Special Report: Part Three
Part Three: Five who left Western New York
When the Class of 1987 looked ahead, the future was beyond imagination
If you had asked Vincent O'Keefe 10 years ago whether he could imagine himself becoming a full-time dad in suburban Cleveland, he probably would have laughed.
He had been on the fast track to an academic career, a doctorate under his belt, teaching at the University of Michigan. Then, his wife gave birth to their oldest daughter, and O'Keefe joined the daddy track.
"I have kind of redefined success," he said. "It certainly wasn't how I planned things out in high school."
Four other top graduates from the Class of '87 also have navigated the opportunities, challenges and curveballs life threw at them as they plotted their futures against the backdrop of Western New York's economic decline.
All of their paths would be different. None would lead home.
One of the graduates would land in the city he never wanted to call home, only to embrace it; one would head to the region she dreamed of, only to find it wasn't all palm trees and sunny skies.
Another would devote himself to developing downtown … in another city, 2,000 miles away.
And one would save her baby's life.
Kathleen Callaghan
Orchard Park High valedictorian
East Lyme, Conn.
Kathleen Callaghan: Saving her daughter's life helped define hers
Kathleen Callaghan's daughter Elizabeth was 3• months old when the baby's symptoms started.
On that August weekend, she threw up frequently. Her sleep became restless. And the corners of her eyes turned yellow.
That Monday, the pediatrician sent her to the Connecticut Children's Medical Center. By Thursday, doctors knew liver problems were likely to kill her.
Elizabeth's baptism, scheduled for Saturday, was canceled.
"I was planning her funeral instead of her baptism," Callaghan said, choking back tears nearly four years later. "We were going to have her buried in her baptism dress."
The baby needed a new liver.
As the nerve-wracking wait for a donor began, a nurse told them about another option: the living donor program. Doctors could remove part of a donor's liver and transplant it into Elizabeth. The donor and the baby both would end up with a fully functioning liver, once each portion had time to regenerate.
That was all Callaghan needed to hear. She tackled her daughter's medical nightmare with all the determination that made her valedictorian at Orchard Park High School and landed her a chair in the community symphony when she was only 15.
"I was on a mission … she's getting my liver," Callaghan said. "If anything happened to her, that would be the end of me."
Elizabeth was transferred to Mount Sinai in New York, accompanied by Callaghan and her husband, Dong Li. Two weeks later, doctors cleared Callaghan as a donor.
Dr. Sukru Emre and his team spent three hours extracting part of Callaghan's liver, and another eight hours putting it into her daughter. The next six months proved an excruciating recovery for mother and daughter, but with a happy ending.
These days, doctors closely monitor the enzyme levels for Elizabeth, who's now a quiet 4-year-old with a passion for books and a weakness for the giggles. The smallest health problems have the potential to blossom, given the immunosuppressive drugs she takes.
But her parents take solace in their proximity to Mount Sinai, as well as top-notch facilities in Boston.
It's just one of many reasons Callaghan loves living in East Lyme, Conn., outside Mystic, with her husband; their children, Elizabeth, 4; Brendan, 2, and Brian, 5 months; and their black cocker spaniel, Molly.
Callaghan earned her bachelor's degree in chemistry from Canisius, then went to Yale, where she planned to earn her doctorate.
"You basically work as slave labor for a professor. It's a form of indentured servitude," she said of her fellowship. "For a lot of people, especially women, you kind of say enough is enough after a while. I left after a master's in chemistry from Yale."
She returned to Buffalo and taught science at the Nichols School, working on her master's in education from Canisius at the same time. But the workload was heavy, the pay was low, and Callaghan decided that Buffalo wasn't where she wanted to be.
She headed for Boston, where she landed a chemistry job at the Cabot Corp. There she met Li, a theoretical chemist and a graduate of Peking University.
The two married and moved to Mystic, where Li had been hired at Pfizer. Soon, Callaghan was hired there, too, doing organic synthetic chemistry.
Since Elizabeth was born, Callaghan has been a stay-at-home mom, delving into projects with the same fervor she attacked academics and chemistry.
When she was seven months pregnant with Brian, she single-handedly moved the family into a new house in East Lyme … at 3,300 square feet, double the size of their old one … taking a load of boxes and furniture over in the Honda Odyssey every day, leaving only the biggest pieces for the movers.
A few times a year, Callaghan fills in playing viola for the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra, reminiscent of the 11 years she played with the Orchard Park Symphony, starting while she was in high school.
She talks on the phone every day with her parents, Mary Ann and Thomas, retired teachers who live in Orchard Park.
That's as close as Callaghan needs to get to Buffalo, which she sees as a place that doesn't offer the challenges she seeks. At Pfizer, for instance, she was thrilled to find "international chemistry superstars."
"It's a lot more stimulating to be with these kinds of people," she said. "Buffalo is not really providing a lot of that."
