By Jim Devine
Staff Writer

Observer/Bruce Preston Kasmir Ulaky, former co-owner of Canobie Lake Park, Salem, died at age 83.

One of the partners that helped make Salem’s Canobie Lake Park a New Hampshire landmark, Kasmir Ulaky, died late Tuesday evening, Feb. 14, at Holy Family Hospital in Methuen, Mass.

Ulaky, 83, was the last surviving member of a partnership that modernized the Salem amusement park. In the late ’50s, he purchased the park with Claude Captell and Anthony Berni Sr., who died in 1993 and 2004, respectively. The families of the partners are now owners of the park.

Ulaky’s son Wayne remembered when his father visited a very small New Hampshire town called Salem in 1957 with interests in buying a park with his partners. At that time Route 93 hadn’t been developed any further north than the Merrimack River.

“He and his two partners from New Jersey wanted to have a park together and they looked at several,” he said. “One in New Jersey, one in Pennsylvania and one in a little town called Salem, New Hampshire, and back then it was very little.”

Ulaky, a World War II veteran, served in the air force as a B-24 bomber pilot and was missing in action for a period of time after his plane was shot down in Eastern Europe. Upon his return home, he was awarded an Air Medal and a Purple Heart.

He started his work with amusement parks out on South Beach in Staten Island, N.Y., with a concession stand and later owned and operated small rides at Dietch’s Kiddie Zoo in Fair Lawn, N.J. But it was in February 1958 when he invested in the purchase of Canobie Lake Park with the Captell-Berni-Ulaky partnership.

The park released a statement that said Ulaky’s dedication to Canobie Lake Park helped it become a modern family entertainment facility.

“Staff, guests and business associates of Canobie Lake Park have expressed abundant appreciation to Kas for his visionary achievements,” the statement said. “They have supported him during his long illness and will warmly remember him forever.”

Former selectmen and friend Larry Belair said Ulaky was unlike anyone else in Salem when Belair first became a selectman in the 1960s. Ulaky was especially considerate to listening to the community’s needs, he said.

“Kas was so very down to earth, willing to work with community leaders and very understanding of the responsibilities that others had to meet,” Belair said. “I never saw him speak crossly or do anything less than a perfect gentleman would.”

Later, Belair’s daughter, Lynne, married Ulaky’s son Wayne and he said he enjoyed many hours in the company of Ulaky and his wife, Rita.

“He set a standard by which many of us would do well to set as a personal goal,” Belair added.

“He was a man of very few words,” his son said. “But most of the people who have known him for lifetime have said to me that whenever he did speak, he always made sense.”