The Buffalo News - Top Stories http://www.buffalonews.com Latest stories from The Buffalo News en-us Sun, 19 May 2013 00:09:53 -0400 Sun, 19 May 2013 00:09:53 -0400 <![CDATA[ Local airmen make a connection in fight against cancer ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130518/CITYANDREGION/130519042/1109
Both are serving overseas with the 107th Airlift Wing.

So Senior Airman Little, of Akron, and Airman First Class Edwards, of Niagara Falls, did the next best thing: They organized a companion Relay for Life on their military base in Afghanistan, which raised nearly $7,000.

Then, they did one better.

Little and Edwards – using an iPad at Camp Bastion Leatherneck in Afghanistan – and their families – using a laptop back on Old Falls Street – connected on Skype so the two events could share their fight against cancer despite being half a world apart.

Little and Edwards were streamed onto a large video screen.

“How are you guys doing with your relay?” asked Marie Little, Patrick’s mother.

“Good,” Patrick Little said. “We’re pretty much done here, but we raised another $485.”

“That is awesome guys,” his mother said.

The effort in Afghanistan to participate in the Relay for Life began with Margie Lengen, Cierra’s mother, and Kristina Groff, Little’s sister.

Lengen,a five-year Relay for Life volunteer, told the American Cancer Society’s special events manager she wanted to stay busy this year, because her daughter would be leaving for Afghanistan in February and she would need something to take her mind off of that.

The manager, Kristina Groff, had a brother who was deploying then, too.

When Little, 22, isn’t deployed, he works for Southwest Airlines. When Edwards, 23, is home, she lives in Niagara Falls and works for FedEx.

Little and Edwards are halfway through their first deployment overseas.

The two are in the same unit, and when the connection with their sister and mother was made, they decided to stage their own relay on their military base in Afghanistan.

“It speaks to how important Relay for Life has become to them,” Groff said.

Cancer has affected Little’s mother, grandfather and grandmother, and Edwards’ grandfather also has cancer.

In about two months, the two raised about $6,000 by sending emails to family and friends. They ordered enough barbecue – with meat brought in from the air base in Ramstein, Germany – to feed 100 of their colleagues, who were expected to cheer them on Saturday.

They also held a pingpong tournament and a weight-lifting competition.

“When the two of them get together, they’re a force to be reckoned with,” Lengen said. “They have survivors in their family.”

After a few technical difficulties, the Skype connection was made shortly after 5 p.m. Saturday. Family members gathered around the camera in the laptop.

“Tell us what you did to raise all your money?” Groff asked.

“We put on a barbecue and that brought in a lot of money,” Little said. “Donations, too – just a lot of word of mouth. We’re a little shy of $7,000 right now.”

“Are you guys having fun?” Little’s wife, Lindsey,asked.

“Yeah,” Little said. “Our deejay just left so we’re about done for the night.”

It was about 2 a.m. in Afghanistan – and about 90 degrees, Little said.

“Did you do your pingpong tournament?” Groff asked.

“Yeah,” Little said. “We don’t have a winner yet.”

“Who won your weight-lifting competition?” asked Cierra’s father, Bob.

“Nobody yet,” Little said. “It’s not over.”

“It’s the middle of the night,” responded Cierra’s mother, Margie.

The connection was fine early on, but after a while only the people on Old Falls Street could see and hear the two in Afghanistan. Little and Edwards only had sound.

It didn’t matter.

“It’s fantastic,” Groff said. “We are so lucky because we do get to talk to them, but to have them here so other people can cheer them on – it’s awesome.”

The pair led relay participants in Niagara Falls in a ceremony honoring caregivers.

“Cierra, Pat, we love what you’re doing,” Ona Sherman, a Relay for Life committee member said from the stage on Old Falls Street. “Fight the fight and relay on.”

The participants in Niagara Falls cheered.

About 500 participants walked around Old Falls Street from noon to midnight on Saturday, and raised $50,000, including what was raised overseas.

The Relay for Life’s goal is to connect cancer survivors and caregivers, remember people who have had cancer and raise money that provides services for cancer patients and to fund research.

Groff, 26, has three family members who have been diagnosed with cancer, and found years ago that the relay was a way to meet other survivors and to fight back.

“Our family said ‘enough is enough,’ ” Groff said.

Little and Edwards stayed on Skype for about a half-hour before saying their good-byes.

“What’s for the rest of the night?” someone asked.

“We got to go back to work soon,” Little said.

“I’m going to bed,” Edwards added.

“We miss you guys not being here,” Little’s mother said.

“We miss you guys, too,” her son said.

“But at least we can see you,” she added. “That helps.”



jrey@buffnews.com and jterreri@buffnews.com ]]> Sat, 18 May 2013 23:21:38 -0400 Jay Rey
Jill Terreri
]]> <![CDATA[ Today’s mental health squad: The police ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130518/CITYANDREGION/130519047/1002
By Matthew Spina

News Staff Reporter

Officer Robert Yeates had crossed paths with her before. She was mentally ill, and when off her lithium, the caring mother and grandmother would turn violent and suicidal.

Charlene McNally Fears was so out of control on Aug. 1 she tore apart her son’s bedroom and, in an act impossible to fathom, stabbed her trusting 4-year-old grandson in the chest while whispering “it’s OK, it’s OK.”

Little Manny’s mother, hearing his cries, burst in to yank him away. She laid him out on the porch to await an ambulance. Then she flagged down Yeates, passing by in his squad car.

It was up to Yeates to subdue and arrest Fears.

He found her inside the home in Black Rock, staring him down from 14 feet away. Her chin was down, her breathing heavy, Yeates wrote in a statement later.

Blood covered her white shirt and dripped from the knives in each hand. She wanted her life to end right there.

“Please put the knives down. Drop them right now,” Yeates said, leveling his Glock.

“NOOO,” she yelled, advancing in blood-spattered socks. “You’re going to have to shoot me. Go on ... shoot me.”

Again he told her to drop the knives. Again she refused.

Still closing ground, she raised the blades.

The first shot hit the left side of her chest and spun her. The second coursed through her torso from right to left, and her bouts with depression and bipolar disorder were over.

No one faulted the officer for shooting Charlene Fears, not even her family. A grand jury found the gunfire justified. But it was another messy, fatal outcome to a police call involving someone with a serious mental illness. This time, the person took a life, that of the grandson she usually doted upon.

Police today are the front line in the nation’s mental health system. Big psychiatric centers have been mothballed in favor of community clinics ill-suited for people who forgo medicines and don’t show for appointments because they don’t think they are sick.

So police decide what to do with someone hearing voices in their head, shouting threats or raising a knife.

Or with someone diagnosed with a mental illness who is simply sad, confused or urinating in the street.

Jail? The hospital? The care of a friend? Deadly force?

Should this be the job of police?

“What used to be dealt with by the medical community years ago is now dumped on criminal justice. And it’s just caused a nightmare,” said Michael Biasotti, head of the New York State Association of Police Chiefs.

“No cop wants to be involved in putting a severely mentally ill person in jail,” he said. “But they respond, and a lot of times in the response, they don’t know what the person’s mental status is. So you pull up, and the guy has a weapon and comes at you. And the next thing you know ... it’s a shame.”

Weeks before the mass killings in Newtown, Conn., shined a new light on mental illness in America and on the nation’s gun laws, The Buffalo News began examining how police are tested as today’s community mental health workers. Among the findings:

• Nearly half of the people killed by police north of New York City over a five-year period – 17 of 36 – suffered from a mental problem or were emotionally disturbed. A few, such as Laura J. Pettey in Watertown, Justin Arnold in Canastota and Charlene Fears in Buffalo, enlisted police to kill them by aiming weapons at the officers.

• Prisons and jails have become quasi-psychiatric centers. Researchers estimate that at least 17 percent of jail inmates are seriously mentally ill, a percentage three times greater than the public at large. In New York’s prisons, the state Office of Mental Health treats one out of every seven inmates, nearly 8,000 people. The percentage of state inmates with some type of “mental health problem,” including substance abuse, is much higher – 56 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. That’s five times greater than the public at large.

• At least 500 times each year, police in Erie County escort or wrestle disturbed people who are a danger to themselves or others into psychiatric emergency rooms. Some town and city departments deal with the same people dozens of times, usually for minor infractions.

• A police cadet’s basic training in handling the mentally ill has changed little in more than a generation. The training takes up just two or three days of a multi-week course at New York’s police academies.

• Police are busy with mentally ill people because families are frustrated in attempts to prod their loved ones into treatment. It’s not uncommon for someone with a serious mental illness to spurn their medicines because they hate the side effects and don’t understand they are sick. With the patient in a spiral, some families welcome police because they have nowhere to turn.

• New York still runs more psychiatric centers than any other state, but more closings are expected. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo intends to consolidate them into regional “centers of excellence” for behavioral health programs and would plow the savings into community-based outpatient care – the strategy that has led to uneven results for people with serious mental illness.

“The mental health system right now is failing not just the patient, but it’s failing the family members who care for them ... and unfortunately our society,” said Victor Campione, whose law enforcement career included work as a police officer and as a state corrections officer. His brother, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, was off his medication and adrift when he provoked a hail of police gunfire in Syracuse in 2011 and was killed.

D.J. Jaffe saw how difficult it was for a mentally ill sister-in-law to find treatment. He founded the Mental Illness Policy Org in New York City, his think-tank about the treatment of people with serious mental illness.

“In the mental health field, they will say we have to train police better to handle the mentally ill,” Jaffe said. “What we should be doing is training the mental health system to handle people with serious mental illness.”“John” lives with his mother in Cheektowaga, near Amherst. With bipolar disorder, John has intense mood swings far more severe than the ups and downs that most people go through. Because his mother did not want John interviewed, The News agreed to use a pseudonym.

Police records show officers have arrested him 19 times and escorted him 15 times to a psychiatric emergency room. In total, they have responded to 79 calls involving John.

That’s in Cheektowaga. Police in Amherst, Depew, Evans and Buffalo have responded 10 other times in their municipalities.

John is just 19 years old, and those are the calls only on his adult record. Doctors and police say there are many more mentally ill people with similar histories. Officers shuttle them between jails and hospitals, usually after outbursts and nuisance crimes. John has been dangerous, but he also seems to know his pattern cannot continue. One night last year, he broke down outside the Cheektowaga police station when released from custody.

“I want to die,” he yelled. “I want to go to heaven. I am living in hell.”

His mother has been overwhelmed.

“I love my son. He’s such a good kid. He’s a smart kid. He has been through hell,” she said. “He just wants to be like everybody, and to have friends like everybody else. It breaks my heart.”The revolution that put people such as John and Charlene Fears back on the street time and again, making them a police concern, started in the 1960s.

Activists who wanted more dignity for patients – to give them the chance to live in the community and have a say over their treatment – persuaded states to close big asylums and psychiatric centers. States went along for several reasons. Among them: While state budgets paid for state-run psychiatric centers, new federal safety-net programs could support community-based treatment. States laid much of their cost to care for the seriously mentally ill on the federal government.

In 1955, states and counties made 558,000 beds available for mentally ill individuals. By 2005, the number had plummeted to about 53,000, and it’s around 40,000 today, said E. Fuller Torrey, a research psychiatrist in Chevy Chase, Md., who in the fall will publish his latest book about the changes.

When adjusting for population growth over the decades, it was as though the nation lost 19 of every 20 beds set up for the seriously mentally ill, Torrey said during a recent speech in Getzville.

While the transformation benefited many patients, some severely mentally ill people still spin on and off their medicines, cannot comprehend that they are ill and pose a threat to themselves or others while resisting long-term treatment. Police arrest them dozens of times.

Do people like this need the structure of an institution?

