Palace

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Madden was the bridge between the evolving phases of the Ice Palace build, in the days when its future was not guaranteed. He helped usher in the volunteer era of the Ice Palace Workers 101 we know today.

Back then, Charlie Keough supervised the construction of the Ice Palace, with the village Department of Public Works putting in labor.

In 1981, Madden — who was in his mid-20s — was sent down with a crane from his family business to help out. But he didn’t get hooked then.

It was the next year when he made the mistake of going down to see family friend Sue Dyer at the build site.

“How would you like to be Ice Palace Chairman?” Dyer asked him.

The village was stepping away from construction and Keough was sick that year. Madden didn’t realize what he was getting into. He didn’t even know the first thing about building an ice palace.

In those days, there were some volunteers, but very few. Inmates from the Camp Gabriels minimum security state prison cut ice blocks during the day, and sometimes it was only Madden stacking them with a backhoe and crane at night.

He would make dares with the inmates to get a couple more rows out of them. On two or three occasions he swam the channel the ice blocks were floated down. More often, if they cut more rows he would run across rows of floating blocks. He preferred this one because he had a good success rate and said he only fell in once.

The ice blocks in 1982 started at 28 inches and grew to 36 inches by the end of the build, he said, so heavy they could not be moved without machines. It was “brutally cold.” The handsaws used to cut blocks sunk so deep they could barely be seen when they were cutting to the bottom. The builders had to alter tools and use different machines to match the block depth.

Madden spent years asking for volunteers on the radio and in the Enterprise. They started trickling in at first — mostly Madden’s family and good friends — but eventually they built a core group of the “Dirty Dozen.”

Dean Baker was one of the people listening to the local radio station in 1983 when he heard Madden come on the air and say they needed help to finish the build. Baker still builds to this day, and last year retired from the IPW director position after 18 years.

The volunteer base built over the years as people saw what was happening and decided to show up. Today, there’s a robust crew of around 50 people who build the Ice Palace, some traveling from out-of-state or taking time off of work just for the opportunity to be part of the build

To this day, 1989’s palace is Madden’s favorite. This was around when IPW started.

Back then, winters were longer and colder and they usually had a much longer building season. But 1983 was “a disaster.”

There was a severe January thaw and all their work had to be knocked down. Enterprise reporters believed it wouldn’t happen. But Madden said with “tons of volunteer help,” they rebuilt a smaller palace in one weekend.

In this time, the evening and weekend crews of volunteers “blossomed.” People got hooked.

“It’s like an addiction,” Madden said. “It’s very rewarding when you realize it’s there for the community. It’s very short-lived but it almost defines our community in the winter.”

Holderied grew up in Lake Placid and said she did not have a personal emotional connection to Carnival. But she sees what it means for her husband and her sons.

“More people come home for Carnival than for any holiday,” she said.

It’s the one time a year that brings the extended community together. Madden remembers when he lived in Connecticut in middle and high schools, he’d always return for Carnival. Their sons have friends who come up every year for the event.

“We come home and the hot tub is filled with people we don’t know,” Madden said.

The grand marshals will be chauffeured in a Jeep near the start of the Feb. 8 Gala Parade next week, riding down Broadway and Main Street, to the judge’s bandstand Madden donated to the event.