Mr. Boniface was an avid outdoorsman, who loved the outdoors with fishing being his favorite.
Edward “Ted” J. Boniface Sr., owner/partner of Pine Bush Equipment, passed away on Sept. 19, 2013, at Catskill Regional Medical Center in Harris, N.Y. He was 71.
The son of the late Edward Boniface and Dorothy Goldsmith Boniface, he was born on May 8, 1942, in Bridgeport, Conn. Mr. Boniface was the owner of Multi Generations Excavating of White Lake, a member of the MountainView United Methodist (Pine Bush) Church. He joined the Iroquois Club in 1988 and served as the president from 2001-2005. He also held several positions, Life Member of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, and Life Member of the Buck Masters. Mr. Boniface was an avid outdoorsman, who loved the outdoors with fishing being his favorite. He was a loving husband, father, grandfather, brother, uncle and great-grandfather.
Mr. Boniface played an integral role in the iconic Woodstock concert in 1969, held in nearby Bethel, N.Y.
The eldest brother in the Boniface family, Ted Boniface served as Pine Bush’s general manager in 1969.
“The first time they were here, they bought $1,700 worth of stuff and gave us a check for it. For a walk-in customer, that was a major purchase in merchandise, such as chain saws and gas cans,” Mr. Boniface told Construction Equipment Guide in a 2001 interview.
From that initial purchase, the supply list grew to include everything from equipment rentals, such as bulldozers, forklifts and generators, to prepare the site and build roads, to hardware to build stages and fences.
Mr. Boniface became so involved with the job that he and his brother Steve actually lived at the site.
“During the last week, I took my pop-up camper, parked it by the lake, and proceeded to stay there 24 hours a day, meeting with them at 2 a.m. to get their orders that they needed for that day,” he said.
“I would call my office at 7 a.m. and put the orders in, and everybody would run around and try to scrape up lots of items that we’d never even sold before. But because we were one of their major suppliers, we were getting fire extinguishers and different things that were kind of out of our context, but things that we could find the supply for. We ended up supplying them with quite a large volume of dollars of merchandise over a period of time.”
Boniface estimated that Pine Bush supplied approximately $157,000 in merchandise to Woodstock before the festival’s end, which ended up being the company’s largest account for the year.
Survivors include his wife of 51 years, Barbara; sons Edward Boniface of White Lake, James Boniface and his wife Zoe of Pine Bush, Joseph Boniface of Pine Bush, and David Boniface and his wife Lori of Pine Bush; grandchildren Edward J. Boniface III, Leann Hewett, James Boniface Jr., Drew Boniface, Stephanie Battaglia, Allison Battaglia, Nicole Boniface, Kylie Boniface, Jessica Boniface, Joseph Boniface, Bria Boniface, David Boniface Jr., Jonathan Boniface, Nicholas Boniface, Heather Gendron and Stephanie Gendron; great grandchildren Sadie Boniface, Riley Gallo and Aubrey Gallo; brothers Kenneth R. Boniface and his wife Veronica, Thomas A. Boniface and his wife Jean, and Steven H. Boniface and his wife Debbie; sisters Donna L. Dopp and her husband Jack, and Holly Bodnar and her husband Michael. Mr. Boniface was further survived by many nieces and nephews and was predeceased by his grandsons Ryan Hewett and Andrew Boniface, and his great granddaughter Allison McClure.
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