Wounds of hate, flashes of hope, year's end in 'devil's snow': In Buffalo, 12 fateful months in quotes

This year is distinct, for the harshest reason. For much of 2022 in Buffalo, I covered the aftermath of an obscene act of hate, the murder of 10 people by a racist killer at Tops Markets on Jefferson Avenue. It led me to contemplate – out of respect and reverence – breaking quotes related to the massacre into a forum of their own.

But it seems to me that would be an action in step with exactly what the killer wanted – to separate lives of deep meaning in the Cold Spring neighborhood from the everyday heartbeat of the surrounding city. Each of the 10 lives stolen at Tops will always be of bedrock importance in Buffalo, and tributes and reflections born from searing grief need to be, more than ever, shared in community.

From 2022, here is the year in Western New York, in your own words:

Jan. 16: “Cold?” – An unperturbed LeRoy Reid of Buffalo, dismissing near-zero temperatures as he and his son Remington sat at the top of Section 338, about as far from the field at Highmark Stadium as you could get, while the Bills steamrolled New England in the playoffs on a frigid night – a week before the aching loss known as “13 seconds” in Kansas City.

Jan. 22: “I’m thinking the Lord must have had me singing the words.” – Ron Isley, a founding member of the Isley Brothers, of the exact moment on stage in Philadelphia in 1959 when he spontaneously came up with “Shout” – now the inspiration for the anthem that drives the #BillsMafia.

Jan. 28: “I have an awful lot of friends.” – Pearl Harbor veteran Ed Stone, 98, who enlisted 82 years ago in Buffalo, after receiving a box jammed with hundreds of notes of thanks from readers of The Buffalo News.

Feb. 5: "If Syracuse can do it, why not Buffalo?" – Izzy Cruz, who uses a motorized wheelchair, on his frustration with unplowed public sidewalks in Buffalo, on track to rank as the nation's snowiest large city for the third time in five years.

Feb. 19: “If I see 716, I’m going to return that call.” – Grant Lewis, younger brother of the late and legendary civil rights activist John Lewis, on close family ties to Buffalo – a city that changed his brother’s life.

March 19: “I don’t think I can still be your grand marshal.” – The gut reaction of Pat McGuinness to organizers of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, after McGuinness lost his daughter Caitlin to Covid-19. Parade officials told him the role would serve as a way to honor Caitlin, which McGuinness embraced.

March 26: “In Poland.” – A two-word, late-night text message sent by Kris van Huystee to his mother, Kateri Ewing of East Aurora, once Van Huystee and family had safely escaped Ukraine after a difficult journey amid the violence of the Russian invasion.

April 9: “Freddie’s.” – The one-word answer of basketball Hall of Famer Bob McAdoo, now 71, when asked for the first thing that comes to mind when he remembers life in Buffalo. McAdoo, a National Basketball Association MVP with the old Buffalo Braves, loves doughnuts.

April 30: “God led me here.” – Pan Kyaing, chief usher at Our Lady of Hope Church on Buffalo’s West Side and a leader within the Burmese community, on his awe at the many immigrant cultures that turn Mass into a vibrant celebration at the parish.

May 6: “It’s like you threw a note in a bottle into the sea 50 years ago, and somehow it came back to you.” – Pam Kaznowski of Tonawanda to her friend, Ralph Sirianni, a Marine Corps veteran, after his forgotten request of a half-century ago was granted: An old photo Sirianni mailed from Vietnam to a teenage pen pal, Marijean Senefelder Nichols, was unexpectedly returned.

May 16: “Grandma, are you at Tops?” – How Eva Doyle, revered community historian who usually shops on Saturday afternoons at Tops Markets, learned from her frightened granddaughter, Somalia, that a racist killer had murdered 10 of their friends and neighbors on May 14.

May 22: “For someone to have that much hatred for someone they don’t even know? And then to carry it through like that?” – Jamien Eutsey, 22, who wept during a Zoom meeting of Breaking Barriers, a youth leadership council involving young men of color who rallied to support each other after the shooting.

May 25: “We all have to wonder if we would do as Aaron did.” – Retired Buffalo police officer Bradford Pitts on efforts to create a scholarship honoring his close friend, Aaron Salter Jr., the Tops security guard who died confronting the killer.

June 4: “He has never talked more while we ran than he did during that race.” – Lucas McAneney of Ontario, who won the Buffalo Marathon while pushing his 2-year-old son Sutton in a stroller, bringing one small ripple of warmth to a grieving community.

June 17: “We want to show that people can and definitely should get together, and that we’re not afraid.” – Judson Price, 91, a founder of Buffalo’s Juneteenth celebration, on why he would be at that event as it resumed after the pandemic, in person – a gathering that defied the cruelty and terror the killer brought to Tops.

June 26: “If I die, tell the kids I love them.” – Brendalis Vega of Hamburg to her sister Christina Baxter, just before the heart transplant surgery that would return Vega to her children.

July 2: “I could not believe how hard he threw that ball.” – Carl Kinyon on a game of catch last spring with his 100-year-old dad, which led to Roy Kinyon of Lockport signing a one-day contract to throw out the first pitch for the Buffalo Bisons, on July 4.