“There is one. It’s the Holding Center. And it’s the Department of Corrections,” lamented Dr. Michael Cummings, director of community psychiatry for the University at Buffalo medical school, which provides psychiatrist services to Erie County Medical Center’s Community Psychiatric Emergency Program. Cummings also is a consultant to local detention centers, such as the Erie County Holding Center and the county’s Youth Detention Center.

“There are any number of individuals who years ago would not be in the Holding Center,” Cummings continued. “They would be on the grounds of a psychiatric state hospital. They often come in and out based on relatively minor and modest crimes. They have incredible discontinuity in their medication.”

The Niagara County Jail spends about 40 percent of its medicinal budget – or about $140,000 a year – on psychotropic drugs for inmates with a diagnosed mental illness, Chief Administrator Kevin M. Smith said.

“There are always going to be some where you are basically dealing with an adult with the mental capacity of a 7-year-old, or lower,” Smith said. “They don’t belong in jail, no. But we treat them to the best of our ability. That can go as far as officers having to walk them into the shower, or officers having to clean their cell on a daily basis.”Cheektowaga Police Chief David J. Zack suspects the number of police calls triggered by people with mental illness is on the rise. He’s not the only police chief who thinks that.

Biasotti, the head of the state police chiefs’ association, surveyed police administrators nationwide for a master’s thesis. Eighty-four percent of the respondents said they have seen the mentally ill population in their communities increase over their careers; 76 percent said they have seen the number of mentally ill detainees rise; 61 percent have seen the numbers of suicides grow.

Few local police agencies count the calls in which a person’s mental health was the root issue. A telling statistic might be found in the number of times police take people to psychiatric emergency rooms, but no state agency counts that traffic in New York.

After days of research, the staff at ECMC determined that police last year transported 502 people involuntarily to ECMC’s busy psychiatric emergency room, and that total represented a 35 percent climb over the prior year. Still, those numbers don’t reveal the full volume because it’s not uncommon for people at the last minute to enter the psychiatric emergency room voluntarily because they are going in anyway.

The vast majority of seriously mentally ill people are not violent or dangerous when taking their medicines and seeing counselors and psychiatrists. Their illnesses, unlike, say, diabetes or hypertension, are more complex to diagnose and treat, and they carry a stigma. To a large degree, the fates of these seriously mentally ill people depend on the police.

“The best way, we know from experience here, is that you cannot arrest your way out of this problem,” Zack said. “So if you are not going to arrest, what can we do?”

Weeks later, Zack decided that each of his approximately 130 officers will receive specialized crisis-intervention training that helps prevent calls involving people who are mentally ill from escalating and helps steer people into treatment rather than jail. Cheektowaga is the first Erie County police department to make this move.In Niagara Falls, Thomas P. Jamieson’s hobby was making Molotov cocktails. When his trove was discovered, police evacuated his neighborhood in April 2012 to remove up to 20 of the weapons. His case, assigned to mental health court, led to his placement in the Buffalo Psychiatric Center rather than the Niagara County Jail.

It was a path that many families, desperate to help their loved ones, would prefer in an effort to get them into monitored treatment or an institution. Toward this end, the police have become pivotal gatekeepers for the seriously mentally ill. Plus, they are easier to find than psychiatrists.

“For a lot of families, the most effective solution to a serious dilemma is the patient gets arrested without being beat up, shot, killed, hurt or whatever, and ends up in a mental health court,” said Lynne Shuster, who was active for years in the National Alliance on Mental Illness chapter for Buffalo and Erie County.

“The mental health court judges follow these people and hold the mental health agencies accountable, which they are not real happy about necessarily,” she said.

Jaffe, founder of the Mental Health Policy Org, sees a disparity.

“New York State now basically has two mental health systems,” he said “You have the one run by the Office of Mental Health and the counties that basically helps improve mental health. And then you have the system for people with serious mental illness, and that is being run by police and corrections and judges.

“Basically OMH and the mental health system have decided they are going to focus on the highest functioning,” he said, “and the results of that is the off-loading of the others to police and criminal justice.”

Jaffe said events like the deaths of Charlene Fears and her grandson occur because neither the hospital nor a government agency is expected to follow up with a once-dangerous patient when released from inpatient care. They are usually released to the outpatient care offered by a mental health center, but if they slide backward and go off their medication, which is common, no government agency is watching. Their cycle is free to repeat itself.

“Her case is exceedingly typical,” Jaffe said of Fears. “The criminal justice system had to go where the mental health system no longer treads, to the aid of somebody with serious mental illness. And tragedy resulted. But the tragedy did not result because police went in. The tragedy resulted because the mental health system didn’t.”In calls involving the mentally ill, police try to get it right. Sometimes they don’t.

When Michael Bennett, diagnosed with schizophrenia, walked naked down a West Side street in July 2002, Buffalo police took him to the Holding Center rather than ECMC. In the jail, Bennett tried to hang himself with a shoelace and repeatedly jumped off his toilet, smashing his head into the bars. The state Commission of Correction attributed his death to traumatic asphyxia: A shoe had been pressed into his back when jail deputies tried to control him. Erie County settled the wrongful death case for $1 million.

Every corner of the nation has horror stories that played out in jails or on the street. Just look at newspaper accounts in upstate New York:

• In Schenectady, police in 2009 shoot and kill a man with schizophrenia who was off his medicine and refused to drop a knife.

• Rochester police in June 2012 shoot and kill a man with bipolar disorder – off his medication – who fired a rifle at them after a domestic incident.

• Syracuse police in May 2011 shoot and kill Benjamin Campione, who aimed a pellet gun at them. Campione was off his medicine and slipping deeper into paranoid schizophrenia, said his brother, Victor, who had been desperate to find him help.

“You can’t understand the terror, the fear, the frustration of a family member that has a son or a daughter that has been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic or a manic depressive, and you can’t get any help,” he said. “You are waiting for that phone call that they have been picked up again, or you are waiting for that phone call that they have killed themselves or they’ve harmed somebody else. You live with that every day.”

A federal government statistic hints at a dramatic jump in the number of troubled people who resort to suicide by cop: In the mid-1970s, roughly one of every three victims of a justifiable police homicide had attacked the officer. By 2005, it was double that – two out of every three.

Every year in America, police kill an average of 24 people whom officers did not intend to arrest, according to a Justice Department study. In most of those cases, the task of bringing someone to a hospital for a mental evaluation turned ugly.

“We go to calls all the time, on a daily basis, where we interact with the mentally ill. We do the best we can,” Chief Deputy Steven Preisch of the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office said. “We have to be realistic. We are police officers. A lot of times we are dealing with individuals who are going to need a lifetime of medication or supervision or counseling or something to help. A lot of times we get called in on the weekends, or holidays or in the middle of the night when no one else is available. And we are basically a Band-Aid.”While some families welcome police involvement, the patients, also called consumers, do not necessarily feel the same way. The arrival of officers with badges and guns can cast the mentally ill as criminals.

“They sent the police for me once,” said Lauren Tenney who calls herself a “psychiatric survivor” and an advocate for the “liberation movement” that fights for the rights of people in the system. Tenney has experienced and rejected the tools of psychiatry, especially the drugs that doctors prescribe.

The police came for her in Manhattan, around 1992. She was 20 years old and had been diagnosed with a mental illness.

“I was sad. I was crying. The person that I was with flipped out because they couldn’t deal with the fact that I was crying. And so they called the psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist told them to call the police. The police showed up, six or eight of them maybe, with those plastic screen things, you know? And helmets ...

“It was frightening. Having people come in prepared for who knows what didn’t in any way help me feel more like a person. And having to be walked out by police, in all this gear, with people seeing it, it deepens the justification in peoples’ minds ... that we are dangerous. All I was doing was crying.”

Said Tenney: “I do think that police and people in general are afraid of us.”

Some officers acknowledge they do find calls involving the mentally ill scary. But that doesn’t mean the seriously mentally ill are inherently more dangerous when treated. Studies have found that people with mental illness are more likely to be victims of crimes than perpetrators. Police are more likely to harm the mentally ill than be harmed by them.

A Buffalo News analysis found that from 2008 through 2012, police north of New York City killed 17 people who had mental trouble or were emotionally disturbed.

The News found that four upstate police were slain by gunfire over the same period. One of the four, Detective Alexander Ridley of Mount Vernon, was killed by law enforcement officers who mistook him for a suspect.

Tenney’s views reveal a philosophical divide in the mental health community: Should treatment be forced on the mentally ill?

Generally, the legal answer is no, unless the person appears to be a threat to themselves or others. Police can then take them to a hospital for what usually turns out to be a short-term stay.

But with someone, say, eating from a dumpster or ranting on the street to no one in particular, cops have limited power.Charlene Fears was dangerous. She once pulled a knife on her husband. She fought with a neighbor. She threatened suicide. “It was always some chaotic stuff at that house,” a neighbor later told police.

Fears had spent time in psychiatric care and was released in the hope that she would take her lithium.

But she didn’t like the side effects. Her husband told detectives that his wife thought the drug made her hair fall out.

Her torment worsened until her final acts on Aug. 1.

A detective examining her body at 195 Esser St. in Black Rock found she had slashed her wrists some time before squaring off with Officer Yeates.

Another detective found a handwritten note she left upstairs.

“... I am better off dead,” the note said. “I kill everybody I touch ...

“I love my kids ...

“I taking my life cause I’m a loser.”



email: mspina@buffnews.com ]]> Sat, 18 May 2013 23:35:13 -0400 <![CDATA[ Rumore wins re-election as BTF president ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130518/CITYANDREGION/130519044/1002
Rumore received 758 votes to 398 cast for his opponent, Marc Bruno.

Rumore, who has held the union president’s post since 1981 after working for 13 years as a special education teacher, did not return a call to comment.

Bruno, a history teacher at Riverside High School and longtime member of the union’s governing Council of Delegates, said he was pleased with the turnout, which was almost twice the number cast in the last election.

He said there were some issues Saturday morning when his observers were briefly blocked from watching the vote-counting process, which is carried out by a computer company.

“The counting process definitely needs to be reviewed and revised, that’s for sure,” said Bruno. “It’s not a CPA firm that counts the votes, so it’s not like they have a license to lose, like a CPA.”

“I’m not going to contest the election,” said Bruno, “I don’t think that would be very good for the union, and it would probably cost a lot of money, but the process definitely needs to be changed.”

Bruno said he was happy with the number of votes he got.

“Phil Rumore is like a Ted Kennedy or a Strom Thurmond; he’s been there for 32 years. I’ve been on the council for 10 years, but it’s all name recognition. Phil beat me not quite 2-to-1, and for a 32-year incumbent and a virtual unknown, I think I had a pretty strong showing. He had a decent victory, though, and I’m going to support him every step of the way.”

About 3,500 active teachers received ballots, which they filled out and mailed back to a post office box. Bruno said 1,172 valid ballots were received.



email: aneville@buffnews.com ]]> Sat, 18 May 2013 21:34:53 -0400 Anne Neville
]]> <![CDATA[ Embattled Assemblyman announces resignation ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130518/WORLD/130519050/1002
The announcement by Democratic Assemblyman Vito Lopez, 72, a once-powerful Brooklyn Democratic leader, came as a surprise. A day earlier, he had defied demands by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, leader of the state Democratic party, to resign immediately.

Instead, Lopez said he would resign at the end of the legislative session on June 20 to fully pursue his candidacy for the New York City Council.

In a single, terse sentence Lopez announced the resignation from the seat he’s held since 1984: “I hereby resign the public office of Member of the Assembly from the 53rd Assembly District, Kings County, effective 9 a.m. Monday, May 20, 2013.”

