3

For most folks, growing old develops into a full-time job. So it was for Fred. At first it's an annoyance and only gradually do you find your world filled up with appliances and helpers and appointments and limitations. Your horizons shrink; you find yourself more and more focused on the fundamentals. Getting dressed and getting breakfast for yourself and arguing with the home health aide, remembering to take your drops and your pills. While the years pass, the forests out back are growing, and so are the kids in the families that have bought land that back up to your land. Kids are building tree houses in your trees, people are enjoying their walks and snowmobiling in your woods.

All this activity never seemed to bother Fred that much. Maybe he liked it. He never posted his land. Real estate agents told families that were moving in that Fred's land was too ledgy to ever develop. And they believed them, of course, because we all want to believe that things are never going to change.

With Fred's guns around and his habit of waving them when he got into arguments with his home health aides, he had trouble keeping help. But he was damned if he would go into a nursing home. An older man who worked for VNA/Hospice, Richard LaRose, was the only aide that Fred really got along with.

Bob Dostal told me that at some point Father O'Connor encouraged Fred to make a will and referred him to Northampton attorney Patrick Melnik, who was active in the church, to draw it up. Melnik is not just a lawyer; he has also been a developer and represented developers at public hearings.. He is a seasoned combatant. In the 1980s, he chaired the Northampton Conservation Commission. Today he and his wife, Alice Melnik, and the Melnik Nominee Trust own an aggregate of about 67 acres off of Chesterfield Road. In the 80's, while he was on the conservation commission, Melnik bought a large tract on Roberts Hill up off Chesterfield Road and later developed Shepherd's Hollow, a 12-unit flag lot.

In l989, Melnik represented his brother-in-law, Thomas Hanley, administrator of the Hampshire Care nursing home on River Road, Leeds, when he was in a battle with the Northampton Zoning Board of Appeals. The ZBA ruled that 13 building lots that Hanley and his wife wanted to develop off Park Hill Road were not legal because they were on a dirt road. Thomas Hanley and Patrick Melnik are trustees of Hampshire Care Nominee Trust, which owns property in Westhampton. According to newspaper accounts, Patrick Melnik, over the years, has fought some nasty battles on unpopular sides. He represented 29 landowners in Williamsburg in their so-far unsuccessful attempt to block construction of a bike trail in that town. In 1988 he represented contractor Eugene Tacy in a controversial case in Leeds that led to Northampton building inspector Paul Duclos being fired for issuing Tacy a permit for a foundation. Both the Melniks have gotten involved in adversarial actions against abutters and would-be abutters to their offices at 110 King St. Edouard deVarennes owner of Breeders Choice, bought the lot next door, but ended up abandoning his plans and moving to their present Pleasant Street location when Alice Melnik filed a suit challenging the ZBA decision that gave deVarennes permission to build. read more>>>