Christina Derme
Kenmore East High class president
Long Beach, Calif.
Christina Derme: A California life with Buffalo accents
California was not the place Christina Derme thought it would be.
"I thought it was going to be like a dream come true … with the weather and the palm trees and the beaches and all of that. And of course, that was a huge draw," she said. "I found out it's not all like that stereotypical image, with the traffic and the smog and all the unpleasant things about it."
The main thing she didn't like, though, was that it wasn't home. And for a long time, she and her husband, Carlos Martinez, didn't know if they would stay.
Those times have passed.
These days, Christina Derme looks and lives like she has always been on the West Coast. The president of the Kenmore East Class of 1987 is now a professor at California State University at Long Beach, teaching communication theory and oral persuasion classes. She has lived in Long Beach for the past nine years with her husband, an ophthalmologist with his own practice. They have a 3-year-old son, Michael.
She lives in a Spanish-style villa within walking distance of the beach. Every room of her home has original detailing, whether it's stained-glass windows, beveled ceilings and archways, or a wall-sized picture window with wrought iron detail.
A fragrant and colorful rose-lined driveway leads to the terra-cotta-roofed house. The backyard has lime, lemon, kumquat and avocado trees … to name a few.
Every sight and smell seems to scream Southern California. But talk with Derme awhile, and a little Western New York comes out.
"I still call Buffalo home, and I always will," she said.
Candace McCune, one of Derme's students, said Derme couldn't deny her heritage, even if she wanted to.
"When she's lecturing, her accent comes out," McCune said.
Following high school graduation, Derme was inspired by a Brockport State College professor to consider a career in teaching, but she didn't follow that dream until years later.
After obtaining her undergraduate degree from Brockport in communications, Derme went to work at the Arthritis Foundation and the American Heart Association, but the traditional work routine wasn't for her.
"The 9 to 5 thing I found really difficult," she said.
That's when she decided to take her mentor's advice and went back to school … to the University at Buffalo … to earn a master's degree and a doctorate in communications.
"I knew my goal was to teach, and it crystallized," she said.
Most of Derme's high school career was marked by leadership activities. In addition to being the class president, she sat on the student senate and was on the school's peer team. The group made presentations to fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade students on such topics as the dangers of drugs, self-esteem issues and peer pressure.
Like many Buffalo transplants, Derme misses her family and the sense of community that comes with it.
However, since she has lived in Long Beach, family has never been far away. Her sister Erin, who has a 9-month-old daughter, has lived in Los Angeles for 12 years and will probably stay in Southern California for a while, Derme said. One of her brothers had lived in Los Angeles for 12 years before moving back to the Buffalo area recently because his wife gave birth to twins, and they wanted to be near a family support system.
Her other brother lived nearby for a time but returned to Buffalo a few years ago. He's getting married in Buffalo this summer.
Derme and her husband have talked about doing the same thing, but it doesn't get much further than talk.
"The economy … if that would change, I'd be back in a heartbeat," she said. "Out here, we have a better chance of our son staying here when he graduates."
These days, the California dream she had feels like it's coming true, and Derme can pinpoint almost exactly when she finally felt like she was where she belonged.
"We were in our new house for one month. There was a big Christmas parade they have in this little area called Belmont Shore, which is a couple blocks from where we live, and the whole street got together and walked down to the parade. And I said to my neighbor, "I feel like I'm in Buffalo.' For the first time, I feel like I actually have community."
Dan Klocke
St. Joseph's Collegiate Institute
class president
Phoenix, Ariz.
Dan Klocke: His passion to make a difference led him far away
Dan Klocke and his team are trying to persuade a Chicago investor to buy into a downtown Phoenix project. They want the investor to fund the construction of multiple buildings to the tune of about $20 million.
The team … which includes two brokers and a developer … is assembled on the top floor of one of Phoenix's oldest buildings on a recent afternoon. Covering a large table is a model of downtown, complete with streets and dozens of scaled buildings that represent different stages of development.
Light gray is for buildings in the planning and construction stage. The maroon ones represent Arizona State University buildings under construction or existing. And the dark gray models symbolize future construction hopes.
"Downtown Phoenix is booming," Klocke tells investor Jim Weiss. "The public investment has been there and now the private investment is rolling in. Now you need to jump on the bandwagon."
Weiss likes what he's hearing, and after an hourlong meeting, the broker takes him on a tour of the city.
"Dan is terrific," said Shawn Goetzinger, a developer with Greenroof Development Company. "He is our information resource. He navigates the city process and issues, and he advocates downtown."
Klocke is director of the community development corporation component of Downtown Phoenix partnership, a nonprofit partnership that promotes development in downtown Phoenix. In an area that is growing by more than 70,000 people a year, Klocke spends part of his time working with developers on commercial projects and part of his time trying to get affordable, reasonably priced housing built downtown.
