Bob Hirsch, Ellenville booster and decades-long face of the Ulster County Chamber of Commerce, has died. Hirsch, 67, passed away on October 30 in Camden, South Carolina after a long battle with cancer.

Hirsch was born in Brooklyn but moved to Ellenville as a child. He remained there, living in the house he grew up in until his recent move to South Carolina to be closer to family. In 1978, Hirsch was hired by the Ulster County Chamber of Commerce to administer a federal job training program that he would grow into a million-dollar operation.

Chamber President Ward Todd recalls Hirsch’s passion for his work and his ability to use his vast knowledge of the Ulster County’s business community to help connect people with jobs. Hirsch became an integral part of the organization and fixture at chamber events and ribbon cuttings across the county.

“Bob was a great matchmaker,” said Todd. “He was just very, very good at determining someone’s skill set and who could use that best. He was very successful at that for a number of years.”

Later, as the chamber’s director of business services and communication, Hirsch helped establish the chamber’s IT infrastructure and online presence. But Todd said Hirsch’s most valuable contribution was his personality and ability to network – making introductions, encouraging collaborations, and serving as a welcoming presence at chamber events. Hirsch, Todd recalled, would show up at 5:30 a.m. to set up the group’s monthly breakfast meetings wrapping up in time extend a warm welcome to attendees.

“He was known as the guy who greeted everyone with a smile,” said Todd. “He just had the most wonderful, outgoing personality.”

Hirsch was also an early board member of the Hudon Valley LGBTQ+ Community Center. He leveraged his connections in the business community to help get the organization off the ground. Fred Mayo, who served alongside Hirsch on the board, recalled him as an active and energetic presence who knew how to ask probing questions to better understand issues and make decisions.

Hirsch served as chair of the center’s programming committee, evaluating existing services and helping to develop new ones. Mayo said Hirsch used his wide network of contacts in the county to assess and address the needs of the LGBTQ community.

“He was ideally suited to talk to people all across the community about what the center should be doing and how we should be doing it,” said Mayo. “Every decision we made he wanted to think about it carefully, what is our audience, what are we doing for the community?”

To former Ellenville village manager and Ulster County comptroller Eliot Auerbach, Hirsch was the village’s conduit to the rest of the county using his connections to inform and advocate for the community. The dedication to Ellenville reflected his deep roots there. Hirsch’s father was an executive at Channel Master, a manufacturer of antennae and aluminum tubing and part of the village’s small white-collar community. His mother owned an antique shop on Canal Street and passed on to her son her love of vintage furniture. Hirsch lived in the family home off of Carnation Avenue helping his parents as they aged and staying on after they passed.

“Hus claim to fame was that he was Mister Ulster County Chamber of Commerce,” said Auerbach. “And he used that to build the bridge between all of the communities and then come home to Ellenville at night knowing that that was his spot.”

Later in life, Auerbach recalled, Hirsch became an avid walker of the D&H Canal trail reporting back on bear sightings and trail conditions, serving as a kind of “neighborhood watch” for the path. Auerbach described Hirsch and quiet and laid back with a “contemplative” approach to decision making and a willingness to put himself in service of the community.

“A real nice human being,” said Auerbach. “That’s the best way I can describe him.”