Every December, I sift through 12 months of columns to pull out a few memorable quotes from the past year. The choices this time were particularly heartbreaking, and I offer these selections – including many voices of loss, passage and resilience from within the pandemic – with gratitude for the hundreds of Western New Yorkers who trusted me with their stories:
Feb. 1 - “I’m not a drama guy.” – Ted Yochum, 90, a Kenmore native, on why he never told his children he earned the Soldiers Medal, a high military honor, for helping to rescue three drowning men in 1952, in Boston Harbor. Yochum died less than two months after this column appeared.
Feb. 20 - "The inflection was absolutely critical. It had to be a question and a very strong response." – Robert “Buddy” Risman, the advertising man who turned “Fun? Wow!” into an iconic saying for Fantasy Island, which officially closed in February after almost 60 years – though a group of investors say they hope to keep it going.
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March 6 - "I know they were there.” Cliff Brooks IV of the Seneca Nation, after a strong performance in the ancient Six Nations game of snow snake at Pine Hill Forest, on the presence of the father, grandfather and uncles – all gone now – who served as his teachers.
Cliff Brooks IV of the Seneca Nation makes a throw during a snow snake tournament in the Pine Hill Forest.
March 21 - “Hold him up like Simba in ‘The Lion King.’ ” A request by Frank Badaszewski of South Buffalo, in a cellphone conversation with his daughter, Kelsey Milley. Prevented by the risks of Covid-19 from visiting Kelsey and her newborn son Nash at Mercy Hospital, Badaszewski climbed a parking ramp so he could see mother and infant through a window.
April 2 - “My dad was a great man. There are no buildings named after him, he left behind no fortune, and there are no books that tell his story.” – Education professor John Pijanowski of the University of Arkansas, writing on Twitter after his father, Don, who spent a lifetime in Buffalo factories, died of Covid-19.
Here are just a few examples of memorable quotes from men and women whose paths columnist Sean Kirst was lucky enough to cross in
April 17 - " ... I look at the elderly population, and what’s happening, and everything they’d seen and done and lived and then gone, like cutting down a 100-year-old tree." Dr. Stephen Thomas, a virologist, vaccinologist and chief of infectious diseases at the SUNY Upstate Medical University Hospital in Syracuse, on the collective wisdom and experience of patients at especially high risk in the pandemic.
April 30 - “I’m just sitting here. They won't let me do nothing." – A frustrated John Poleon, telling a friend he wanted to get to work, even during emergency treatment for Covid-19 at Buffalo General Medical Center. Poleon, a beloved X-ray technologist, died shortly afterward. He is believed to be the first front-line worker in greater Buffalo lost to the virus.
May 16 - “They talk about people who are ‘Teflon men’ because nothing sticks to them, and he was the opposite. Whenever he came in touch with you, it stuck to him forever.” – Community volunteer Joe DiLeo on longtime friend Joey Giambra, a Buffalo legend lost to Covid-19.
Joey Giambra and Joe DiLeo, close friends and fellow natives of Buffalo's West Side.
May 30 – "I didn't get the opportunity to tell them how much I valued all of them." Maria Garcia, a graduating senior at SUNY Fredonia who lost her grandmother in Brooklyn to the virus, on leaving campus without a commencement or any chance to thank teachers who changed her life.
June 1 - "I like the ability to keep Jonny alive." – Former Steelers defensive lineman Ray Seals on his cousin and close friend, Jonny Gammage, a University at Buffalo graduate and young businessman who died in what began as a suburban traffic stop 25 years ago, near Pittsburgh. Amid national anguish over the death of George Floyd, a Black man, in police custody, Seals – a police officer’s son – said his cousin's life and death remain a searing lesson on the need for change.
Enjoy these memorable quotes, gleaned from a year’s worth of tales involving joy, whimsy, hardship and passage throughout Buffalo and the wider
July 5 - “If they had one ounce or even a smidgen of sentiment, they wouldn’t do it.” Bill Kauffman, writer, journalist and disciple of the Batavia Muckdogs of the New York-Penn League, one of many minor league clubs wiped out by a new plan from Major League Baseball executives.
July 11 - "I didn't think it was so uncommon to break up a fight and help someone." Simon Griskonis, a North Tonawanda High School student, on his surprise at a passionate community response after he and fellow wrestler Anthony Swan intervened to protect a girl being tormented by some teens.
July 18 - "It's like our own little park." Pam Flood of East Delavan Avenue, speaking of how she and her fiancé – like thousands in Buffalo who revere the same thing - found escape in the pandemic on their second-floor porch, the kind of refuge described by Jim Nowicki of Buffalo “as a place to go without going anywhere,” in a city of double porches.
July 28 - “COME GET ME.” – Text message from Melissa Fuller to her husband, Erik, once Melissa, a cancer patient who contracted Covid-19, was taken off a ventilator and began to recover after 96 days of treatment for the virus at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Aug. 15 - “I worked like a demon.” A restless Viola Hippert, 95, of West Seneca, remembering her days as a “Rosie the Riveter” for Bell Aircraft during World War II, and looking toward normalcy once – as she puts it – we “get rid of this damn bug.”