July 9: “Without your encouragement, this doesn’t happen.” – Alexander Burgos, a successful contractor, on the note of gratitude he planned to send Erie Community College business professor John Eagan Jr. – only to learn Eagan, who deeply influenced Burgos’ life, died last spring.

July 14: “We have to make sure these families in the community feel our love, not only in the week it happened, or a month after it passed by, but six months from now, a year from now, two years from now, five years from now.” – Buffalo Bills legend Bruce Smith, whose efforts included joining the scholarship effort for Salter and whose call to retired fire commissioner Garnell Whitfield Jr. – his mother Ruth, lost at Tops, loved Smith – brought both men to tears.

July 16: “If someone needed a dollar, he was the kind of man who’d reach into his pocket and give them two.” – Anna Smith of Jefferson Avenue, who often received rides home from Tops from Deacon Heyward Patterson – one of the 10 killed at the store.

July 16: “I think we all can use this little bit of light.” – Judy Thomas, on bringing her 3-month-old grandson, John Wesley, to the reopening of Tops.

July 31: "Pretty cool to know your name will be someplace forever." – Depew High baseball coach Dennis Crawley, the 27^th person in his family to confront a genetic form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), after learning he was not only named “coach of the year” by WNY Athletics following his team’s unexpected sectional championship, but that the award itself will be named in his honor.

Aug. 2: “I have to know what I’m talking about.” – Yordan Kovatchki, 64-year-old director of facilities for Our Lady of Victory National Shrine and Basilica, on why he routinely climbs to dizzying high points in the great dome during restoration of that landmark.

Aug. 13: “It was like he did it on purpose. We all felt like Jim Thorpe was watching us.” – Lois Garlow of the Seneca Nation, co-captain of Haudenosaunee Nationals women’s lacrosse, after her team defeated Czechoslovakia for a historic World Games win in the same week that Thorpe’s Olympic medals from 1912 were finally restored.

Aug. 20: "It’s about as safe a place as you can go.” – Documentary filmmaker Bestor Cram, on the assumption shattered at the Chautauqua Institution when writer Salman Rushdie survived a vicious attack, on stage. Cram was among the onlookers who rushed forward to help.

Aug. 28: “Mommy, they’re shooting us in the store.” – Tiara Johnson, a Canisius College student who worked at the Tops Markets service desk, on a call she made on May 14 to her mother, as Johnson hid from the killer. On graduation day, Johnson's mortarboard honored the 10 who died.

Sept. 24: “This was the last one standing, and it kind of gets to you.” – Wally Kowal, 98, who spent his life working in Buffalo’s lakefront grain industry, watching the demolition of the last-of-its-kind Great Northern grain elevator.

Oct. 29: “Please let them win it.” – Hollywood writer and Rochester native Glen Morgan on the Buffalo Bills; Morgan wrote the 1996 “X-Files” episode in which a sinister character promised the Bills would never triumph in the Super Bowl, which Morgan hardly believed would still hold true, after almost 27 years.

Nov. 12: “We don’t want these veterans to be left alone.” – Farhana Fiha, part of a group of Hutchinson Central Technical High School JROTC students who on Veterans Day clean military tombstones, on hands and knees with toothpicks and small brushes, at Forest Lawn.

Nov. 19: “That building had been dark for so long.” – Matt Moose, whose Zeno Controls illuminated the peak of the Rand Building, one of the city’s tallest skyscrapers, for the first time in memory.

Nov. 23: “When he speaks of his mother, he speaks of her as the root of everything.” – Leah Angel Daniel on Mark Talley, her friend and fellow youth advocate who channeled his grief into civic action, including a major food and clothing effort on Thanksgiving, after Geraldine Talley, his mother, died at Tops.

Dec. 3: “Josh has eyes like every 2-year-old you’ve ever seen.” – Jeanette Korbel, knowledgeable and passionate 96-year-old Bills fan from Cheektowaga, explaining her theory on why so many parents and grandparents embrace quarterback Josh Allen.

Dec. 6: “It was before I was born and why I was born.” – Lee Ruff of Orchard Park, whose father’s life was saved 80 years ago by the outstretched hand of a friend in a Coast Guard disaster at the Oswego lighthouse, where six men died.

Dec. 20: “Kat did as Kat did. If she was on a mission, you weren’t going to stop her.” – Barbara Massey Mapps, at a Fruit of the City children’s Christmas celebration that always had passionate support from her sister Kat, a tireless Fruit Belt advocate who was murdered at Tops.

Dec. 25: “Don’t stop believing.” – A T-shirt bought by Lil Wesley Lee for her cousin, Henry Wesley, who spent much of his life in nightmare conditions at the Willowbrook State School and then became a legendary advocate for people with disabilities. Henry, of Jamestown, was reunited this year with Lil and other blood relatives, through AncestryDNA, for the first time in more than 70 years.

Dec. 28: “These winds … Andy called them the ‘devil’s snow,’ because they snatched the breath right out of your mouth.” – Buffalo Police Lt. Pat McDonald, agreeing with how his friend, Lt. Andy Shea, described rescue efforts in the Christmas weekend blizzard that has claimed at least 40 lives in Western New York.