Silver announced Lopez’s reversal. The powerful speaker had planned Monday to begin a rare and uncertain effort to expel a sitting lawmaker. Expelling Lopez could have proved difficult – he’s not charged with any crime and was overwhelmingly re-elected in November, when the scandal was already widely known.

But Lopez and Silver have been under increased pressure since last week, when reports from Special Prosecutor Daniel Donovan and the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics detailed allegations involving four female staffers. The allegations include Lopez forcing his hand up a woman’s leg, trying to coerce them to share hotel rooms with him, touching the tumors on his neck and requiring them to write flattering and flirtatious memos to him that he later tried to use to discredit their accusations.

The allegations involving two women came last summer, when the scandal first became public. That’s when Silver and top Assembly staffers, along with reviews by top staffers for Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman and Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, authorized a secret $103,000 settlement for Lopez’s first accusers.

Lopez has denied sexually harassing anyone. He noted the two investigations found he committed no crime and that only the voters should decide if he leaves office. His attorney didn’t respond to a request for comment Saturday. ]]> Sat, 18 May 2013 20:47:57 -0400 By Michael Gormley

Associated Press

]]> <![CDATA[ Bills home opener game sells out ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130518/CITYANDREGION/130519075/1002
The Buffalo Bills Sept. 8 home opener against the New England Patriots at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Orchard Park has sold out, according to a mobile alert and tweet sent out by the organization this morning.

]]> Sat, 18 May 2013 14:32:22 -0400 NEWS STAFF REPORTS

]]> <![CDATA[ Train-crash probe looks at fractured rail ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130518/WORLD/130519057/1002
National Transportation Safety Board member Earl Weener said Saturday the broken rail is of substantial interest to investigators and a portion of the track will be sent to a lab for analysis.

Weener said it’s not clear if the accident caused the fracture or if the rail was broken before the crash.

He said he won’t speculate on the cause of the derailment and emphasized the investigation was in its early stages.

Seventy-two people were sent to the hospital Friday evening after a Metro-North train heading east from New York City derailed and was hit by a train heading west from New Haven. Most have been discharged.

Officials earlier described devastating damage and said it was fortunate no one was killed.

“All of the injured people described the really harrowing experience of having the train jolt to a stop, the dust, darkness, other kinds of factors that made it particularly frightening,” said U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who visited several patients in the hospital.

Blumenthal said a Metro-North conductor helped passengers despite her own injuries.

“Her story is really one of great strength and courage helping other passengers off the train in spite of her own very severe pain,” Blumenthal said. “She eventually had to be helped off herself.”

The crash damaged the tracks and threatened to snarl travel in the Northeast Corridor. The crash also caused Amtrak to suspend service between New York and Boston.

“The damage is absolutely staggering,” Blumenthal said, describing the shattered interior of cars and tons of metal tossed around. “I feel that we are fortunate that even more injuries were not the result of this very tragic and unfortunate accident.”

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy said it was “frankly amazing” people weren’t killed.

Both said new Metro-North Railroad cars built with higher standards may have saved lives.

Metro-North said train service will remain suspended between South Norwalk and New Haven until further notice.

Railroad officials said rebuilding the two tracks and restoring train service “will take well into next week.”

NTSB investigators arrived Saturday and are expected to be on site for seven to 10 days. They will look at the brakes and performance of the trains, the condition of the tracks, crew performance and train signal information, among other things.

When the NTSB has concluded the on-site phase of its investigation, Metro-North will begin to remove the damaged rail cars and remaining debris.

The process of removal requires specialized, heavy equipment that will be in place today, officials said.

Only after the damaged train cars have been removed can Metro-North begin the work of rebuilding the damaged tracks and overhead wires. ]]> Sat, 18 May 2013 20:02:32 -0400 By John Christoffersen

Associated Press

]]> <![CDATA[ Niagara County School District Elections ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130519/CITYANDREGION/130519130/1003
The following capsules introduce the school board candidates and give the financial information voters can use to see how their money would be spent. All figures related to tax rates and tax bills are estimates, either provided by school officials, or calculated based on information they provided. The taxes on a $100,000 home do not include the STAR rebate.Candidates (elect 2): William Smith (i); Mary Jo Clemens-Harris and John McDonald.

Total budget: $19.01 million, down 2.4 percent.

Tax levy increase allowed under tax cap: 90 percent.

Tax levy: $3.91 million, up 3.5 percent.

Property tax rate per $1,000 of assessed value: $15.96, up 54 cents

Taxes on a $100,000 home: $1,596

Percentage of budget from property taxes: 20.5 percent

Percentage of budget from state aid: 34.4 percent

Proposition 2: Proposal to convert Barker Free Library into a school district library with a $75,000 budget.

Proposition 3: Candidates for Library Board (Elect 7): Roy Anderson, James Trinder, Pamela Atwater, Terrence Upton, Henry Charache, Marilyn Zaciewski and Seanna Corwin-Bradley.

Polls open: Noon to 8 p.m. in the Barker High School Auditorium, 1628 Quaker Road.

Web link: www.barkercsd.net

...

Voters will consider a $19 million budget that cuts spending nearly $467,000 from its current level, a 2.4 percent reduction.

“While our expenditures have steadily risen, our revenues have decreased, primarily from our PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) with the Somerset coal plant (now Upstate Power Producers) , which will drop $3 million in 2013-14,” said Superintendent Roger Klatt.

To help cut down on costs, Barker and the Royalton-Hartland districts will share a superintendent. Effective July 1, Klatt will oversee both districts.

The district has also taken on other collaborative agreements with Roy-Hart “by sharing our football program, and we will share wrestling and some special education programs and a business teacher. We are also eliminating 6 full-time positions and will not fill vacancies created with retirements,” Klatt said.

Voters will choose from a field of three candidates for two school board openings. Candidates are:

• Incumbent William Smith, 73, retired Barker elementary teacher who has served on Barker School Board for 18 years, was board president for seven years and currently serves as vice president.

• Mary Jo Clemens-Harris, 44, is an optician. This is her second time running for a seat on the board.

• John McDonald , 65, retired General Motors toolmaker. Also taught vocational education for BOCES for 10 years. First time running for elected office.• Candidates (elect 3): Jodee L. Riordan, Anna Boulay Wright, Betty VanDenBosch Warrick.

• Total budget: $40 million, down 1.16 percent.

• Tax levy increase allowed under tax cap: 4 percent.

• Tax levy: $23.6 million, up 5.52 percent.

• Property tax rate per $1,000 or assessed value: $24.06 in Lewiston, up 5.22, and $20.69 in Porter, up 4.86 percent.

• Taxes on $100,000 home: $1,966.

• Percentage of budget from property taxes: 59 percent.

• Percentage of budget from state aid: 34.8 percent.

• Proposition 2: $26 million capital improvement project for interior and exterior reconstruction and renovation work for code and safety measures and upgrades throughout the district, as well as a number of enhancements and upgrades including the pool and locker room and air conditioning for the computer labs.

• Polls open: 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. in Community Resource Center [board room], 4671 Creek Road.

• Web link: www.lew-port.com.

...

Despite an overall decrease from budget to budget, the proposed $40 million Lewiston-Porter budget would affect taxpayers with a 5.5 percent tax increase. The increased tax levy exceeds their district’s tax levy threshold and the proposed budget will need a 60 percent majority to pass. Superintendent R. Christopher Roser said the increase is caused by the loss of state aid from New York State’s gap elimination adjustment, which for each of the past three years took away $2.4 million in state aid from their district. “This is the fourth year in a row we are trying to operate with significantly less funds than we had four years ago.” He said they have attempted to avoid increases, staying at the same tax level for three years and at the threshold this past year, but he said this past year they were one of eight districts in the state operating with no fund balance. The proposed budget also cuts 23 positions – nine teachers, nine support staff and five they are not filling. “There is not a stash of money floating around in our budget. We’ve cut lots of positions, but this year we hit the wall. This will maintain the programming that our community wants for our students,” said Roser

Three candidates are running for two three-year terms on the board. They are:

• Board President Jodee L. Riordan, 44, of Youngstown, the mother of four, just completed her first three-year term, serving as president for two of those years. She has been active in a number of community organizations and served as president of the Lewiston-Porter Parent Teachers Association, including her first year as president of the Board of Education, serving for one year as president of both boards. She has lived in the district since 1987 and is a graduate of North Tonawanda High School and has a bachelor’s degree in English from the University at Buffalo. She is employed in sales as a contract administrator at Modern Disposal.

• Betty J. VanDenBosch Warrick, 45, of Youngstown is seeking her first term on the board. She has lived in the district for the past 20 years and is the mother of three children. She previously served as treasurer, vice president and president of the Lewiston-Porter Parent Teachers Association. She works as the general manager of U.S. operations for Yorkville Sound and has a background in credit management.

• Anna D. Bouley Wright, 32, of Youngstown has lived in the district for the past seven years. She is the mother of two children and is seeking her first term on the board. She has worked in management for 15 years and is currently employed as a general manager for a retail denim store.• Candidates (elect 3): Diane Phelps; John Williams; Randall Parker; Marietta Schrader; Edward Sandell; Todd McNall.

• Total budget: $83.06 million, up 3.96 percent.

• Tax levy increase allowed under tax cap: 5.04 percent.

• Tax levy: $35.2 million, up 2 percent.

• Property tax rate per $1,000 of assessed value: about $25.37, up 2 percent.

• Taxes on $100,000 home: $2,537.

• Percentage of budget from property taxes: 42.4 percent.

• Percentage of budget from state aid: 47.8 percent.

• Proposition 2: A $22.2 million capital project package including improvements to the kitchens of four elementary schools, and added security cameras and upgraded Internet connections and fiber optic cable at all schools.

If approved, the district intends to borrow $19.2 million on a 15-year bond at 2≤ percent interest. The state will reimburse the district’s costs at 92 cents on the dollar, but the district must spend the money up front. The remaining $3 million will be appropriated from a reserve fund.

•Polls open: Noon to 9 p.m. in Washington Hunt Elementary School, 50 Rogers Ave. (1st Ward); Board of Education, 130 Beattie Ave. (2nd Ward); Anna Merritt Elementary School, 389 Green St. (3rd Ward); Charles Upson Elementary School, 28 Harding Ave. (4th Ward); Roy B. Kelley Elementary School, 610 E. High St. (5th Ward); Lockport High School, 250 Lincoln Ave. (towns).

• Web link: www.lockportschools.org.

...

Spending rises $3.1 million, or nearly 4 percent, in the $83 million budget voters will consider Tuesday. The major increases are in state-mandated pension contributions, driving a $3 million increase in employee benefits, according to a district newsletter. The budget also includes $1.2 million to pay debt incurred for the 2008 high school renovation project. On the other hand, retirements and the closure of Washington Hunt Elementary School this June have produced $1.3 million in savings. The board deleted nearly $500,000 it had intended as a contingency fund in case of federal budget cuts, assuming Congress will restore the sequestration of funds for local schools.

Candidates (Elect 3): Diane Phelps; John Williams; Randall Parker; Marietta Schrader; Edward Sandell; Todd McNall.

Schrader is a former board president who retired in 2010 after one year in her last term.

Six candidates are running for three three-year terms on the board. They are:

• Incumbent Diane Phelps, 49, is seeking her second term. She was elected as a write-in candidate three years ago. She holds a doctorate in English education and has taught education at Niagara University and the University at Buffalo.

• Incumbent Jon A. Williams, 66, is running for his third term. He has been a professor of public communication and speech at Niagara County Community College for the past 29 years.

• Randall J. Parker, 52, has been a City of Lockport firefighter since 1986, and has served as president of the Lockport Professional Fire Fighters Association.

• Marietta G. Schrader, 60, served on the board for 12 years, including four years as president, before stepping down in 2011. She is a retired nurse practitioner.

