William Savage

William Gordon Savage, D.D.S., 76, of Swanton, MD, died Sept. 23, 2014 at home, overlooking his beloved lake and listening to the pre-dawn snorts of deer in the woods.

An oral surgeon and dentist, he practiced in Oakland for more than 40 years, from 1966 until retiring in 2007. In addition to his own practice, he was on staff at Garrett Memorial Hospital. During the later decades of his career, he restored a historic home, the McIntire House, on Oak Street to house his dental office. Loquacious and curious, his career afforded him the perfect opportunity to share stories and deeply know generations of the families of this region. Generous in nature and a creative problem solver, he was known to trade tooth pulling for slabs of honeycomb, partials for sacks of potatoes, and crowns for couch re-upholstery. The stories of these offerings in lieu of cash were better gifts and forged more meaningful connections with those he served.

An avid outdoorsman, he embraced everything Garrett County had to offer, from its woods, to its lakes and streams, to its farmland.

As a teen, he worked for the Gordon Douglas Boat Company, where he learned to build his own motor and sailboats to enjoy and race on Deep Creek Lake. His waterski tricks were legendary, inspiring family, friends, and neighbors to vainly attempt to out-best him. For more than 60 years, he was a member of the Deep Creek Yacht Club on Turkeyneck Road, where he was not only an avid sailor, but also instrumental in the social life of the club. As chairman of buildings and grounds, he was a familiar sight on his John Deere tractor caring for the docks. A collector of old barn wood, he donated most of his finds of wormy chestnut to line the club walls and craft award cabinets. As Commodore in 1999, he instituted the now-iconic Friday night dinners.

When the mountainside in the northern end of the county was developed for skiing, he joined the Wisp Ski Patrol, where he served for nearly 50 years, lauded not only for his emergency medicine skills, but also his ability to keep equipment and rescue tobbogans in shape (which he would spend summers repairing). He believed fresh powder and blue skies a legitimate reason to take his children out of school to enjoy the slopes. To help celebrate the end of the ski season, he helped organize what began in 1968 as Yakapah Garbolo Day and eventually became Winterfest.

The birth of his children heralded in the birth of his career as a farmer, with the great desire to have the demands of caring for the earth help shape their young lives. Employing ranching techniques he learned from his days as a Captain in the U.S. Air Force in San Antonio, TX, he brought the concept of cattle guards to Garrett County, allowing him the luxury of remaining in his warm pickup on brutal winter nights to check on his cows. Although he embraced the backbreaking physical labor of farmwork and expected the same from his children (especially splitting wood, digging post holes, laying stone, and stacking hay bales), he took great pleasure in simply watching his herd of Polled Herefords eat grass as their new calves nursed. The great tragedy of his life was the loss of his youngest son Preston after a farm accident. It was a testament to the great support of his community and lifelong friends that he found the will to go on for another 26 years.

Born in Wilkinsburg, PA, he was the son of Ezra William and Nancy Gordon Savage. He grew up in the Forest Hills area of Pittsburgh playing ice hockey, spending his summers at Deep Creek Lake and his father's family land in Ontario, Canada. His boyhood sport extended throughout his life, most recently as a member of the Old-Timers hockey league in Cumberland, MD.

Somehow, he earned his B.S. from Dartmouth College in geology, despite the fact that he lived in the original fraternity that inspired the movie "Animal House." Always an instigator, he delighted in mischief making of one kind or another. His ambitious pranks and practical jokes included: completely sodding a hallmate's room, down to placing turf inside each dresser drawer; to disassembling and reassembling a car into a professor's classroom; to spiriting away geological samples and secretly placing them at dig sites to confound new research students.

He earned his Doctor of Dental Surgery degree at the University of Pittsburgh, where he fell for his "gorgeous" tutor Ruta Delgalvis. He tried to woo her with his guitar playing and songwriting, as well as rambunctious spur-of-the-moment escapades. Persistent courting and a promise of a lifetime of adventure eventually won her over. After his military service, they moved to Deep Creek Lake, where he purchased his boyhood summer home from his parents and opened his dental practice.

