Doug Plummer, beloved Sharon Springs mayor, dies at 63
The world feels emptier to Tony Daou as he looks out from the window of his restaurant, the Black Cat Cafe. Season after season, he and Doug Plummer would tend to their gardens, brightening opposite sides of Main Street in Sharon Springs, and talk.
Plummer, whose passion and leadership helped transform the village of Sharon Springs, died on Thursday, Dec. 14 following a battle with cancer. The beloved mayor was 63.
Born in Fairview Village, Penn., Plummer grew up aspiring to perform. After earning his theater degree, Plummer moved to New York City where he met his husband Garth Roberts, a musician. In 1990, the two bought what they thought would be a summer home in Sharon Springs.
“That’s when we were introduced to this almost abandoned village, a place that would come to change the direction of our entire lives,” said Plummer in a 2018 TEDX Talk. It would also change the direction of the entire village.
The pair made Sharon Springs, once a resort mecca in the mid-1800s, their official home in 1992. The next year, the couple opened the Rockville
Cafe, which became a center for caffeine, community and the Coffee Flip, an almost daily group coin toss to determine who would buy coffee that day which Plummer frequently lost, until 2001.
Rockville Cafe would become the first of several investments Plummer and Roberts would make as they became deeply embedded in their new hometown. In 1996, the pair bought the deteriorating American Hotel for $18,000 and, over five years, invested $500,000 in savings and loans and countless hours to restore it to a fully functioning inn, restaurant and
symbol of Sharon Springs’ renaissance.
“We knew we couldn’t live here and watch it fall down,” said Plummer in a 1998 interview with the Times Union.
The energy of the American Hotel, which has been on the market since 2021, was infectious. Plummer, Roberts and others in the community bought and restored properties throughout Sharon Springs, and Plummer persuaded friends in
New York City to relocate, paving the route for a revival of the small rural village.
“He really put Sharon Springs on the map,” Daou said. “He convinced people to do stuff here, convinced people to want to live here.”
Plummer also had an eye on fostering the arts and culture scene in Sharon Springs. He and Maureen Lodes, owner of Cobbler and Co., bought the abandoned Klinkhart Hall in 2007. Plummer, who served as the executive director of the hall’s board, wanted to create “a permanent home for the large and vibrant arts community” in the village. A threephase restoration plan is slated to break ground as early as next year.
“Whenever you find a community that embraces the arts, you find creative and empathetic people motivated to make positive changes that benefit the community as a whole,” Plummer told the Times Union in November 2023.
As mayor, Plummer continued to lead the village’s renaissance, seeking state grants to fund the community’s dreams of modernizing and revitalizing Sharon Springs. He held the office from 2013 to the time of his death.
The flood of responses on social media posts announcing his death reflect an individual whose warmth, positivity and humor impacted all who met him. A recurring theme among the hundreds of comments is the void already being felt by the community he loved and who loved him back.
“He loved this place. He loved what he did,” Daou said. “He loved the people around him and he was just a powerful presence. He sort of embodied this growth of Sharon Springs, making things better and fixing things and always paying attention, always being interested.”
Plummer is survived by his husband Roberts, father, Lawrence Plummer, step-mother, Prudence Churchill, mother-in-law, Caroline Roberts, sister, Melissa Plummer-trice, brother,
Lawrence Plummer Jr., and a host of nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews. He was predeceased by his mother Elizabeth in 1981 and brother Thomas in 1974.
A memorial celebrating Plummer’s life will be held in 2024. In lieu of flowers, contributions in his name may be made to the Klinkhart Hall Arts Center.