• Incumbent Edward P. Sandell, 55, is running for his third term. He is an engineering manager at the Delphi Thermal technical center in Lockport.

• Todd G. McNall, 35, is a former shop chairman of United Auto Workers Local 686 at Delphi. He now works at the GM Powertrain plant in the Town of Tonawanda and is the son of Niagara County Legislator W. Keith McNall, who was a previous School Board president.• Candidates (elect 3): Donna Lakes of Charlotteville Road; Michele Malone of Corwin Ave.; James Schmitt of Rounds Road; Margaux Lingle of Charlotteville Road; Joseph Flagler of Lockport-Olcott Road, Lockport.

• Total Budget: $33.69 million, up 2.31 percent.

• Tax Levy increase allowed under tax cap: 2 percent.

• Tax Levy: $12.78 million, up 2 percent.

• Property tax rate per $1,000 of assessed value: Newfane, $28.35; Lockport, $26.08

• Taxes on a $100,000 home: $2,608.

• Percentage of budget from taxes: 38 percent.

• Percentage of budget from state aid: 52 percent.

• Polls open: 8 a.m.–8 p.m., Newfane Elementary School, Main St.

• Web link: www.newfane.wnyic.org.

...

Voters are being presented with a budget that holds the tax increase to a flat two percent, the amount usually referred to as the tax levy limit.

Instead of seeking a larger increase, the district will cover more than nine percent of its budget from its reserve savings or about $3.2 million, officials said.

Although the state tax levy limit is frequently believed to be two percent, districts are permitted to make adjustments for items such as indebtedness and pension obligation increases. Such adjustments usually allow districts to seek a larger tax hike without needing a supermajority of voters or 60 percent to pass the budget.• Candidates (elect 2): Ronald J. Barstys, Kevin Dobbs, Michael S. Gawel, Don J. King, Herbert L. Lewis, Anthony F. Paretto.

• Total budget: $124.06 million, up 1.32 percent.

• Tax levy increase allowed under tax cap: 3.77 percent.

• Tax levy: $25.82 million, up 3 percent.

• Property tax rate per $1,000 or assessed value: $19.21, up 3 percent.

• Taxes on $100,000 home: $1,922.

• Percentage of budget from property taxes: 21 percent.

• Percentage of budget from state aid: 73 percent.

• Polls open: Noon to 9 p.m. at eight neighborhood polling sites. Polling places can be found on district’s website.

• Web link: http://www.nfschools.net/nfschools.

...

Voters will consider a $124.06 million budget that would increase spending by $1.62 million over the current budget.

The budget is the first in 20 years to include a tax levy increase.

District officials say the increase is driven by employee pension contributions and other contractual items.

Six candidates are running for two five-year terms on the board. They are:

• Incumbent Don J. King, 80, a more than 30-year veteran of the School Board who is a retired retail business owner.

• Incumbent Kevin Dobbs, 58, a school board member since 1997 who is a retired supervisor for Occidental Chemical.

• Ronald J. Barstys, 40, director of student services for the North Tonawanda City School District.

• Michael S. Gawel, 56, an accountant and real estate broker.

• Herbert L. Lewis, 41, a former City Council candidate and security guard at the Seneca Niagara Casino.

• Anthony F. Paretto, 46, an electrician for the City of Niagara Falls.Candidates (elect 2): Lorna Tilley-Peltier, Lori Pittman and Amy Deull.

Total budget: $62.75 million, up 3.69 percent

Tax levy increase allowed under cap: 5.91 percent

Tax levy: $30.35 million, up 5.91 percent

Property tax rate per $1,000 of assessed value: Town of Niagara, $29.27 (homestead), $39.35 (nonhomestead); Wheatfield, $24.71 (h), $33.78 (n); Lewiston, $20.86 (h), $28.06 (n); Cambria, $17.11 (h), $17.11 (n).

Taxes on a $100,000 home: $1,711.

Percentage of budget from property taxes: 49 percent

Percentage of budget from state aid: 46 percent

Proposition 2: Whether to allow a representative from the high school senior class to sit on the School Board as a member who would not have voting rights or be allowed to attend executive sessions. Students who apply to be a board member would have to meet specific criteria and would be selected by the board.

Polls Open: 8 a.m.-9 p.m., Adult Learning Center, 2292 Saunders Settlement Road, Sanborn, N.Y.

Web link: www.nwcsd.k12.ny.us/nwcsd/site.

...

Voters will decide on a budget that had to address a $1 million deficit by eliminating six teaching positions, but not touching kindergarten, as threatened, or sports and the arts programs.

According to school officials, the cuts to cover the budget shortfall total $1.07 million. The instructional cuts come to the equivalent of six teaching positions, while other items in the savings are $414,975 in retirements, $40,975 for three school monitors, one cleaner at $29,415, and $115,000 for 18 hours a day in teaching assistants. School board members had suggested cutting kindergarten back half-time or even entirely until they were approached by dozens of residents who objected.

If the budget goes down, they said kindergarten, a nonmandated program, would be reduced or eliminated for a second budget vote.

This budget represents the third year the district has had to make significant program and personnel cuts and increase taxes since it was pressured into depleting its reserve fund by the State Comptroller’s Office.

Voters will elect two members. The highest vote-getter of the three candidates would begin serving on May 21, immediately after the vote to fill the remaining term of a previous vacancy to June 30. The term would continue to June 30, 2016. The term of the second highest would begin July 1 for three years.

Candidates are:

• Lorna Tilley-Peltier of Ward Road, Wheatfield

• Incumbent Lori Pittman of Lauer Road, Town of Niagara

• Amy Deull of Millville Circle, Wheatfield.• Candidates (elect 2): Colleen Osborn, Arthur Pappas, Robert D. Schmigel, Susanne Williams, and Randy Bradt.

• Total budget: $65.74 million, up 1.53 percent.

• Tax levy increase allowed under tax cap: 2.56 percent.

• Tax levy: $26.83 million, up 2.56 percent.

• Property tax rate per $1,000 or assessed value: $21.48, up 2.558 percent.

• Taxes on $100,000 home: $2,084.

• Percentage of budget from property taxes: 41 percent.

• Percentage of budget from state aid: 49 percent.

• Polls open: noon to 9 p.m. in Alumni Center at North Tonawanda High School, 405 Meadow Drive.

• Web link: www.ntschools.org.

...

Voters will consider a $65.74 million budget that would increase spending by $987,861 over the current budget.

The rise in spending is driven by benefit costs, primarily the retirement system and contractual increases in salary, said Alan Getter, assistant superintendent for administrative services.

This year nine retirements helped the district keep costs down. “Last year we had zero,” Getter said.

Five candidates are running for two three-year terms on the board. They are:

• Colleen Osborn, 38, an incumbent, a medical office manager studying for a master’s in nursing, running for a second term. She wants to continue to find ways for the community to use school buildings and to encourage the district to share information in a transparent, accountable way.

• Arthur Pappas, 68, an incumbent, served on the board for 15 years, a decade of those as president. A retired elementary and middle school teacher with Starpoint Central School, he is now running for his sixth term. He aims to collaborate with the city to save costs on such things as snowplowing and bring an educator’s perspective to the board. “With education it’s the students that should come first. Discussion should revolve around that,” he said.

• New are: Robert D. Schmigel, 44, a father of three and store manager at CVS, wants to balance school needs with keeping the budget and taxes down.

• Susanne Williams, 46, an office manager in dental and medical practices, would work to maintain sports and art programs and draw on her experience developing an educational program with her son.

• Randy Bradt, 42, a father of three and an accountant and owner of Nicastro Accounting Services in Amherst.Candidates (elect two): Daniel Bragg; Sara Fry.

Total budget: $22.02 million, down slightly.

Tax levy increase allowed under tax cap: 6.1 percent.

Tax levy: $9.36 million up 3 percent.

Property tax rate per $1,000 of assessed value: $22.49, up 3 percent.

Taxes on a $100,000 home: $2,249.

Percentage of budget from property taxes: 42 percent.

Percentage of budget from state aid: 49 percent.

Polls open: noon to 8 p.m. in Roy-Hart High School gym, 54 State St., Middleport.

Web link: www.royhart.org.

...

Voters will take to the polls to consider a $22 million budget, which represents a 0.17 percent decrease in spending from the current budget, according to Superintendent Kevin MacDonald. “We made significant cuts in the past four to five years and while the cuts were made in past years, they have had significant benefits that continue,” he said.

One of the cuts included a new agreement with Barker schools to share a superintendent. Barker’s Roger Klatt will oversee both districts, while MacDonald leaves Roy-Hart to head Genesee Valley Educational Partnerships.

Other cost-saving moves have included laying off teachers “and we have had a fair number of retirements that has helped,” MacDonald said. “We’re trying to be understanding of the community’s needs, while still managing the cuts in state aid we suffered years ago and not balance the budget on the backs of the taxpayers. We feel we’re as close to bare bones as we can get.”

There are two candidates running unopposed for two three-year terms. They are:

• Daniel Bragg, 58, completing his ninth year on board and is its current vice president. He is manager of Standish Jones Building Supply.

• Sara Fry, 46, office manager for Hypertherm, Lockport. This is her first time running for a seat.• Candidates (elect 4): Susan M. Brooks, Jeffrey D. Duncan, Michael D. Zimmerman, Eugene E. Stanwich, Andrea L. Wick, Kevin P. Duffy, Dennis P. Toth, Sherri Weber.

• Total budget: $46.55 million, up 2.6 percent.

• Tax levy increase allowed under tax cap: 4.86 percent.

• Tax levy: $25.81 million, up 3.18 percent.

• Property tax rate per $1,000 of assessed value: $22.23, up 1.99 percent in Cambria.

• Taxes on $100,000 home: $2,223.

• Percentage of budget from property taxes: 55.4 percent.

• Percentage of budget from state aid: 39 percent.

• Polls open: 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. in the middle school gymnasium, 4363 Mapleton Road, Pendleton.

• Web link: starpointcsd.org.

...

Superintendent C. Douglas Whelan said the proposed Starpoint budget of $46.55 million, which shows a spending increase of less than $1.2 million, doesn’t really cover the district’s cost increases. “The cost of doing business as usual is $3.5 million,” he said. “We have reduced quite a bit, about $950,000, plus $300,000 in extra state aid.” He said the district has had 24 retirees in the last four years that haven’t been replaced.

Eight candidates are running for four seats on the board. The top three finishers receive three-year terms; the fourth-place finisher wins a one-year term. The candidates are:

• Susan M. Brooks, 42 of Pendleton, a director of nursing at Buffalo General Medical Center.

• Incumbent Jeffrey D. Duncan, 40, of Pendleton, who is running for his second term. He is a service account engineer at Siemens in Amherst.

• Incumbent Michael D. Zimmerman, 47, of Pendleton, is a chief master sergeant in the 914th Airlift Wing at the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station, working as a load master superintendent on C-130 cargo planes. He is seeking his third term.

• Eugene E. Stanwich, 64, of Wheatfield, has a doctorate in education and retired after 32 years as a librarian in Amherst schools.

• Andrea L. Wick, 38, of Pendleton, works at a Buffalo accounting firm.

• Kevin P. Duffy, 42, of the Town of Lockport, served two terms on the Lockport School Board when he lived in that district. He is a psychologist in the Buffalo public schools and in private practice.

• Incumbent Dennis P. Toth, 57, of Pendleton, is a captain in the Niagara Falls Fire Department, where he has worked for 27 years. He is running for his second term.

• Sherri Weber, 42, of the Town of Lockport, is a professor of elementary education and reading at SUNY Buffalo State.Candidates (elect two): Timothy Kropp, Mark Randall and Amy Phillips.