It's that part of his job that's directly related to his passion for community service that goes back to his days at St. Joseph's Collegiate Institute, where the motto for the Class of 1987 was "Involvement, Responsibility, Leadership."
"There's definitely a philosophy at the school of giving to others," said Klocke, who graduated as the class president. "There's a theme of social justice that runs in the school, and it may not be a tangible thing you can put your finger on, but I think the philosophy of the school of giving to others is pretty strong."
That passion followed him after high school, leading him on journeys to Indonesia, Africa and Bolivia, where he worked with a group Xaverian brothers to start a school for poor children. He also helped open a school in Baltimore for at-risk and low-income children while living in one of that city's toughest neighborhoods … all in the name of community service.
Klocke was a student leader at St. Joe's, sitting on the student council his sophomore and junior years. He was a member of the National Honor Society and co-editor of the 1987 yearbook, which celebrated the school's 125th anniversary that year. He also played tennis and sang in the glee club in his sophomore, junior and senior years. He was co-president of the Swing Choir his last two years in school.
At home in Phoenix, Klocke is father to three children … Quinn, 10, Keelin, 8, and Rory, 2, with another baby on the way.
Married 11 years, he met his wife, the former Shannon Clancy, while both were attending the University of Notre Dame, where he earned a bachelor's degree in government and history. The two went their separate ways, but reconnected when Klocke was in Baltimore and Clancy was attending the University of Maryland for graduate school.
The couple got married in Boston, where Klocke received his master's degree in international development from Tufts University.
The Klockes have been remodeling their downtown Phoenix home … it was a duplex when they moved in six years ago.
"It's a work in progress," he said.
Although he hasn't lived in Buffalo since he was 17 … he left right after high school graduation … Klocke visits Buffalo once or twice a year with his family, usually around the holidays. The winter weather is the main draw, especially for the children.
"The kids love the snow," he said. "They remember the first time they saw snow. The first time was in Buffalo."
Vincent O'Keefe
Niagara Falls High
most likely to succeed
Avon Lake, Ohio
Vincent O'Keefe: Most likely to redefine what it means to be a success
A decade ago, Vincent O'Keefe was carefully dissecting William Blake's poem "Jerusalem" and arguing for pragmatist nonrealism as the best approach in writing fiction about the Holocaust.
These days, he rips a page out of his daily life for raw material for his writing … getting beaned by a toilet seat lid while helping his toddler button her pants in a public restroom, for instance, or donning his wife's bathrobe to get a colicky baby to sleep after a 10-hour screaming bout.
It's all in a day's work for O'Keefe, who quit teaching to become a stay-at-home dad seven years ago, when his daughter Lauren was born.
At the time, he was teaching in the University of Michigan's English department; his wife, West Seneca West grad Michele Colangelo, had just become an obstetrician. It made more sense financially for O'Keefe to take the lead on child care while she brought home a paycheck.
"The most important thing was that one of us was going to be at home," Colangelo said. "Parenting is a partnership; it doesn't necessarily have to be the mom."
O'Keefe, named most likely to succeed when he graduated in 1987 from Niagara Falls High School, attended Canisius College, where he met Colangelo. After earning a bachelor's degree in English, he went to Temple University for a master's degree in English, then to Loyola University in Chicago, where he got a doctorate in American literature.
He took a position at the University of Michigan.
On April 30, 2000, he turned in his final set of grades. Four days later, Lauren was born … a colicky baby who had her father resorting to late-night car rides, seemingly endless runs of the vacuum, and, once, donning his wife's robe to calm the baby with Colangelo's scent.
The transition to full-time parenting, O'Keefe says, was "abrupt and unpleasant." But he has since found his footing as one of about 150,000 stay-at-home dads in the United States.
"This is definitely the hardest I've ever worked," O'Keefe said. "This is sometimes difficult to convey to men. I thought I knew how hard it might be, but I had no idea. It's a little easier now that they're older, but those first few years, I was shell-shocked."
Lauren, now 7, has been joined by Lindsay, 4, spunky girls who … along with SpongeBob and at least 30 stuffed animals … share a bunk bed in their pink bedroom in Avon Lake, Ohio.
Like any suburban parent, O'Keefe spends quite a bit of his time on the road … a "stay-in-van dad," he jokes … shuttling the girls from their house to attend Ruffing Montessori School, explore the Cleveland Zoo or visit Colangelo's sisters, who were a primary reason the couple decided to settle in the Cleveland area.
His strength? Finding fun places for kid adventures.
His weakness? Cooking remains a bit of a challenge, he admits.
He still gets the sarcastic "Gee, how'd you get that gig?" sometimes when he tells other men what he does … but a more sincere, wistful "must be nice" is becoming a more common response. And O'Keefe remains in the gender minority at PTA meetings.