There wasn't anything he couldn't make, or couldn't learn to make, creating jewelry from leftover gold fillings and discovered gemstones, making stained glass artwork, tooled leatherwork, and furniture to adorn his home and as gifts for friends and family. His lawn was littered with an assortment of play structures he built for his children and grandchildren, from airplanes and trains, to jungle gyms, forts, and castles. He crafted the altar and stained glass decorations for St. John's Episcopal Church in Deer Park.

A lover of history, his children and grandchildren were all baptized and two of his children were married in "The Log Church," Our Father's House, in Altamont. Like his father before him, he attained the 32nd degree as a Mason. Devoted to geneology, he enjoyed exploring his family roots and would pack up his five children on houseboats to trace history. Each autumn he and his children would also spend a week on a sailboat exploring the Chesapeake, another avocation he deemed worth missing school.

His appreciation of history and craftsmanship developed into a passion for restoring old cars, beginning with a 1929 Model A and his uncle's 1916 Model T, followed by a '69 Jaguar and a '52 MG TD roadster (which was a familiar sight in the Autumn Glory parade). He also restored an MGB convertible for each of his children. His Model T is now housed at the Garrett County Transportation Museum. He also restored the last Wayne-Studebaker type wagon built by A.D. Naylor's livery, which he donated to the Spruce Forest Artisan Village in Grantsville.

A great advocate for preserving the natural beauty of the county as well as for the rights of landowners, he served as a considered chairman of the Deep Creek Lake Zoning Appeals Board for many years.

A celebrated liar and teller of tall tales, he served as the featured speaker at the annual Autumn Glory Festival and he shared his stories at the Deer Park VFW during the Friday Old Time Music nights, as well as during his traditional Labor Day parties and Thursday night poker nights. He created memorable "local" characters that listeners swore they either knew or must be related to, like Oscar Pepinacki, Hershal Rodeheaver, Bushrod Hardesty, Dolph Briscoe, and Emma "Buncake" Pepinacki. The locales were equally colorful and descriptive, (although not searchable on a GPS), like Fried Meat Ridge, up above Push Root Run out on Backbone Mountain. His inspiration came from the stories of his patients, his hunting buddies, and from friends he would meet at the hardware or feed stores. Perhaps his greatest character though was himself, retelling his own thinly veiled, outlandish escapades and hunting misadventures.

The great joy of autumn was hunting season, when he could walk the woods and watch the deer who had featured on his corn crops and shared in his apple trees. As they shared in his harvest, he would harvest a few to feed his family. He took great pride that the majority of food on his table came from his fields and woods, or from his wife's garden.

Opinionated, strong-willed, his way was always the right way. A tough disciplinarian, he was truly poet at heart, settling in the place among mountains and hollers, where he could be surrounded by the extraordinary beauty of the land and its people.

He is survived by his wife of 49 years, Ruta; his four children, Daina, wife of George Dailey, of Lancaster, PA, Heather, wife of Chad Crowe, of Monkton, MD, Gordon, husband of Stacy Savage of Wilmington, N.C., and Elyzabeth of Oakland, MD; his six grandchildren Colin Lynch, Lara Dailey, Carter and Logan Crowe, and Jacob and Connor Savage. He is also survived by a sister, Nancy Ann Cotter of Spring Hill, FL.

He will be interred in the Oakland Memorial Cemetery. A memorial service and celebration of his life will be held 11 a.m Oct. 12 at the Deep Creek Yacht Club on Turkeyneck Road.

In lieu of flowers, tall tales, true lies, and outlandish stories of Wild Bill, Uncle Skippy, and Doc Savage are welcome and requested. Please share with wildbillsavage@gmail.com by Oct. 10 so that some of these recollections can be offered at his memorial service. Donations can also be made to the Preston Savage Collection at the Ruth Enlow Library.

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