Total budget: $24.29 million, up 3.5 percent.

Tax levy increase allowed under tax cap: 5 percent.

Tax levy: $11.32 million, up 4 percent.

Property tax rate per $1,000 of assessed value: $27.42, up 4 percent.

Taxes on $100,000 home: $2,523.

Percentage of budget from property taxes: 47 percent.

Percentage of budget from state aid: 48 percent.

Polls open: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. in R. Zipp Gym at Wilson High School, 412 Lake St.

Web link: www.wilson.wnyric.org.

...

Voters will consider a budget that increases spending 3.5 percent due to debt service, salaries, BOCES contracts, materials and supplies, according to school officials.

There are three candidates running for two board seats. The candidates for three-year terms are:

• Timothy F. Kropp, 63, an incumbent, has served on the board 18 years and is current board president. He is a retired lineman for the New York Power Authority.

• Mark Randall, 57, an incumbent, is a truck driver and has served on the board for six years. He also serves as vice president of Niagara-Orleans School Board Association.

• Amy Phillips, 36, is executive secretary for the chief of surgery for Kaleida Health Systems and chairman of the department of surgery at the University at Buffalo. This is her first time running for public office. ]]> Fri, 17 May 2013 17:50:43 -0400 <![CDATA[ History Center readies program commemorating War of 1812 ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130519/CITYANDREGION/130519131/1003
Ann Marie Linnabery, the center’s assistant director and education coordinator, will present “The War of 1812 in Niagara County” at 7 p.m. at the center, 215 Niagara St. The program will be repeated at 11 a.m. June 22 at the Erie Canal Discovery Center, 24 Church St.

The presentation will highlight the significant role Niagara County played in this international conflict and some little-known incidents as well as the more recognized events.

Using historical images as well as recent photographs, Linnabery will trace war-related events that occurred in the county from 1812 to 1814, beginning with the Battle of Queenston Heights and continuing through the destruction of much of the Niagara Frontier.

One of the lesser known skirmishes occurred at what is now known as Molyneaux Corners, at the corner of Route 104, North Ridge Road and Plank Road, in the Town of Cambria, Linnabery said.

“After the British and their Native American allies burned Lewiston in December of 1813, people fled along Route 104 east toward Orleans County,” she said.

“When they got to Gaines, in Orleans County, they told the people there what had happened, and the Gaines Militia gathered and walked to Niagara County. When they got to the area around what is now Molyneaux Corners, there was a tavern there, and they heard noise inside. They weren’t sure what to expect.”

“One of the militia went in and confronted the British soldiers and Native allies he found inside, and there was some shooting,” she said.

“From what I’ve read, two British soldiers and two Natives were killed, but no Americans. In fact, those two British soldiers were the first to be buried in Molyneaux Cemetery, which is just a little west of where the tavern was on Route 104. It’s called Molyneaux Corners because just before this all happened, the property had been sold to William Molyneaux. He later built a large hotel and tavern on the site, and it lasted about 100 years, burning down around 1927.”

Linnabery said the center would like to get a marker at the site some day. “We are still looking for an original letter or diary or newspaper article as a primary source of information,” she said.

Linnabery said she has relied on help from Old Fort Niagara, the Historical Association of Lewiston and the Cambria Historical Society for the project. She has 25 years of experience in the museum field, with a master’s degree in history from the University at Buffalo.

She also is working on a map of sites throughout Niagara County that are marked because of their connection to the War of 1812. She hopes it will be available by the June 22 presentation.

Light refreshments will be served following the program. For more information, call 716-434-7433. ]]> Fri, 17 May 2013 17:50:10 -0400 By Teresa Sharp

Niagara correspondent

]]> <![CDATA[ Public pianos part of Lockport’s “sweet summer” plan ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130519/CITYANDREGION/130519132/1003
But less common are places where the art has turned to music.

Lockport businesswoman Ellen Martin has cooked up an idea to fill the city’s business district with music and attractive art this summer.

Starting June 21, several businesses will have pianos set up outside their doors. The donated pianos, mostly uprights, will have been painted or otherwise decorated, but they also will be available for anyone who wants to tickle the ivories.

“The idea is, come and stroll and play,” said Linda Van Buskirk, executive director of the Market Street Art Center.

It’s called Sweet Harmony, and it’s part of Martin’s “Sweet Sweet Summer” series of events.

“I think it’s a cool, innovative idea,” Mayor Michael W. Tucker said. “Ellen has come up with some innovative ideas, good ways to promote our community.”

“I’m viewing it as bringing business and life to downtown,” Martin said.

Martin might be trying to trademark the word “sweet.” She is the owner of Sweet Sixteen Cafe and Sweet Ride Rentals, a bicycle rental business.

“I’m just viewing it as part of an overall theme for the summer,” she said.

Her other ideas include “Sweet Dreams,” a chalkboard on which citizens will be able to draw or write about their dreams; the “Sweet Chalk Festival,” a weekend of sidewalk art drawn in chalk; and “Sweet Idea,” which opened the season earlier this month.

An 8-by-12-foot chalkboard was attached to the outside wall of City Hall, starting May 6, and citizens were invited to complete the sentence: “I’m important to Lockport because I …”

Responses, written in blue, pink or yellow chalk, included, “I help my grandma,” “Get rid of drug dealers,” and “Contribute to the downtown economy.”

“My staff and I built the chalkboard. It’s not as pretty as the art people would have made it,” Martin said.

Sweet Dreams will run for a week, starting July 6. The chalk festival is set for the weekend of Aug. 17 and 18. Both will be held on Canal Street.

Meanwhile, donated pianos for Sweet Harmony are being stored at Market Street Art Center, until they are collected by sponsors for painting. Sponsors, who pay $350 each, may do as they wish with the piano after the Sweet Harmony event ends Aug. 18, which is the date of the annual Taste of Lockport restaurant promotion in Ida Fritz Park.

The $350 include the price of moving and tuning the piano, which is being handled by Thomas Miller of Miller Piano, a Lockport business.

“We’re only doing a dozen. I think we could do it every year. It has the potential to be a long-running public art project,” Martin said.

Sponsors so far include the Niagara County Bar Association, which plans to place a piano in front of the County Courthouse; Lake Effect Ice Cream; J. Fitzgerald Group; J. Muscato Interiors; McCollum Farms; and Old City Hall. Martin’s businesses and the Market Street Art Center also will have pianos.

Piano sponsors may hire an artist from the Market Street Art Center’s roster to help them paint the instrument.

“You can get very creative and do all kinds of things with them,” Van Buskirk said.

The Common Council voted Wednesday to give formal permission for Sweet Harmony, Sweet Dreams and the Sweet Chalk Festival.



email: tprohaska@buffnews.com ]]> Fri, 17 May 2013 17:50:04 -0400 Thomas Prohaska
]]> <![CDATA[ Niagara County faith-related events ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130519/CITYANDREGION/130519133/1003 www.middleportcommunitychoir.com.

PASTA DINNER: 2 to 6 p.m., St. Jude Shrine of Lewiston. Dinner includes ravioli with pork sauce, fettucini alfredo, Italian sausage, pizza, salad, rolls, dessert and beverage. Cost is $13 adults, $8 for children 6-12. Dine in or takeout available. For reservations, call Joanne at 284-7043.PRAYER: The Healing Rooms of Buffalo Niagara is open to pray for anyone needing physical, emotional or spiritual healing, 7 to 9 p.m., Potters House Christian Community Church, 723 Seventh St., Niagara Falls. No appointment or fee necessary. For more information, call 884-0048.BIBLE STUDY: 7 p.m., St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church, 1073 Saunders Settlement Road, Lewiston. Study will focus on the Gospel of Matthew. For information, call 297-2668.

RECOVERY GROUP: 7:30 p.m., Wheatfield Community Church, 3571 Niagara Falls Blvd. Addiction Conquerors will offer a Life Recovery Group every week to those who are victims of any addiction. The Rev. Pat Lavery, co-founder of the group, will lead. For information, call 553-3794 or visit www.wheatfieldcommunitychurch.org.DEVOTIONAL GROUP MEETING: St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church, 1073 Saunders Settlement Road, Lewiston. Upper Room discussion and devotional at 1 p.m.; vespers at 6:30; and “Orthodoxy 101,” a meeting designed for those wishing to convert or learn more about the Orthodox faith, at 7. All are welcome. For information, call 297-2668 or email saintgeorgeorthodox@yahoo.com.GROUP DISCUSSION: 6:30 p.m., Mount Olive Lutheran Church. “Step One,” an informal group gathers to discuss various faith-based topics. All are welcome. For information, call 434-8500.



If you would like your event included, send the information two weeks in advance to Niagara Community Calendar, c/o The Buffalo News, P.O. Box 100, Buffalo, NY 14240, fax to 856-5150 or email to niagaranews@buffnews.com. ]]> Fri, 17 May 2013 17:49:38 -0400 <![CDATA[ Around Town / Niagara County meetings and hearings this week ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130519/CITYANDREGION/130519134/1003 The Planning Board will meet at 7 p.m. Monday, followed by the Zoning Board of Appeals at 8 in Town Hall, 4160 Upper Mountain Road, Sanborn.The Village Board will meet for a work session at 6 p.m. Monday in Village Hall, 145 N. Fourth St.

Also this week:

• The Lewiston-Porter School Board will meet at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Community Resource Center on the district’s Creek Road campus.The Common Council will meet for a work session at 5 p.m. Wednesday in the Municipal Building.

Also this week:

• The Greater Lockport Development Corp. will meet at 7:45 a.m. Thursday in the Municipal Building.The School Board will meet at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Early Childhood Center on Godfrey Road.

Also this week:

• The Town Board will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Town Hall, 2737 Main St.• The Town Board will meet at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Town Hall, 7105 Lockport Road.The County Legislature will meet at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the County Courthouse, Park Avenue and Hawley Street, Lockport.

Also this week:

• The Board of Health will meet at 4:30 p.m. Thursday in the Warren J. Rathke Public Safety Training Facility, 5574 Niagara St. Extension.The Niagara Falls School Board will hold an agenda review session at 6:15 p.m. Wednesday in the district’s central office, 630 66th St. A public hearing about the district’s safety plans will follow at 6:30, with the board’s regular meeting following at 7 and a meeting to accept election and budget vote results at 8.

Also this week:

• The Zoning Board of Appeals will meet at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday in Council Chambers in City Hall, 745 Main St.The Common Council will meet at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in City Hall, 216 Payne Ave. An agenda review session will be held at 6:15.The town Planning Board will meet at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in Town Hall, 6570 Campbell Blvd.The Planning Board will meet at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in Town Hall, 5316 Royalton Center Road, Middleport.

Also this week:

• The Middleport Village Board will meet at 7 p.m. Monday in Village Hall, 24 Main St.The Niagara Charter School board of trustees will meet at noon Thursday in the school, 2077 Lockport Road. ]]> Fri, 17 May 2013 17:48:48 -0400 <![CDATA[ Click It or Ticket seat belt enforcement campaign starts Monday ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130519/CITYANDREGION/130519135/1003
Children under age 8 must use a child restraint, and babies must be in rear-facing infant seats until they are at least 1-year-old and weigh at least 20 pounds, with new recommendations that they be kept in a rear-facing restraint until as close to 2-years-old as possible.

The Sheriff’s Office, based in Lockport, offers a permanent fitting station to check to make sure that restraints fit properly.

“It’s important that everyone buckles up every time they go out, both day and night, and there is no good excuse not to have your children properly buckled,” Voutour said.

“Seat belts save thousands of lives every year, but still far too many motorists are senselessly killed or seriously injured by not wearing them, especially at night when the risk of getting in a crash is even greater,” the sheriff said.

