A half-century after he created the pioneering and phenomenally successful Storytown, U.S.A. amusement park (now The Great Escape) in Lake George, N.Y., 89-year-old Charley Wood still possesses the same two traits that have propelled his entire life: a love of business and having a good time. Accomplishing both simultaneously is the essence of a self-made entrepreneur for whom entertainment was a natural, seemingly inevitable calling. Charley’s eye for opportunity was keen from the start. Born in 1914 in Lockport in western New York, he was already a bold investor as a teenager. “When I was in high school, I bought a couple of houses,” he recalls. He bought the first when he was 13 years old for his parents to live in. He remembers it with typically vivid detail—“The house had a black walnut trim. My folks were so happy when we moved in. We loved that house,” he says. Clearly a young man with drive, Charley says, “I was a little ball-buster.” He was as mechanically adept as he was ambitious. Charley bought a Ford Model T to work on when he was 12 years old, and on one of his Lockport properties, he’d done the construction, turning a carriage house into a rental unit. College wasn’t for Charley, though. After less than a year at the University of Michigan, he went to work for General Motors, then to Curtis Wright in 1938 as an aircraft technician. During World War II, he spent 38 months overseas. In Egypt, he serviced British Air Force planes and eventually supervised 290 mechanics. He spent 18 more months in the Pacific working for Douglas Aircraft. After the war, Charley got down to his own business. An article in Reader’s Digest led him to Southern California to see Knott’s Berry Farm. “I fell in love with what he had done,” says Charley. “Mr. Knott had created the boysenberry, and Mrs. Knott cooked chicken and made boysenberry pie. People would swarm this place. Mr. Knott built a chapel and a volcano to entertain people while they waited for the dinner. He had started an amusement park. I came back full of beans and wanted to get into the amusement business.” Opportunity Knocks All his life Charley says he read the business opportunity ads in the classified pages of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. A listing for a roller skating rink sent him to Albany, N.Y. He says he was all set to buy it, but the deal was stymied by the seller’s wife. He eventually found out that she and the skate rink manager were an item, and she didn’t want to cost him his job. Charley was left on State Street in downtown Albany, still hunting for a business opportunity to sink his teeth into. He saw an ad for a property for sale about 60 miles north in the Lake George-Adirondack region. Not knowing the area, he asked a policeman for directions. The officer pointed to the U.S. 9 sign on a utility pole and told Charley to follow those signs north. It turned out to be the fateful journey. “It was just so pretty,” says Charley. “And I could just see nothing but opportunities.” The ad for the Adirondack property had been placed by Earl Woodward, himself a legendary salesman, developer, and entrepreneur who turned former millionaire estates on Lake George into cottage resorts and parlayed the out-of-the-way Lake Luzerne area a few miles away into dude ranch country. Woodward and Wood hit it off instantly, although the first property Charley bought from him, farther north in Schroon Lake, turned out to be too far from the action. But when Charley bought a stone mansion on the west shore of Lake George from Woodward and turned it into the Holiday House resort, Wood was on his way. Holiday House, on the shore of one of America’s most beautiful lakes, was a full-scale summer resort, but Charley says he learned a quick, important lesson. Guests would “eat the meals, use the boats, play tennis, go water skiing, and then, when it was time to leave, say, ‘This was a terrible place. I’m not going to pay for this.’ They wanted an attraction.” Storytown Windfall In 1954, Charley and his late wife, Margaret, invested $75,000 on five acres on the east side of U.S. 9 between Lake George and Glens Falls, launchng Storytown, U.S.A., an amusement park themed by the Mother Goose rhymes. On the eve of its debut, Charley says he was uncharacteristically doubting himself. “I sat on the Mother Goose hill and I cried and I thought, ‘What have I done? I’m not gonna have anybody pay and see what I’ve done.’” But when the park opened, the result was just the opposite. “The first day people came in droves. When we tried to count the money, somebody’d open the door, and money would blow all over the place.” Not only was Charley doing big business, he was making connections and friendships that set the stage for much bigger success. Even before Storytown opened, “I was in the brook with waders on, cutting brush, and the boys came in and said, ‘Arto Monaco’s here to see you.’ He was driving a Corvette. I was thinking, ‘Oh boy, he’s got money.’ But he told me it was his partner’s car.” Monaco told Charley that he intended to open his own theme park farther north in the Adirondacks, in his hometown of Upper Jay, and he, too, was thinking of calling it Storytown. Charley recalls, “I said, ‘You SOB. I hate you.’ But Arto said, ‘Wait a minute. I came to meet you. I want to be your friend. There are a thousand other names.’” Arto, an industry pioneer in his own right who has the same zest for life as Charley, instead titled his park The Land of Make Believe. “He’s been my good friend for 40 years,” says Charley—and business associate as well. Arto designed and built many of the houses and attractions not just at Storytown but at other Charley Wood properties. “I plowed all the money back into things, improvements,” Charley says of Storytown’s success. On the hill above Storytown, he created Ghost Town. “I used to stand up on the hill and look down on the cars in the parking lot, and the men were all smokin’ cigars and leanin’ against their cars, talking to other men. I said, ‘I gotta get them in here.’” So he built Ghost Town and Dan McGrew’s Saloon. “We had a sign that said, ‘No Women Allowed.’ And we had a bar where a man could take his son for a beer. We only served root beer, but we made it a real ‘man’s bar.’” Five years after founding Storytown, U.S.A., Charley opened an entirely new park, Gaslight Village, “Yesterday’s Fun Today,” four miles up the road in Lake George Village. While Storytown always closed for the day by 5:30, Gaslight Village was the late afternoon and nighttime attraction. Near Gaslight Village, Charley opened the Tiki Resort, a Polynesian-themed motel, restaurant, and nightclub that he remembers nostalgically. In contrast to fairy tale Storytown, the Tiki nightlife was a little outrageous, with the adult repartee of Sophie Tucker-style Hurricane Hattie and the boldly displayed physical assets of the Hawaiian performer, Kaena. The bartender, says Charley, was a woman named Lani, whom he describes as having “the biggest bosoms in the country. She made a mint of money. She’d put her boobs right up on the counter and say, ‘What can I help you with?’” Charley opened another steak house called The Blacksmith Shop with a motif that combined western with Lil’ Abner. “I had fun there, because the girls were nice, and I put these short skirts on ’em and made ’em a Daisy Mae,” says Charley. He also opened the Cavalcade of Cars and a wax museum. The Great Escape Along the way, Charley served as president of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions in 1977 and was inducted into its Hall of Fame. Amid so many ventures, Charley never lost fervor for his original park. In 1982, he changed the name of Storytown to The Great Escape. In 1986, he installed The Raging River, adding the waterpark dimension. In 1989, Charley sold The Great Escape to International Broadcasting Corporation (IBC), which then owned the Ice Capades and Harlem Globetrotters and was looking to branch into amusement parks. “They came and made an offer I couldn’t refuse,” says Charley. “I had dreamed of doing what Six Flags has done—of buying other parks. I wanted to control a number of parks, so this was my chance.” The $36 million price was paid half in stock, which became virtually worthless after IBC subsequently filed for bankruptcy. That was the bad news. The good news was that Charley was able to buy back The Great Escape, plus Fantasy Island park in western New York. He kept improving The Great Escape, most notably when he bought the vintage wooden roller coaster, The Comet, from Crystal Beach, Ontario. “I bought that in a teeming rainstorm. It was one of the oldest and greatest roller coasters in the country, and it had a wonderful reputation, so I bought it.” Then another suitor called—Premier Parks, since renamed Six Flags. Charley says he was paid $37 million—$36 million for the park, $1 million for his serving on their board for four years—and this time it was all in cash. The Wood family’s roots in the park business have extended outward. Charley’s daughter, Bobbie Wages, and her husband, Tom, who both helped Charley run The Great Escape, now manage Kennywood Entertainment’s Lake Compounce in Connecticut. “They’ve done a terrific job,” says Charley. Ever on the prowl for opportunities, Charley mentions a park he says he’s still in pursuit to buy. “I know someone who I would put in charge of it and give them a chance because they want to get into the park business,” he says. Meanwhile, Charley has moved full tilt into philanthropy. Through the Charles R. Wood Foundation, he donated $1 million for the children’s room at the Crandall Public Library in Glens Falls; $500,000 toward turning the vacant former Woolworth store, also in Glens Falls, into a 300-seat theater; and $1.4 million—the largest individual gift ever received by Glens Falls Hospital—which the hospital used to create the Charles R. Wood Cancer Center. In Albany, N.Y., Charley funded the children’s floor at Albany Medical Center. But the biggest gift has been to create and fund the Hole in the Woods Ranch for critically ill children in Lake Luzerne, co-founded by Charley and actor Paul Newman. Charley says, “I’d written him a letter seeking help to create a children’s place like Newman’s place in Connecticut” at a resort called Sun Castle that Charley owned on Lake George. Charley says Newman initially turned him down, but that Charley sent a follow-up letter saying, “I will never be as well-known as you are. I will never have the money that you do, but my heart is just as big as yours.” “Then he called me,” says Charley. “I was in Tiffany’s [in New York] and I heard on the speaker, ‘Paul Newman wants to speak to Charley Wood.’” Charley says Newman had tracked him down through Charley’s secretary in Glens Falls and that Newman said, “I want to fly up and see you and bring some of my men up to see this Sun Castle. He says the punch line of the story is that the Montcalm Restaurant had prepared a picnic lunch on site. With the food already prepared and served, he says Newman announced, “Charley Wood, what do you want from me?’ I said, ‘A million dollars.’ He said, ‘You got it. Let’s eat.’ I’ve never made a million dollars so easy in my life. And he did come through. He gave me $3.5 million dollars for the ranch.” Charley says his donations to Hole in the Woods amount to $10 million, and that he estimates he’s given $15 million to $17 million to causes overall. “I made my money here, I want to leave it here,” says Charley. “I’m leaving everything to the Foundation, so they’ll be able to help local charities. I wish I had a billion dollars, cause I’d have the fun of giving it away. There’s so many good causes. The Foundation really keeps me busy.” “I’ve had fun all my life,” says Charley, who laughs easily even as he fights various health ailments, including the aftermath of five heart attacks. “Pray and work your butt off and you’ll be a success,” he says. ”Don’t be afraid to fail. Just take that shot. Go for it.”
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