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VETERAN NEWSMAN PAYS TRIBUTE TO ONE OF THE MEMORABLE CHARACTERS

GUEST VIEW by George Sample

Editors' note: George Sample has been a newspaper writer, editor and publisher for the past 60 years, a career that has taken him variously from running the Chicago Sun-Times and the Jerusalem Post to his current role as head of the Sample News Group, a family-owned syndicate of newspapers located throughout the eastern United States. But his heart always belonged to the small town of Corry, in Erie County, Pa.

While Sample got to know luminaries such as Muhammad Ali, Henry Kissinger, David Brinkley and dozens of others over the years, he's always had a soft spot in his heart for the charming rogues of this world.

Carl Hillstrom was just such a character. A freebooter and marijuana smuggler, his escape from the federal prison at Allenwood in the late 1980s put law enforcement -- and the media -- on high alert in northwestern Pennsylvania. Here's George's take.

CORRY, PA. -- When Carl Hillstrom died at 56 a few days ago, those 56 years were calendar years. His life experiences added up to more.

He was large physically, and his mind worked overtime a lot.

Someone called him a romantic adventurer. Certainly, he loved the cutting edge of adventurous excitement.

His dad, "Bids," was killed tragically when his snowmobile slammed into a parked car at night near Garland.

Carl was a grandchild of wealth. His grandfather, David, founded Corry Jamestown, one of the city's largest plants, with 300 workers.

With Bids gone, the family splintered.

The mom, Doris, and daughter Christine moved to Jamaica.

Carl, after coming home from fighting in wartime Vietnam, was footloose. He bought and planted his feet on a large sailboat.

Sailing the waters of the Caribbean, trekking from island to island, he was close to life as a soldier of fortune, freelancing for better ways to use his boat.

On and off the boat, he rubbed shoulders with parts of society on the fringes.

Legend has it he spent conversation time with G. Gordon Liddy, who became notorious and famous in the shakeout from the Nixon Watergate scandal.

Carl, a swashbuckling figure of a man, pursued his elusive dream, mostly off the southeast coast of America, hundreds of miles into Caribbean ports-of-call.

From a devil-may-care series of cutting-edge races through life, his death was an irony of immense proportions.

He walked out of a store in Waycross, Ga., started to cross the street and fell dead on the side of the pavement in the sleepy Southern town.

Put together a montage of Corry characters, and Carl left a mark as a romantic adventurer, saw a lot, smiled a lot and surely had enough memories for two lifetimes.

Carl, it was good to know you.

Niagara Falls Reporter www.niagarafallsreporter.com April 26 2005