“We want everyone to have a safe summer, but it requires an important step that everyone buckles up prior to heading out on our roadways.”

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), more than half of the passengers killed in 2011 were not wearing a seat belt at the time of the crash.

It also said crashes were more prevalent at night than during the day. Automobile crashes are the No. 1 killer of children between ages 1 and 12, and 85 percent to 90 percent of all child restraints are installed incorrectly.

The Niagara County Sheriff’s Office permanent fitting station is available by appointment for seat checks from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Call Grace Destino at 438-3190 to schedule an appointment. Checkpoints are also offered throughout the county, mainly in the warmer months, with no appointment necessary.

Locations and times for upcoming seat belt checks are available on www.niagarasheriff.com calendar of events. ]]> Fri, 17 May 2013 17:47:53 -0400 NEWS NIAGARA BUREAU

]]> <![CDATA[ Overdue makeover to brighten scene at N. Tonawanda court ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130519/CITYANDREGION/130519136/1003
The monthlong, state-funded project, which will cost about $45,000 to $48,000, should be completed by the end of this month or early in June. It is expected to give the courtroom both a new look and a new feel.

The hope is that it will command more respect from those who appear in the courtroom, said Andrew B. Isenberg, executive for the state’s Eighth Judicial District, who oversees court operations in Western New York.

He said the look of a courtroom does make a difference.

“I’ve been involved in a number of courtroom renovations in the Eighth Judicial District, and the judges and court staff regularly tell me that they cannot begin to articulate how much it changes the way the public interacts with the court,” Isenberg said. “Any lack of respect for the law can ultimately lead to chaos.”

Isenberg pointed out that it has been “decades since there has been any work done” on courtroom aesthetics. “I would say it has more of ’50s or ’60s feel.”

He said court officials felt that it was time to take a fresh look at the facility in an effort to upgrade and update the courtroom and back office. “The city was willing to work cooperatively with the state court system and, fortunately, the state court system was able to find some funding to pay for these updates,” he said.

Mayor Robert G. Ortt said that the city has fronted the money for the project and that city workers are involved. Any costs for upgrades, he said, will be reimbursed by the state. Ortt said the courtroom is expected to match the design of Common Council Chambers.

The mayor said both rooms at the court really had a dated look but that Council Chambers were updated several years ago. “Now they will have a similar look and similar feel,” he said.

While work is under way, all courtroom proceedings have been moved next door to Council Chambers.

Ortt said the temporary move has not been an inconvenience. Staff meetings have been moved to a different part of the building, he said.

Isenberg said that it made sense to try to match the look and feel of Council Chambers. He said that it was cost-prohibitive to remove the judge’s bench and that there would only be minor changes to the jury box. But the paneling is coming down, walls are being painted and new carpeting is going in, he said, including in a back office where carpeting had become a tripping hazard. The wooden chairs and Council tables also are being replaced, he said.

Chief Court Clerk Jennifer A. Steele said, “It already looks better with paint on the wall instead of paneling. It’s definitely an improvement.”

Isenberg said they hope when the renovations are completed, North Tonawanda residents and others who interact with the court will “do so in a setting that is proper to promote decorum and respect.”

“We appreciate the help of the city,” he said, “to make this happen.”



email: nfischer@buffnews.com ]]> Fri, 17 May 2013 17:47:43 -0400 Nancy Fischer
]]> <![CDATA[ Niagara Honor Roll / Recognizing the accomplishments of WNYers ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130519/CITYANDREGION/130519137/1003
Meholick, who is board certified in internal medicine and cardiology, is an invasive and clinical cardiologist with Buffalo Heart Group and a clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University at Buffalo.

Mooradian, who returns for a fourth year as tournament co-chairman, is the director of marketing and public relations for Health Systems Services, providers of home medical equipment and the developers of customized injury prevention programs for health care workers in long-term and acute-care settings.

Since the inaugural tournament in 1992, the Niagara Cup has raised more than $1 million for medical equipment and health care programs at the hospital. The tournament is presented by the Medical Center Foundation.

Money raised at this year’s tournament will support health care programming at the hospital, particularly cardiac and stroke services.

...

Air Force Airman Joseph F. Mulcahy graduated from basic military training at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, San Antonio, Texas. Mulcahy is the son of Patty and Joseph Mulcahy of Niagara Falls. He is a 2009 graduate of Niagara Wheatfield High School.

Airmen who complete basic training earn four credits toward an associate in applied science degree through the Community College of the Air Force.

...

The following area businesses recently became members of the Niagara River Region Chamber of Commerce:

Stu StuStudio, owned by Michael and Nicole Stuart, 736 Center St., Lewiston (inside the Lewiston Opera Hall); Slender Inspirations, owned by Margaret Mokhiber, 7311 Porter Road, Niagara Falls; Domova, owned by Ed and Kylie Evanz, 421 Center St., Lewiston; Chris Fit Personal Training owned by Chris Tybor, 734 Cayuga St., Lewiston; and Lovely Nails, owned by Mary Nguyen, 769 Cayuga St., Lewiston.

...

Renee Cerullo is the new first vice president of New York State Women Inc. She has been a member of the Buffalo Niagara New York State Women Inc. for seven years and was the chapter president from 2010-12. She is responsible for the chapter’s website and social media presence.

Cerullo received her master’s in informatics from the University at Buffalo. She started her own business in 2000, called RL Computing, a Web and print design company. She previously served as an adjunct professor at UB, Bryant & Stratton College and Niagara University, and continues as a consultant for colleges in the United States and Canada. Cerullo is the president of the Educational Technology Foundation of Western New York, which helps provide technology to kids in underserved areas. She has been involved with the organization since 2003.



email: citydesk@buffnews.com ]]> Fri, 17 May 2013 17:47:02 -0400 <![CDATA[ Flying a kite is a good way to remain grounded ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130519/CITYANDREGION/130519161/1003
“It helped bring me back to normal,” he said of kite flying. “Just being outdoors in the sun and watching the kite in the sky, it’s uplifting.”

In the 20 years that have gone by since, his collection of kites has grown to about 80, including one painted by hand with flowers and a 125-square-foot model in rainbow colors. And as past director and current president of the Great Lakes Kiteflyers Society (flyglks.com), he flies with the group of about 30 at Gratwick twice a month – noon to 4 p.m. the first Saturday and third Sunday – and goes to special kite events.

For the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, he’s arranged for two Canadian guest flyers to come to Gratwick Park with giant kites and kites shaped like eyeballs, a penguin family and an octopus. The appearances will be part of the May 25 kite fundraiser for homeless veterans. From noon to 4 p.m. organizers will collect donations, serve hot dogs and give away 800 free kites to children. Registration is encouraged, but not essential, at kitesforvets.com.

When Shaw, 66, first got into kiting, he was attracted to kites with two lines that steer and control direction. Now he prefers single-line kites because he can tether them to the ground and visit with fellow kite flyers.

“We put stakes in and it flies by itself, and then we walk around and talk to each other,” said Shaw, a retired former highway engineer with the state. “If it’s a steady breeze, you don’t have to stand there and manage it. The advantage of staking down is you can put two or three kites up. You’re not stuck with just one.”

What kind of kites do club members fly?

We have kites that are anywhere from 2 square inches to 450 square feet.

One of our main purposes of our club is to expose people to kiting and get ’em started if they want to … There are a lot of people that don’t have any idea that this is going on.

Two square inches?

You use a sewing thread for string. It could be made out of a turkey feather. Anything light. Toothpicks and light fabrics or paper. Those are miniature kites. You only use two or three feet of thread. There’s a whole field in that. For some people, that’s all they make.

Do you fly those?

I like the bigger stuff. I used to fly two-line and four-line kites. Now it’s mostly just single-line kites. The four-line kite goes in every direction. It can go forward, reverse, stop, sideways and spin.

I like the social aspect of it. When you’re flying stunt kites, you’re kind of removed from the crowd.

Several of us have taken up sewing, too. We have workshops where we get together and make our own kites. It’s like a room full of 25 men sewing kites and a couple of women. It’s fun. You can save some money. It’s fun to work with a group. These kites can cost a few hundred dollars, and you might be able to make one for a hundred dollars.

Can you tell me a memorable kite-related story?

There was an amusing incident this weekend. There was this guy that made a kite that had a red hat lady on it. Appliqued. He made the kite for his wife. She was flying it and she dropped the spool of twine. It flew up Gratwick Park to the other side of Grand Island. About 30 minutes later, it came back in a boat. Two men brought it back. We thought that was pretty amazing. The boaters see our kites all the time. A lot of times, you’ll see them shut the motors down and just kind of drift by.

A few years ago at the Niagara International Kite Festival at Reservoir Park, in Niagara Falls, there was a fellow here from Japan who flew his 10,000-square-foot kite. I think it was called the “Mega Moon.” It’s the size of an Olympic swimming pool. But it’s open on the long side. It takes about 20 people to fly it. You want to see it in action search for “mega moon” on YouTube.

It’s a $50,000 kite. There’s only three of them in the world, or maybe four. You could park 22 school buses inside it. Just to be that close is just amazing.

What do you love about kite flying?

One of my biggest joys is to stand in a crowd of observers and hand the kite to different people and let ’em fly it. It’s just sort of magical to see people’s faces. Sometimes they’re afraid to take it. They think they’re going to break it. I’ll explain to them why it’s flying and give them instructions on how to fly it.

Why do they fly?

The air hits the front of the kite and gives it some lift. The other part of the air passes over the front end of the kite and that creates a vacuum on the back that lifts the kite just like an airplane wing. It all works because the kite is tethered and the air flows over.

Was Benjamin Franklin’s kite experiment with electricity one of the more famous kites in history?

He discovered static electricity. I don’t fly in the rain or lightning. One of the most interesting events in this area, though, was the story of Homan Walsh.

When they wanted to build the first bridge across the Niagara Gorge, they had a contest to see who could fly a kite across the gorge. As a young boy, he made two attempts; he finally got across on the second attempt. And then they used his kite string to pull successively larger lines across. And, eventually, steel cables to build a suspension bridge. It wasn’t too far from the whirlpool I think, but I think it’s gone now. (Find the story at kitehistory.com.)



email: mkearns@buffnews.com ]]> Fri, 17 May 2013 17:34:22 -0400 Michelle Kearns
]]> <![CDATA[ Life is working out for bodybuilder ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130519/CITYANDREGION/130519162/1003
Except her true personality.

“I’m kind of a tomboy,” the former Niagara Wheatfield High School track athlete and cheerleader said. “But on stage I’m supposed to be this stallion, a sexy stallion. And I laugh every time I turn it on, because that’s not me in real life. It’s like acting.”

That stage persona – along with good genes and an unwavering work ethic – have allowed Booth to become the area’s only active International Bodybuilding and Fitness Federation professional, less than two years after she began competing in the sport.

Booth, 25, earned her IBFF Pro card in November after winning the Figure E Class at the National Physique Committee Nationals in Atlanta. That followed her overall championship at the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Cup.

Two weekends ago, Booth made her professional debut at the NPC Pittsburgh Championships, placing seventh out of 28 competitors. The top six were all veterans in the sport who had competed in previous Ms. Olympia and Arnold Classic events, Booth said. Last weekend, Booth placed eighth at the Powerhouse Pro-Am Classic in Detroit.

“I brought a better body to the show, but I thought the competition was even harder,” she said. “I’m happy. I’m a newer pro, so top 10 is pretty good.”

Booth’s rapid rise in the sport is “relatively unheard of in figure competitions,” said her trainer, Ron Primerano, a former Mr. Buffalo champion who has trained more than 50 amateur bodybuilding title-winners at his Military Road facility.

“She is by far the most genetically blessed athlete I’ve ever trained,” Primerano said. “I’ve been around the sport 12 years competitively. You don’t see athletes come around like this, especially right in the backyard.

