CITIZEN OF THE YEAR: Neil R. Weiller/From Main Street Shop To 22 Main

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Neil W. Weiller was raised in golden California.
That was everybody’s dream in the decade and a half after World War II.
But Cooperstown was always in the back of his mind, as his mother, Virginia, planted hollyhocks from home in their backyard in Riverside.
His ancestors included Wyckoffs, Hokes, Rathbuns, Thayers, tenant farmers and hop growers in Otsego County back into the 19th century.
His father, Robert, and mother grew up on the same block in New York City, going to the same church and eventually marrying. 
The newlyweds made a pilgrimage to Cooperstown in 1950, staying at The Otesaga and visiting the newly opened Farmers’ Museum.
After law school, the new attorney went west. Son Neil was born and recalls a “typical 1960s-’50s suburbia” childhood.
He studied accounting at USC and Stanford, then came east to New York City, working in increasingly responsible financial roles for Wedgwood, the maker of fine china, then Fred Joaillier, the high-end jeweler.
As dad Robert pledged he would do during that 1950 visit, he bought a summer house on Otsego Lake in 1983, and Neil visited frequently in the summers, moving fulltime in 1992 and opening Muskrat Hill, originally a ladies’ gift shop.
He’d never even worn a T-shirt before stumbling on the “Life Is Good” brand, but soon found that corner of his store was generating 60 percent of his business, so he specialized, later adding Croc shoes.
In his early years in Cooperstown, he was active in “everything,” serving for a period as the president of the Glimmerglass Opera Guild.
The parking debate drew him to run for office in 2008, leading the ticket in a four-way race for two seats on the Cooperstown village board.