Aug. 22 - "Really, I'm content right now." Hal Miller, a Republic Steel security guard and lifetime baseball fan confronting stage four cancer, after watching from an upper window at Seneca One tower as the Toronto Blue Jays defeated the Miami Marlins in the first regulation big league game in 115 years in Buffalo. No fans were allowed in the ballpark, and Miller obtained that choice view after his son Ryan emailed Douglas Jemal, the tower’s owner, and explained the situation.
Hal Miller outside Sahlen Field with his son, Dr. Ryan Miller. Hal has stage four lung cancer, and his son helped bring about his lifetime dream of seeing a big-league game.
Sept. 5 - “I gave him a lick that sent him down and knocked out two of his teeth, and then finished him with a ‘Georgia twist.’ ” – The words of Jim Parker, almost 120 years ago, on overpowering the assassin of President William McKinley. While the heroics of Parker, a Black man, were almost wiped from history, some devoted Buffalo historians and educators are bringing back his name.
Sept. 19 - “I’ll make sure that stone stays up until I can’t no more.” David Pim, a longtime union roofer who joined his wife, Mary Smith-Pim, and her brother, Richard Smith Jr., in restoring a tombstone at Holy Cross Cemetery for Casimer Mazurek, a wounded veteran shot and killed by steel plant security during the “great steel strike” of 1919.
Sept. 21 - “It’s their game. They gave it to us.” – Dylan McNally, a Canisius College student and a member of Ireland’s national lacrosse team, on why he and his Irish teammates stepped back to allow the Iroquois Nationals – with a strong Western New York presence – to fill a slot given to Ireland at the 2022 World Games, whose administrators had stunned the lacrosse world by excluding the Haudenosaunee.
Sept. 27 – “Hard to resist your repeated invitations, so I won’t.” A July 2018 note from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to an old friend, Buffalo’s Wayne Wisbaum. After Wisbaum’s death, Ginsburg honored him with a memorable visit to Buffalo in 2019, almost a year to the month before she died from cancer.
Oct. 3 – “I said to everyone, ‘Where’s our Canadian friend?’ ” Bryan Hood, a regular in Section 127 of Bills Stadium, on the sudden 2019 absence of a guy who always sat next to Hood. Chris Lesko, a devoted fan from Toronto, had been killed in a construction accident; in his honor, a childhood buddy in Canada pays for Lesko's empty seat.
A honeybee crawls on the hand of beekeeper Charlie Seewaldt in the Honey House on his farm in Varysburg.
Oct. 15 - “There are people who are suffering, people who are sick, people who can’t find a job, people who try to steal a sandwich because they’ve got nothing to eat.” Mary Roland, in tears while describing life for many during the pandemic, as she looked over a census form at the Broadway Market.
Oct. 17 - “A bee is little, but it can make a big guy dance.” Longtime Varysburg beekeeper Charlie Seewaldt, whose family has maintained hives for generations at Rose Acres, an Audubon preserve at Java Center.
Wendell Giles, left, his uncle, Joe Jennings, and Vaughn Washington on a Bills game day, in an earlier season. Washington and Giles, at separate times in different cities, were both hospitalized for Covid-19.
Oct. 31 - “If I do not vote, my voice is nonexistent.” Henry Wesley of Jamestown, explaining in an email why he took part in early voting. Wesley, 75, an educator and activist, was born with cerebral palsy and built a new life after decades of abuse at the old Willowbrook State School, a nationwide symbol of neglect.
As 2017 nears its close, News columnist Sean Kirst shares some favorite quotes from a year’s worth of columns, “part of the gift of hearing the great stories of Buffalo and Upstate New
Nov. 11 - "I don't remember our first kiss, but I remember that." Corrine Klein of Amherst, married to her husband, George, for 74 years, on the first time they held hands as teenagers on Milton Street in Williamsville.
Thruway toll collector Randy Weston at the Williamsville toll barrier, where he worked for 23 years until the Thruway system went completely "cashless."
Nov. 14 - “We’re becoming a peopleless society.” Longtime toll collector Randy Weston, as he prepared for his last shift before the state Thruway system went entirely to cashless tolling.
Viola Hippert, 95, of West Seneca, was a "Rosie the Riveter" during World War II.
Nov. 22 - “All I want is to be where I was at.” Marcos Vazquez, 20, whose car broke down before he was laid off from his job, speaking for thousands in the region without work in the pandemic. He later was hired by UPS.
Dec. 19 - “How are our Bills doing?” – Once Vaughn Washington made sure his family was well, the first question he asked of his son after Washington was removed from a ventilator to begin recovering from Covid-19.
Dec. 26 - “If you saw him, he was a person to behold.” – Sharon Holley, a key official and educator at the Nash House Museum, on the death at 87 of George Arthur, a civil rights groundbreaker, former president of the Common Council and extraordinary champion of Buffalo.