“She’s a total genetic freak. I think she can be Ms. Olympia one day. She has the potential to be the best figure competitor in the entire world.”

Growing up, Booth was overshadowed athletically by her younger brother, Darren Sneed, a standout wrestler for the Niagara Wheatfield Falcons.

“I was average at everything I did,” Booth said. “It was nice to find something I was finally good at.”

Booth began training with weights five years ago after failing a fitness test while serving in the Air Force. She also was looking for a way to deal with depression and restore confidence after going through a divorce.

“If I had a bad day, I would just go to the gym and I would leave all of my anger or stress there and go home and be fine and happy,” she said.

It wasn’t just the emotional boost that kept bringing Booth back to the gym. “The weights really attracted me,” she said. “I like doing what the guys do and competing with the guys.”

Booth entered a local competition on a lark in 2011. She placed last, but was undeterred. At the Arnold Classic in Columbus, Ohio, the following spring, she linked up with Team Bombshell, a Daytona, Fla.-based coaching network. In July 2012, she placed fifth out of 37 competitors in her first national show.

“From there, it was serious,” she said. “No more just doing this for fun.”

Over the past year, Booth has had little time for fun. She was a full-time nursing student at D’Youville College, graduating on Saturday; a part-time Army Reservist; a regional coach for Team Bombshell; and a single mother to her 6-year-old daughter.

“I wake up at 4:30, go to the gym at 5, do an hour of cardio, come home, eat, get my daughter ready for school, go to school, get her off the bus and go back to the gym,” she said. She will compete in the New York Pro Bodybuilding Contest next weekend before entering her offseason.

“I have to get my studying in,” she continued. “On the drive to Pittsburgh, I was studying for my finals in the car. It was overwhelming; it was stressful and it was emotional. I want to be good at everything I do. I don’t want to just put all of my attention into competing. And I want to be there for my daughter. I feel like I can balance it out more. This graduation means so much to me because now I can have a normal life.”

A normal life that includes up to three workouts a day.

“She never misses a beat,” said Barbara Aceti, one of Booth’s coaching clients and training partners. “She is extremely hardworking and dedicated. The drive to make herself better is what keeps her going. Every time she comes to the gym, she wants to get better and better.”

Aceti, a Niagara Falls native, also supervised Booth during her clinical training at Women & Children’s Hospital, getting to know the softer side of the hard-bodied competitor. “She is the sweetest person I’ve ever met, always going out of her way to help others,” Aceti said.

Aceti won the Amateur Figure Short Class at the Powerhouse Pro-Am Classic and has seen both of Booth’s professional shows. “It’s an amazing experience to see her up on the stage,” Aceti said. “She has a different persona up there. She takes over the stage.”

“When you’re competing, you get to be someone else,” Booth said. “You get dressed up, wear makeup, get your hair done and all that fun stuff I don’t usually have time for. And you get to bring a different personality to the stage.” ]]> Fri, 17 May 2013 17:34:14 -0400 By Jonah Bronstein

niagara correspondent

]]> <![CDATA[ For women in abusive relationships, a haven in Falls ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130519/CITYANDREGION/130519163/1003
The Passage Domestic Violence Program, a service of Family and Children’s Service of Niagara since 1989, operates a 15-bed emergency shelter in a confidential location and also offers counseling, both at that location and at other sites, to help women make the transition from abusive relationships.

Karrie Gebhardt, director of the program, said the facility offers help to women of any age from anywhere and is nearly at capacity. The YWCA of Niagara also offers an emergency shelter in Lockport.

Passage House “is for people who are literally fleeing a domestic violence situation,” Gebhardt said. She said a hotline is available 24 hour a day, seven days a week.

“The women who are in there right now are in there for various reasons. Maybe their abuser is in jail right now and they chose this time to flee with their children. It may be a single woman for whom the threat of violence is there,” Gebhardt said.

She said Passage House is not a gymnasium with beds, as many might envision. The facility has individual bedrooms with various decors, just as a regular home might have, with a large family room for a mother who might come in with several children.

“It’s very much like your own home would be,” Gebhardt said. “We provide all the food, and they make their own meals, just like at home. There is a dining room, two living rooms, TV and two full bathrooms.”

Safety is an essential component.

“We let people know that if they even question whether it’s domestic violence, it probably is,” she said.

But Gebhardt said the Passage House staff does not try to convince women what to do, but rather to educate them about red flags in relationships, as well as give them options on courses of action.

She said an outreach program extends the counseling beyond just the women who are living in the shelter.

“We will do home visits, or they can come to our office on Main Street in Niagara Falls. It’s confidential counseling, and it’s meant to be educational,” Gebhardt said. “We will do safety planning. They can learn about domestic violence and learn about red flags.”

She said women often say they realized through this program that they are in an abusive relationship.

In some cases, it is a learned behavior they grew up with, seeing their mother abused by their father. It could be physical or emotional abuse, such as name-calling, or financial abuse.

“Women grow up and think that’s the way it’s going to be,” Gephardt said. “It comes in so many forms. People still think it’s just a black eye or a welt from a slap. More often than not, it’s emotional abuse, the isolation, getting the woman away from people who would provide her with her emotional support.”

Gephardt said shelters such as Passage House provide a refuge when women are isolated and have nowhere to turn. “We meet women where they are at,” she said. “If they are not ready to leave, our job is not to convince them to do so, but to educate them where they are at. Abuse is a pattern of power and control. It can be financial. It can be isolating someone. It can be verbal and physical and sexual. It can be all of those things.”

She added that “a relationship doesn’t start out abusive or with that black eye or being called a name. It starts out pretty good, but over time, the power and control is exerted to make sure that person stays with you.”

Gephardt said Passage House receives about 300 crisis calls a year and can “lend an ear” to family members who may be concerned about a daughter, sister or friend who is being subjected to domestic violence.

Help is available by calling the hotline, 285-6984, or by visiting the Family and Children’s Service website, niagarafamily.org.



email: nfischer@buffnews.com ]]> Fri, 17 May 2013 17:33:51 -0400 Nancy Fischer
]]> <![CDATA[ Events for people with disabilities ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130519/CITYANDREGION/130519164/1003 www.ddday.org.

...

The Buffalo Agency Special Care Planning Team is hosting “Financial Strategies for Families with Special Needs,” a free educational workshop from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday in 300 Corporate Parkway, Suite 110N, Amherst. Learn how to prepare for the financial well-being of your special needs loved ones. Topics discussed will include housing, employment, special needs trusts and government benefits. For more information or to register, call 276-1120.

...

Registration is being accepted for the iCan Shine Bike Camp, formerly Lose the Training Wheels, a program that utilizes adapted bicycles and specialized instruction to teach campers how to ride a two wheel bicycle. The camp will run from June 24 to June 28 at Cheektowaga High School, 3600 Union Road. Campers must be at least eight years old, have a diagnosed disability and be able to walk without assistive devices. For more information, to register a camper or if interested in volunteering, call 817-7204 or email: wnylearntoride@yahoo.com.

...

ALS Association Upstate New York Chapter will host a support group meeting from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Monday in the Dent Neurological Institute, first floor boardroom, 3980 Sheridan Drive, Amherst. Laurie Krupski, former care services coordinator, will facilitate the group discussion. For information, contact Kate Cavan, care services coordinator at (315) 413-0121 or email: kcavan@alsaupstateny.org.

...

Parent Network of Western New York is offering a free workshop, “Person Centered Planning,” from 9 a.m. to noon Tuesday in its offices located at 1000 Main St. Learn how to develop meaningful life plans for the individuals you support. For more information or to register, call 332-4170 or visit: www.parentnetworkwny.org.



Items of timely events may be submitted by fax, 856-5150 or by mail to City Desk, Events for People with Disabilities, The Buffalo News, P.O. Box 100, Buffalo, NY 14240. ]]> Fri, 17 May 2013 17:21:53 -0400 <![CDATA[ From mini-tags to major murals, street art inches into Buffalo’s cityscape ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130519/CITYANDREGION/130519193/1003
The stretch of sidewalk along Elmwood Avenue between Allen and North streets, about as unremarkable a city block as any in Buffalo, is home to a few liquor stores, salons and art galleries. Pedestrians shuffle quickly past the storefronts on their way to the bus stop or to the bars on Allen Street, rarely taking notice of what surrounds them.

But slow down for a minute, cast your eyes downward, and you’ll start to see the evidence of another, slower urban world. In the late afternoon sun, for instance, you’ll see a parking meter near North Street that seems to be casting two shadows. One is real, the other painted onto the sidewalk in fading black paint to give off a barely noticeable illusion.

In that same neighborhood, on bike racks and building walls, if you look closely, you’ll see the miniaturized tags of the city’s graffiti artists on ad-hoc sign-in sheets – the better to decipher their work on larger structures around the city. You’ll see peculiar spray-painted stencils of armored buffaloes, strange stickers, lampposts papered with crude crayon drawings of some unknown origin and tiles chiseled into the pavement at crosswalks spelling out cryptic messages.

This is the sometimes-secret language of the city, a system made up of symbols, sanctioned murals and bits of illicit personal expression that together make up Buffalo’s quiet and slowly growing street art scene. In larger cities, street art has become an assertive, unavoidable part of urban life. But in Buffalo, where authorities have tended to treat artistic expression anywhere other than gallery walls with suspicion if not outright hostility, it’s just beginning to assume a more recognizable role.

For Matthew Grote, the street artist who goes by the name of OGRE and who collaborated with fellow artists Max Collins and Chuck Tingley to produce downtown’s most visible piece of recent street art on the side of 515 Main St., there’s plenty of art to be found here. You just have to hunt for it.

“For some people, and I guess I’m one of those people, it’s a method of communication. It’s like a secret language or a secret society almost,” Grote said. “Most people don’t even look at the stickers, but I do. I see that person is communicating directly to me in that moment, and because I’m paying attention, I get to experience that, whereas most people just blindly walk past it.”

Evidence of Grote’s artistic alter ego can be found all around the city, in places prominent and hidden, sanctioned and unsanctioned. The same goes for a small but growing group of artists whose work aspires to more than the artfully written tags of the city’s handful of experienced graffiti writers.

Their art takes strange and often unexpected forms, from wheat-pasted illustrations form-fitted onto concrete pylons to tiles meticulously inserted into the blacktop under cover of night.

Many of these works are temporary: A beautiful tile piece on Porter Avenue near Kleinhans Music Hall that contained an excerpt from a short story by Ray Bradbury, for instance, was recently scratched out by the City of Buffalo. Asked about street art, the Buffalo Department of Public Works emailed that “unauthorized placement of art is subject to removal by the city.”

But some seem to linger for years. Seeking them out makes us see the city from a different angle. Buffalo’s bits and pieces of street art – good and bad, grand and minuscule – are lenses through which to view the city anew. They help us see the streetscape not merely as a space to inhabit or pass through, but as a canvas waiting to be filled. Being more attuned to this evolving world, in some small way, helps us appreciate where we are as a city, and what kind of city we might become.

With Grote as a tour guide – with a few self-guided detours – I surveyed a few of the city’s more intriguing pieces of street art, legal and, well, less so. Here’s a look at a small sliver of them, with exact locations omitted when the art is off the beaten path or may be targeted for removal:Elmwood Avenue and North Street

On the east side of Elmwood Avenue just south of North Street, one of a row of parking meters is not like the others. Extending from its base is a strip of black paint running across the sidewalk, blooming out into a skewed “shadow” of the part where you drop your quarters. It’s devoid of the ego of graffiti, barely calling attention to itself and rewarding the rare viewer who actually notices it.

