HOMEGROWN TALENT
In most family businesses, the lines are clear from the outset. A patriarch or matriarch hatches a plan, succeeds, and then inevitably brings the children into the line of work. John D. Rockefeller Jr. followed his old man into oil and finance. The New York Times gets handed down from Sulzberger to Sulzberger.
Not so the Posts of Au Sable Forks. Larry Post literally fell into his business, by way of what could have been a tragic accident. In April of 2003, he took a nasty tumble and hit his head while skiing at Whiteface. A slow-bleeding subdural hematoma caused a stroke that nearly killed him and wiped out much of his short-term memory. He couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t remember things, couldn’t even recite the alphabet. “It was like being with somebody with Alzheimer’s,” recalls his wife, Joann.
Unable to perform his job at Georgia Pacific in Plattsburgh, the only alternative to sitting on the couch all day was an old hobby, woodworking. “I didn’t have anything else to do,” he says, “so I’d just go off to my
