Bill "Moose" Connolly

Bill went off to SUNY Brockport after Riverside and earned his BS in 1965. While at Brockport, he played football. He was a starter for three years and was Team Captain as a senior. After graduation, he taught 6^th grade and coached football at East Syracuse-Minoa School. In 1966, Bill married his college sweetheart  -- Sylvia Duffy. 

Like many of our generation, Bill got drafted. He was teaching school one day and in the Army the next. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Artillery after an OCS training program at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. Every one of Bill's classmates in OCS was shipped to Vietnam except him. He and Sylvia were sent to Germany to defend Europe and fight the Cold War for two years. Their first child, Kathleen (Katie), was born in Wuerzburg, Germany the day of the first lunar landing, July 20, 1969. 

After being discharged while in Europe, they decided to do a little traveling before returning to the U.S. They took their VW camper to Greece and then up to Sweden and Norway. Katie learned to walk in the back of that camper. Once they got back to the States, Bill did his graduate work at SUNY Albany and had an assistantship at Geneseo State. He spent 7 years teaching at Potsdam State and as Director of its Star Lake Campus. His second child, Erin, was born in January 1973, the coldest week of that year! It didn't get above -20^oF for 7 days. 

He returned to the Syracuse area in 1979 as Director of Counseling Services at Onondaga Central School before coming to Phelps-Clifton Springs to be the Intermediate School Principal. Sylvia is the Director of Vocational, Adult and Continuing Education at the Wayne-Finger Lakes BOCES. 

Bill and Sylvia love to ski as much as possible each winter and enjoy traveling to Colorado and California whenever they can. They spend their summers at their "getaway" home in Heron Landing, on Oneida Lake. Katie is now in her 8^th year of teaching and Erin is an accountant for Xerox.