For the last 30 years of my career as a columnist, at Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard and then at The Buffalo News, I would routinely take a look back as one year ended and the New Year began, seeking out some particularly memorable quotes from a year’s worth of columns. While I didn’t arri ve at the Central Current until late April, I’ve spent eight months writing about some extraordinary events and human beings in Syracuse and our larger Upstate community – and it seems like the “year in quotes” tradition is a good one to continue in my new spot, especially because of a wonderful part of this new gig: It’s the first time I’ve done this in a long, long time that readers like you can enjoy full and easy access to all my columns, through links within the quotes – because the Central Current does not put up a paywall to stop you from getting there. Also, a note of deep gratitude to Michelle Gabel, Mike Greenlar, David Trotman-Wilkins and Herm Card – all brilliant photographers and longtime friends with whom I had the good fortune to work with side-by-side again in 2025, after many years. You’ll see examples of their beautiful skill, throughout this piece. Dan Straub, new regional principal of the regional Syracuse STEAM High School, captures an image of the restoration of the old Central High. Credit: David Trotman-Wilkins | Central Current May 1 — “I believe this can work, but it has to be done differently.” — Ken Jackson on bringing down the Interstate 81 bridges, during a 2019 WCNY roundtable. Jackson, columnist, editor and publisher of Urban CNY (The Constitution), died last spring. As a longtime journalistic advocate for the Syracuse Black community, he spent years reporting on the cascading aftermath for neighbors displaced when I-81 was built, 60 years ago. May 5 — “When I left the house with my dad that morning, I didn’t come back for a year and a half.” — Vietnam veteran Andy Mondo, on the day almost 60 years ago when he enlisted for the Army in the old Chimes Building – now being restored by the Allyn Foundation into 152 units of housing. May 9 — “That’s all I want. I’m not letting it go.” — Linda Brown-Robinson, on her goal of living out the dream of her late husband, Van Robinson, by striking the first symbolic sledgehammer blow — “the first slug” — to bring down the Interstate 81 downtown viaducts. Van, a longtime Common Councilor and civic leader who died in May, was a passionate champion of the movement to remove I-81. Andy Mondo: A friendship he’ll never forget that really began inside the Chimes Building. Credit: Mike Greenlar | Central Current May 10 — “I’d never be in the place I am right now without her.” — Jayseana Jackson, a law student in Atlanta who spent time as a child in foster care, speaking for thousands about the impact of Amy Betros, who left behind a successful restaurant to co-found St. Luke’s Mission of Mercy in Buffalo, which provides direct help to those enduring the hardest struggles. Betros died unexpectedly in May. May 14 — “We listen to it, and there’s Kat’s voice, and Warren’s voice.” — Barbara Massey Mapps, on the solace provided by the mobile phone of her sister Kat, a device returned to the family just over a year ago by the FBI. Kat, a beloved and passionate Buffalo neighborhood advocate, was one of 10 people killed in a racist massacre at a Tops Markets on May 14, 2022. Her brother Warren, Barbara’s only other surviving sibling – and a source of comfort, as they continued Kat’s work on Cherry Street, together – died of heart disease complicated by cancer, last January. Linda Brown-Robinson: In honor of her husband Van — champion of removing the downtown Interstate 81 viaduct — she hopes to take the first crack at those bridges, with a sledgehammer. Credit: Sean Kirst | Central Current May 20 — “The doctor was not convinced she’d make it. I told him, ‘You don’t know my mother.’” — Wildlife sculptor George BuMann on his mom, the great Upstate sculptor Sharon BuMann, who endured a massive stroke in 2021. Last spring, she received the Onondaga Historical Association medal — the highest honor for service to heritage that organization awards. June 4 — “It’s not my shoes. It’s your shoes now.” — The counsel provided by legendary Christian Brothers Academy baseball coach Tom Dotterer to his successor, Pat Wiese, a CBA graduate and fine baseball player at Le Moyne College, who shifted into coaching after surviving bone cancer in his leg. The 2025 season — in which CBA reached the sectional finals — was the team’s first without Dotterer, who died in 2024, at 88. Sculptor Sharon BuMann works on models of 19th century figures. She will be honored with an Onondaga Historical Association Medal Award May 22 for her lifetime contributions to preserving Onondaga County history. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current June 6 — “One day you’re a normal kid and the next day you’re not going to school and they’re making a plan to try and keep you around.” — Bryan Wilbur, who survived cancer as a teen, on why he volunteers for Paige’s Butterfly Run, whose entire purpose is raising money both for research into cancer, and to support patients and families going through it. June 9 — “It reminds me of the Stanley Cup.” — John Domres, proprietor of the Buffalo Brewing Company, the place that served as host when the Golden Snowball, symbolic of New York state large city snowball supremacy, was ceremonially returned to Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh after a 3-year stay in Buffalo. The way it looks this winter, it’ll be in Syracuse for a while. The Golden Snowball: It’s back in Syracuse – and more than likely for a while. Credit: Sean Kirst | Central Current June 19 – “There isn’t a day when I don’t think of him.” – Sam Spadaro, 99, of Clay, speaking of his close bond with his brother Jimmy, who was killed – his remains never recovered – during the Normandy invasion in World War II, which ended 80 years ago last summer. Jimmy died on the day after his 19th birthday; the two brothers, as teenagers, both left school early to help their parents sustain their family during the Great Depression. June 29 — “You need to cry, you cry. You need to scream, you scream.” — Syracuse Parks Commissioner Syeisha Byrd to her young staff, which responded with what Byrd described as extraordinary courage and grace after a 15-year-old suffered fatal gunshot wounds just outside the Onondaga Park pool on a hot and busy summer day. July 6 — “He swore us to secrecy until he left the planet.” — Dennis Brogan, a former city administrator, on finally being able to speak publicly of how John Marsellus funded a 24-second shot clock monument at Armory Square. Marsellus, a generous and low-profile civic advocate, died in June. Syracuse Commissioner of Parks, Recreation and Youth Programs Syeisha Byrd is shown above the Onondaga Park pool in the same week a teenager was shot to death, just outside the pool entrance. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current July 11 — “His mind was one of the strongest minds I’ve ever experienced.” — Pastor Reggie Smith of Jamestown, for years an advocate for people with developmental disabilities. He was speaking of the death of Smith’s old friend, Henry Wesley, who survived decades behind locked walls at the notorious Willowbrook State School and then flourished as an advocate, storyteller and voice of conscience for human rights, once he made it out. July 14 — “Honestly, it was becoming a bit of a grind.” — John Kucko, on why he stepped away from a longtime, high-profile role as a Rochester television sports journalist to instead embark on a digital career based on beautiful Upstate images from the Finger Lakes and beyond, a journey now followed by hundreds of thousands on Facebook. Nesting eagles, near Onondaga Lake, care for their young. Credit: Mike Greenlar | Central Current July 21 — “Mindblowing.” — Wildlife biologist Sarah Shute on the presence of nesting eagles near Onondaga Lake, sacred to the Haudenosaunee as the place where their enduring confederacy joined together. Shute’s colleague and friend, Tina Thomas of the Onondaga Nation, often listened to a tape of the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving address from the parking lot of the Ska-Nonh Center as Thomas watched the eagles raise their young. July 27 — “It’s just a habit.” — Bob Menotti of Salina, born deaf a century ago, when asked about the extraordinary kindness attributed to him by a legion of friends. Parishioners at St. Lucy’s, Menotti’s longtime church held a surprise celebration for Bob and his wife Mary to mark that 100th birthday. Bob Menotti, as he often does, uses his hand and fingers to create the sign for “I love you.” Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current August 11 — “When people walk in, they will be stunned.” — Victoria Bingham of Fayetteville, an artist whose family was part of a sweeping, detailed and beautiful restoration of the central auditorium at the Landmark Theatre in downtown Syracuse — a building that was at high risk of demolition a half-century ago. August 25 — “I’d rather they build a racetrack.” — Auto racing historian Gary Spaid, upon being asked if he wishes the state would build a fairgrounds monument to the old “Moody Mile,” the historic dirt racing track that was synonymous with Syracuse until the state broke the hearts of thousands of racing fans by demolishing it, a decade ago. Oren Lyons and the late Alf Jacques at Haudenosaunee Wooden Stick Festival, September 2022. In September, Lyons – an Onondaga faithkeeper – and legendary Syracuse University Coach Roy Simmons Jr. received a ‘lacrosse amabassador’ award named in honor of Jacques, renowned for making wooden sticks. Credit: Mike Greenlar | Central Current Sept. 1 — “The most magnificent thing is all this sunlight coming through.” — Construction manager Tarod Clarke on the stunning transformation of the old Central Tech — a long-dormant landmark designed by Archimedes Russell — into a new regional Syracuse STEAM high school. A beloved statue of Minerva once again stands in the entranceway. Sept. 26 — “He’s been almost everywhere and he keeps everything.” — Phil Arnold, a Syracuse University professor, on the significance of 95-year-old Onondaga Nation faithkeeper Oren Lyons allowing SU archivists to become caretakers of his vast collection of papers. Tarod Clarke, construction manager on the restoration of the Syracuse Central Teach, inside Lincoln Auditorium: He sees qualities for students in the new Syracuse Regional STEAM High School that remind him of the opportunities that changed his life. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current Oct. 3 — “I just always wanted to work for someone who could really use the help.” — Matt Gonnella, who never forgot how his family was suddenly evicted from an historic landmark that was then demolished in Fairmount, on why he left a lucrative job in private law to represent immigrants facing detainment or deportation. Oct. 20 — “I knew he would be around the trees.” — Legendary Syracuse University lacrosse coach Roy Simmons Jr., who traveled with his sons to the Onondaga Valley Cemetery to plant a hickory sapling at the grave of a revered friend, wooden stickmaker Alf Jacques of the Onondaga Nation. Nov. 5 — “I was so hurt.” — Sharon Owens, elected as the new mayor of Syracuse in November, recalling the devastating pain decades ago after the death of her infant son, Shaun Jr. The support of her family — and a trip to Florida that helped Owens fully understand the grinding Jim Crow cruelty her own mother overcame — galvanized the sense of mission that helped Owens become the city’s first Black mayor. Roy Simmons Jr. on the gravestone bench of Onondaga stickmaker Alf Jacques, with a soon-to-be planted hickory tree at Onondaga Valley Cemetery. Credit: Michael Greenlar | Central Current Nov. 10 — “There’s nothing to say this was the Erie Canal” — Historian Craig Williams, a Fayetteville native, on an Erie Boulevard monument, made from blocks of the actual canal, that inspired him as a child — and now carries zero signage to tell travelers what it is. Peers call Williams one of the greatest American scholars regarding the history of the canal, which reached the bicentennial of its opening in 2025. Nov. 24 — “You get a little taste.” — Longtime family law lawyer Kevin Harrigan on the death of his father — and hard lessons about losing a parent — when Harrigan was a young child. Harrigan, one of the founders of the National Adoption Day celebration in Syracuse, went on to help countless children find new homes with adoptive families. Deputy Mayor Sharon Owens Tuesday morning, at the annual Dunbar Election Day Breakfast. Credit: Mike Greenlar | Central Current Dec. 7 — “We saved it because it always worked.” — Anthony Dottolo, a Bristol-Myers retiree who quarterbacked the final Eastwood High football team in 1963, on the passing play that resulted in a 6-0 Eastwood victory 62 years ago over Christian Brothers Academy, a stunning upset on the old Roosevelt Field on Brighton Avenue — once the site of almost every high school football game in Syracuse. Dec. 10 — “Pro beano.” — Anna Dobbs, co-founder of the Freedom of Espresso coffee shops, on how she paid lawyer Joe Heath during a long legal battle with corporate giant Federal Express over the name of the business. A month ago, the Freedom shops celebrated 30 years in operation. Forty children were adopted at the 25th Annual Fifth Judicial District National Adoption Day Celebration in Syracuse, at the OnCenter. The Rezsnyak family reacts to the adoption of Benjamin, 2, middle, surrounded by some members of his family – left to right, his brother ,Milo, 4, his father, Scott, his mother, Stephanie, his brother, Jeremiah, 4, and his sister, Eliza, 13. Family Court Judge Christina DeJoseph finalizes the adoption by ringing a bell, far right. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current Dec. 16 — “Maybe someday someone will brush some snow aside for me.” — Vietnam veteran Jim Hathaway, on why he volunteered in a heavy snow on “Wreaths Across America” day, during which wreaths were placed at the graves of 3,600 veterans at the Onondaga County Veterans Cemetery. Vietnam veteran Jim Hathaway, who cleaned off graves Saturday for fellow vets. Credit: Herm Card | Special to Central Current Dec. 23 — “We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people — our strength — from every country and every corner of the world.” — Federal Magistrate Judge Maxwell Katz, quoting Ronald Reagan in an address to 34 new U.S. citizens at a downtown naturalization ceremony.  Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh said his grandfather’s presence always loomed large, during his years as mayor. The outgoing mayor is shown with a portrait of William Walsh – second from left – in the mayoral gallery, at City Hall. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current Dec. 30 — “Look, you have to learn from history, and for me in my position as mayor you have to learn from history that involves my family, most notably my grandfather as mayor.” — Ben Walsh, who stepped down as Syracuse mayor last week, on one of the most intriguing mayoral arcs in civic history: A grandfather he revered, Bill Walsh, was mayor when Interstate 81 was built through the heart of town in the 1960s, and city planning was shaped to accommodate that change. The grandson, 60 years later, was mayor when the state began pulling out I-81 — an “evolution” Ben Walsh contemplated just before leaving his City Hall office for the last time, as the first 25 years of the new century came to an end. The post Sean Kirst: Through a ‘year in quotes,’ a columnist reflects on struggle, love and inspiration in 2025, from Syracuse and beyond appeared first on Central Current. ...read more read less