“One thing that does kind of separate graffiti from street art is that street art seems to be meant to engage the community,” Grote said. “Somebody doing that,” he continued, pointing at the painted shadow, “they’re not building a name for themselves. But once you see that, you may not ever look at a parking meter the same way again.”Various locations

For years, a series of tiles meticulously chiseled into a crosswalk spanning Delaware Avenue where it intersects with Allen Street advertised a person or outfit known only as “House of Hades.” But that tile was recently removed, leaving behind only scratched pavement. Same goes for a particularly good example of the peculiar form – called “Toynbee tiles,” a fixture in many Rust Belt cities – on Porter Avenue that contained a Ray Bradbury quote that seemed to capture the spirit of Buffalo’s cultural resurgence: “Oh, future’s bright and beauteous spires, arise!”

Fortunately for those seeking out tiles, a series of them can be found at the intersection of Elmwood Avenue and Bidwell Parkway that look at first glance like a ream of paper haphazardly scattered across the road. Also on Elmwood, a series of smaller, abstract pavement interventions are there to be discovered. And many more tiles are sure to appear.

3. Chow Monstro

Various locations

It’s tough to miss the work of Chow Monstro, one of Buffalo’s more recognizable street artists. His trademark symbol – a skull with Mickey Mouse ears, often dripping black paint – has been popping up on buildings downtown and in Allentown for the past several years. Monstro’s wheat-pastes and stickers can be found on gritty stretches of Allen Street, as well as on a wall that’s slowly becoming a target for street artists on Exchange Street. One particularly striking example is on the south side of the former Club Diablo at 517 Washington St.The New Orleans-based street artist Candy Chang created a kind of franchise system, whereby her interactive murals have been exported to cities across the globe. One of those projects, a mural with “Before I die...” printed on it and meant to be filled out in chalk by passers-by, hangs on a vacant property (with the permission of the owner) at the corner of Fillmore Avenue and Paderewski Drive, not far from the Central Terminal and Torn Space Theatre. Recently scrawled bucket list items included “become a unicorn,” “live and let life,” and a wish for the Bills to win the Super Bowl.No tour of Buffalo street art would be complete without a stop at Main Street Studios, where artists OGRE, Chuck Tingley and Max Collins (who on his own has grown into a sort of street art wünderkind) collaborated on one of the more striking murals to grace the streetscape in decades. The piece is a fusion of the three artists’ styles, with OGRE’s illustrative, cartoonish characters melting into Tingley’s more realistic portrait work and Collins’ wheatpasted photography of joyful neighborhood characters.

The mural, which has grown since its original painting to back of the building facing Washington Street, was meant as a tribute to the neighborhood and has proved to be a consistent draw for the growing arts and business district on the block.Near Larkinville, this jarring mural in an off-the-beaten-track area is also the work of OGRE and Tingley, whose studios are nearby. Completed over the course of a single day, it’s an example of the kind of work that could soon make its way onto the walls of more vacant and disused Buffalo buildings in neighborhoods where vibrant color is hard to come by.206 Allen St.

Though not necessarily a bona fide piece of street art, this series of miniaturized tags could serve as a kind of Rosetta Stone for Buffalo’s much-maligned graffiti community. But you can look at graffiti without endorsing it, and this sign-in sheet of sorts will help you decode what you see, to separate the talented taggers from the total hacks, and to understand which of them deserves your ire and which your respect.938 Elmwood Ave.

This mural on the side of Jim’s Steakout in the Elmwood Village is the work of well-known local artists Bruce Adams and Augustina Droze, and it’s about as above-board as Buffalo’s street art world gets. It depicts scenes of neighborhood life, from skateboarding to the Elmwood-Bidwell Farmer’s Market and some brash product placement of a Jim’s sub, complete with banana peppers, in the middle of it all. Like the 515 Main St. mural, it may be the signal that edgier and more vibrant legal murals are coming to Buffalo’s streets.300 block of Exchange Street

One man’s piece of street art is another man’s canvas. That was the case with a strange, looming white head someone painted on a stretch of gray wall along Exchange Street on the way to Larkinville last summer. Since then, the face has been modified, presumably by a different artist with a different style, to resemble Mahatma Gandhi. That artist, or maybe a third one, then spray-painted part of Gandhi’s famous quote to go along with the modification: “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”

The wall also contains work by Chow Monstro and stencils and tags from other street artists. The work there, which is constantly changing and being painted over and repainted, is an example of the collaborative ties beginning to develop in the street art community and the rising social consciousness of some street artists.Central Terminal

Because of its relative inaccessibility, it’s tough to count this masterful tribute to the late comics artist Spain Rodriguez as a piece of viewable street art. But its importance in the gradual shift of Buffalo’s street art scene from pure graffiti to socially and culturally conscious work is undeniable.



email: cdabkowski@buffnews.com ]]> Fri, 17 May 2013 12:56:55 -0400 Colin Dabkowski
]]> <![CDATA[ Lost and found: Earliest Cradle Beach records discovered and returned ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130519/CITYANDREGION/130519206/1003 If you wanted to write a suspense story about two slim notebooks containing the handwritten records from the 1880s and 1890s that chronicle the birth of Cradle Beach, you would have a difficult time outdoing the truth.

About half a century after they were written, the notebooks, the only surviving records from that era, were apparently loaned to a longtime camp trustee who never mentioned the books to her family. Found by her adult children after her death and mistaken for diaries, with which they were stored, the books were set aside to be burned. Instead, the trustee’s son stored the books for two more decades, rediscovering them last year when he cleaned out his law office. The attorney’s son then surprised and delighted the current board of Cradle Beach by delivering the notebooks back to them.

“You read sometimes about a person who buys a painting and finds something like a Picasso pasted to the back,” said Mortimer Sullivan Jr., the longtime attorney who last year discovered the notebooks in a bag he thought contained only his mother’s diaries. “When I realized what they were, I sort of had that feeling.”

After the 1992 death of Gertrude H. Sullivan, who served as a trustee and trustee emeritus at Cradle Beach for more than 50 years until her death, Mortimer Sullivan and his sister found the canvas bag among her belongings. “My sister or I pulled one or two of the books out and they were obviously diaries that my mother had been keeping,” said Mortimer Sullivan. “We agreed that we should burn them. We didn’t see the minutes books.”

Rather than destroy them immediately, Mortimer Sullivan put the bag containing the books into a closet in his law office. Last year, when he was closing the office, he finally pulled it out again. “I thought, ‘Maybe I should look at these diaries, they might have some historical value,’ ” he said. “And that’s when I found the minutes books.”The lined notebooks contain the handwritten minutes of meetings held to organize the Fresh Air Mission, which later became Cradle Beach, and of the Buffalo Fresh Air Mission Hospital, a short-lived effort to open a hospital for children suffering from cholera and other diseases.

One notebook runs from 1889 to 1892 and the other from 1894 to 1914. The older notebook, which chronicles the start of the Fresh Air Mission, is filled with gracefully flowing handwriting; the later pages of the other are filled with typewritten text pasted to the pages. Both also contain newspaper clippings, letters and other informal records.

While many of the pages are minutes of meetings that document purchases, donations, publicity and other mundane issues, the books contain some moving passages.

In its first year of the Fresh Air Mission’s operation, before a camp was opened, 106 urban children were housed with farm families in Orchard Park, North Evans, Silver Creek, East Aurora, Corfu and Middleport. As the group prepared for its second year, Miss Alice Moore wrote, “Often we hear of some mark of love or care that still reaches the little children from the motherly women in the country.”

The Fresh Air Mission, which the first report says was started by “two teachers of the Universalist Sunday School,” set a goal of assisting “the poor children of the tired and often wretched mothers living in the crowded tenements or on the unhealthy flats of Buffalo … We ought to reach, first, the children of the unworthy, wretchedly poor, for from these little children we may expect the criminals of the future and the salvation of the children will be the salvation of this class in the community.”

Although Mortimer Sullivan had no idea why the books were with his mother’s possessions, the manila envelopes that held the books offered a clue. Upon each envelope is written, “Mrs. Cornelia H. Allen, School of Social Wk.” Allen, after whom Cornelia H. Allen Hall on UB’s South campus is named, was a pioneering social worker who was on the faculty of the university’s School of Social Work for 31 years. She was also the director of Cradle Beach from 1947 to 1958, when she became the camp’s director of casework, a position she held for decades until her death in 1979.

“We were very close to the Allens and to Cradle Beach starting in the 1930s,” said Mortimer Sullivan, who himself was a counselor at the camp from 1951 to 1953.

“I think that Cornelia Allen asked my mother, or my mother volunteered, to use her knowledge of the history of Cradle Beach to write some kind of a historical document. I’m guessing that Cornelia gave her these or loaned her these to work from. That’s a guess, but it does make sense.”After discovering the books, Mortimer Sullivan called his son, Mark Sullivan, who is executive vice president and chief operating officer of Catholic Heath.

“My father said, ‘I have something that I think someone would want to have,” said Mark Sullivan. “He used the article when he spoke of them; he said, ‘These are THE first minutes from Cradle Beach camp.’ ”

The Sullivans agreed that the books should be returned to the current board of directors of Cradle Beach.

Mark Sullivan called Bryan Carr, president of the board of directors of Cradle Beach, which has a camp in Angola and serves more than 1,100 children with disabilities and from low-income families each year. Carr is also production director at The Buffalo News, which has been involved with Cradle Beach almost since its inception; the books record a 1914 donation of $131.16 to the Fresh Air Mission from Edward H. Butler Jr., then publisher of The News.

Carr said Mark Sullivan asked to attend the next board meeting, saying only that he planned to bring something and “I think you’re going to be pleasantly surprised.”

The day of the board meeting in October, Mark Sullivan said, “I had the books with me the whole day, every meeting I went to. And when I was walking into The Buffalo News, I took a deep breath and just realized that I had in my hands an amazing piece of history.”

After being introduced, Mark Sullivan told the board, “On behalf of the Mortimer Sullivan Jr. family I am honored and pleased to return these newly discovered documents to Cradle Beach. … The work that you, the board and the many volunteers and staff do at Cradle Beach is incredible. May this journey back in time to your roots inspire, energize, and keep strong the wonderful mission and service you provide.”

“As I started to tell the story to the board members around the table, their mood changed,” said Mark Sullivan. “To fulfill the mission of Cradle Beach and to be on a board that is of such importance to the community is one thing, but when you get reaffirmed with something that can reconnect you to your own history, that’s even better.”One board member who was particularly moved by the minutes books was Dana Kimberly of Rochester, president of Danforth Development Inc. and a fourth-generation member of the board. Her great-grandfather, Shepard Kimberly, was on the board and served as president starting in 1912, and her great-grandmother’s sister, Evelyn Fiske, was a trustee. Both are mentioned in the minutes, along with many other familiar Buffalo names — Ransom, Sprague, Kittinger, Tillinghast, Albright, Schoellkopf, Kelly, Sidway, Cary and Almy.

“He really understood what they meant to the history of the organization, and it was very touching,” Kimberly said.

Kimberly, too, is captivated by the records. “If you are interested in history or are just a curious person, it was just fascinating to see how they operated and some of the ways they communicated about what was going on with Cradle Beach.”

After the meeting, Kimberly wrote to tell her sister and brother about the books. “They both immediately sent messages back saying they were thrilled, and they would both really like to see them when they were ready to be seen.”

The books, whose sewn bindings have loosened and covers have come off, were sent to a local conservator to be cleaned and stabilized, and their contents were transcribed. Now Carr is hoping to find a home for them where they can be preserved, displayed and made available to students and researchers.

“We said we would be the caretakers of these books until we found somebody to donate them to,” he said.



email: aneville@buffnews.com ]]> Fri, 17 May 2013 11:11:08 -0400 Anne Neville
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