I had the best job anyone could ask for during the 1980 Olympics.

I reported only to Rev. J. Bernard Fell, president of the Lake Placid Olympic Games. One of the nicest guys I ever met, I knew him when he was a Lake Placid police officer. Others colleagues were in various departments with various duties and various bosses.

My single mission was to write the 12 official reports about the Lake Placid Olympic Games preparations to the International Olympic Committee, and deliver some of them to the IOC Headquarters in Switzerland. Starting with Ron Mackenzie and Rev. Fell, I had many editors who read every word before it went to press.

The reports were also required to be translated to French. Sonia Fluhmann was in charge of that translation with a firm the committee hired from Montreal.

Today, however, we are going to publish Rev. Fell’s goodbye letter to the staff, written even before the Games began. Appropriate and professional, as you will see.

I was one of the staff to stay after the Games with an office set up in the town hall to write the “final report.” After a few days, my desk was stacked high with reports of all description which I was attempting to organize. I have a copy of a letter I sent to Rev. Fell outlining suggesting a layout for the report. It was a depressing time; all our Olympic coworker friends were gone and so was the excitement of going to work every day, playing a small part in staging the Olympic Games.

Rev. Fell walks into my office one Monday morning after I had been on the job for a couple of weeks and asks, “How is it going”?

To my own surprise I answered, “I can’t do this.” Obviously I had thought a lot about it and there was no one better to discuss a problem with than Bernie Fell.

I believe Ed Lewi Associates of the Olympic Press office wrote the Final Report.

We were able to publish about 150 photos of the working staff in the final report. I chose this page today because of who is on it … my cousin Joe Mckillip and other friends — McLaughlin, Finnerty, Forest, Whitney, Battaglia, Kennedy, Ortloff, Stransenback and Rickard, etc. …