After growing up with his mom and two sisters, he was no stranger to being the only guy in a room. But after a while, he yearned for some male peers. He put an ad in the Lakewood Early Childhood PTA newsletter and got responses from three other stay-at-home dads, who now meet regularly to unwind and swap stories.
In the past couple of years, O'Keefe has begun nurturing a freelance writing career, toiling at the computer once the girls are in bed. His personal essays already have landed in a variety of publications, from Northern Ohio Live, a regional magazine, to "What Would MacGyver Do?" a book edited by a former editor at Esquire.
Now, O'Keefe is working on breaking into national magazines with his humorous, self-deprecating essays. He also writes poetry to accompany photographs he has taken, selling the "Poetic Visions" at local shops.
"It's sort of funny … I was voted most likely to succeed. I've had to redefine success," said O'Keefe. "When you have a professional identity, then you lose it, it can be rough. It certainly wasn't how I planned things out in high school."
But, he quickly adds, he has plenty to be happy about, like the relationship he has with Lauren and Lindsay.
"I know them about as well as I can know them," he said, snuggling with them on the couch. "I do cherish that, and I acknowledge that is a luxury."
Jason Wright
Springville High class
president and most popular
Campbell Hall, N.Y.
Jason Wright: In the last place he wanted to be … and thrilled to be there
New York City was the last place Jason Wright wanted to end up.
The youngest of five, he grew up in a bustling house in Springville and benefited from the close bonds that a small town fosters.
"I would do something, and my mother would find out before I got home," he said. "That's just the way Springville is."
He and his buddies played football at Springville-Griffith Institute, with Wright at fullback, a scrappy kid with decent speed. He earned the respect and friendship of classmates off the field, too, winning him the title of class president as well as "most popular."
After high school, he headed up Route 219 to the University at Buffalo, where he majored in political science. From there, he earned a master's degree at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania … spending a semester in Oxford … then attended the State University at Binghamton, where he got a master's degree in public administration and completed doctoral course work in public budgeting and finance.
When he left Binghamton, Wright was ready to make his way in the world, anywhere he might land.
Well, almost anywhere.
"When I started job-hunting, I said, "Anywhere but New York,'‚" he said. "It was the fear of the big city. Growing up, my exposure to a big city was Buffalo."
Still, when he got a call from New York City's Office of Management and Budget, Wright agreed to go for an interview. It would be a good chance to hone his interview skills so he would be ready once the right job came along, he figured.
The interview went so well, the city offered him a job as a budget analyst. He took it.
Wright moved into a basement apartment in Queens. He forced himself to overcome his fear of driving in the city. And he decided New York City isn't such a bad place to be.
"There's a lot of great and rich things to do in the city," he said. "I love working in New York. There's an amazing amount of opportunity."
He should know.
The New York City Economic Development Corp. … a nonprofit that manages most of the city's waterfront properties, staffs the Industrial Development Agency and works to spur growth … hired him in 2000 as an assistant vice president to oversee the capital budget.
After several promotions, he is now executive vice president and chief financial officer, overseeing 140 employees and the $2 billion capital budget.
Despite the stress that comes with his job, Wright exudes calmness … his voice soft, his laugh hearty and his stride quick but not harried. Staffers, from secretaries to senior vice presidents, seek him out for a sympathetic ear and reassurance throughout the day.
He's religious about striking a work/life balance. Wright takes an hour for lunch every day, often eating with Tom Jones, the budget director, who's a Rochester native and fellow UB alumnus.
"He always blocks out noon to 1," said Wright's assistant, Stephanie Field. "That's pretty unusual around here, where most people grab lunch at their desk."
That's not the only way he mixes a Springville pace amid Big Apple frenzy.
He gets to work by 8:30 a.m. Most days, he's out the door by 5:30 p.m., and after about 75 minutes on two commuter trains and in his Land Rover, he's home in Campbell Hall, Orange County.
The commute, unthinkable by Buffalo standards, affords him and his family the kind of home you might find in Western New York: a roomy brick Victorian … complete with a room in back that once served as a speakeasy … set back on three acres, with a cluster of apple trees.
"My wife and I didn't want to raise kids in an apartment, in city schools," he said. "We've lived in the Hudson Valley for four years. We absolutely love it."
His wife, Heidi, works from an upstairs home office, handling corporate accounts for American Express. Hannah, 3, and Cooper, 1, spend the day with a sitter. In the evening, Jake, the black Lab, works off some energy in the yard, while Heidi and Jason tag-team dinner preparations and child care.
Some days, the family doesn't sit down to eat until nearly 8 p.m., by the time Jason gets home and dinner's ready. They say it's worth the wait.
"We've always made it a point to have dinner as a family," Heidi said. "That's important to us."
mpasciak@buffnews.com, dswilliams@buffnews.com
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