CITIZEN OF THE YEAR: Eric Hage/Upstate’s Decline Drew Him To Politics

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Eric Hage was raised in Rochester, where his father was an executive with Eastman Kodak.
But his cousins were in the Cooperstown area, and the family spent their summers here.
It must have been a good experience, because dad Chuck and mom Ursula retired here, and over the years their children gravitated back.
Since 2002, Eric and Dan work together at Mohican Financial, their investment company at 21 Railroad Ave.  Sister Maureen, with husband Matt Schuermann, is raising their daughters locally.
After high school, Eric attended Cornell, (where he was president of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity.) After receiving a B.S. in agricultural economics in 1986, he went on to Columbia, earning an MBA in finance and international economics in 1989.
He held trading and management positions at Smith Barney, Bear Stearns, and was director of convertible arbitrage accounts at Salomon Smith Barney before founding Mohican Financial.
He and wife Noel, a Suffern native he met in New York, have three children, John, 12, Ann, 10, and Mary, 6.
He was elected to the village board in 2007, drawn to politics by the decline of Upstate New York he’s observed over the years.
He remembers a vibrant Fort Plain – his parents were raised there – that has sadly declined today.