Steve Cichon writes about Buffalo’s pop culture history. His stories of Buffalo's past have appeared more than 1600 times in The Buffalo News.
He's a proud Buffalonian helping the world experience the city he loves. Since the earliest days of the internet, Cichon's been creating content celebrating the people, places, and ideas that make Buffalo unique and special. The 25-year veteran of Buffalo radio and television has written five books and curates The Buffalo Stories Archives-- hundreds of thousands of books, images, and audio/visual media which tell the stories of who we are in Western New York.
I don’t remember exactly how it started on the air, but I know that back in the early/mid-90s, when I was the producer of One-On-One Sports with Chris “The Bulldog” Parker on WBEN, I was buying up as many obscure albums as I could from Salvation Army and AMVETS thrift shops—including polka albums with interesting cover art of great song titles.
Chris “The Bulldog” Parker, mid 90s at WBEN.
At some point, with me going through these albums, Chris must have said—we should have a Friday Night Polka—so we did.
The show closed with a polka every Friday night, and we
eventually had a good rotation of songs about drinking and about Buffalo.
Heard here for the first time in more than 20 years—a medley
of the Friday Night Polkas from WBEN’s One-On-One Sports with the Bulldog.
We’d only play a minute or so from each selection at 10:59pm to close out the show—these are the minute long clips we’d play.
Chris and I really enjoyed the music– but we’d get side eye from the lovely call screeners Monica and Rose (which is really how most of the show went most nights anyway.)
One-on-One Sports with the Bulldog Friday Night Polka Medley
On this track:
“Bulldog Talking Sports” theme
Bulldog welcomes you to a Friday night, 1996
Ice Cubes & Beer, Ray Budzilek & The Boys
Buffalo Polka, Krew Brothers Orchestra
No Beer in Heaven, Li’l Wally
Bartender Polka, Walter Solek
Meister Brau Polka, Li’l Wally
Why don’t you people give the ball scores?— from a complaining voicemail
ME! Steve Cichon, producing One-On-One Sports in the WBEN control room, 1995
The Bulldog theme is taken from an aircheck… and you can hear the ancient WBEN delay system folding back on itself as the theme music plays.
One of my personal all-time favorite moments in music came when the late, great Tony Krupski of the Krew Brothers played the Buffalo Polka on demand– and grinned from ear-to-ear when I sang along with him, knowing all the words because of this great Friday night tradition in Buffalo radio.
I saw news on Facebook today that Manny Ciulla has died.
Mr. Manny, one of the greats
Manny’s on Seneca Street was the kind of institution we need more of… run by the kind of man we need more of.
After my ol’man’s bar closed, Manny’s was the only ginmill where dad’d feel comfortable, because Mr. Manny was more than just a guy who pushed drinks over the bar– he cared about his customers and the people of the Seneca Street community like family.
“Mrs. Manny” made great pizzas and burgers, but Manny’s was a clearly a tavern. Still, when I’d stop in as a 12 or 13 year old and ordered a Birch Beer at the bar, there was nothing untoward about it– and I know Mr. Manny loved it, and he’d talk to me like he talked to my dad or my uncles.
I can’t imagine there’s anyone who knew Mr. Manny who didn’t love him. Just like Tony Scaccia at Tony the Barber and Gerry Maciuba at The Paperback Trading Post, Manny was one of those Seneca Street shopkeepers who made Seneca Street– where both grandmas lived– feel like home to a kid who moved seven times before sixth grade.
Conrad Loewer is my third-great grandfather, born in the Holy
Roman Empire state of Hesse Cassel/Kurhessen (in today’s Germany) sometime
around 1855. He died in Buffalo in 1893.
Conrad and Katherine Weigand Loewer
With his father (my fourth-great grandfather) John (born
1821), sister Katherine, and brother Henry, he came to the United States aboard
the Bark Therese. The 52-day voyage from Bremen, Germany landed at the Castle
Garden immigration station in New York—the forerunner to Ellis Island– on August
13, 1868.
A bark (barque) is a ship with three or more masts. The image of the Bark Therese was created by Norwegian artist Frederik Sørvig in 1853.
John was a tailor in Germany and continued that trade in
Buffalo—passing it onto his son Conrad as he came of age in Buffalo. In 1885,
Conrad sold his property on Hickory Street near Batavia (Broadway) and
eventually made his way to Carbondale, PA, where he opened a men’s tailor shop on
Seventh Street there.
In 1887, newspapers in Carbondale and Scranton reported on
Conrad’s childhood association with one of the anarchists who lobbed bombs at
police officers in Chicago’s Haymarket square. In Hesse, Loewer attended school
with August Spies, who was eventually executed for his role in “The Haymarket
Affair.”
“It’s a pleasure to know that this early association with
the bomb thrower did not contaminate him, for Mr. Loewer is ‘mild-mannered’ and
an industrious citizen,” reported the Scranton Republican.
In 1888, Loewer returned to Buffalo with his wife and
children, moving around Jefferson Avenue and William Street. Living at 899
Smith Street, he died in 1893 from pneumonia.
My great-great grandmother, Jeanette “Nettie”
Loewer-Greiner, and her twin brother John were seven years old when their
father died. Sisters Agnes and Dora were even younger.
Conrad Loewer’s daughters: Katherine, Elizabeth, Jeanette, Agnes, Dora
Especially after the death of my third-great grandmother Katherine
Weigand-Loewer in 1900, Conrad’s brother Henry became a father figure in the
lives of the Conrad’s destitute and orphaned six children, doing what he could
to support them. Henry also supported his elderly father John until his death
in 1897.
Henry A. Loewer was a cloth cutter at the Erie County Penitentiary
before he was elected Buffalo’s Morning Justice in 1901. For four years, he was
the judge who’d travel from precinct to precinct deciding on the cases of men
arrested overnight for drinking, fighting, etc. During his time on the bench,
he also solemnized 169 marriages.
Henry Loewer 1864-1907
When Henry died in 1907, the Buffalo Enquirer called him “one
of the East Side’s best-known Republicans,” and said, “he was a man of bulky
size and a familiar figure to the people of the East Side.”
Tracing the history of the Loewer family in Buffalo is challenging since there is another Loewer family with children named Conrad, Henry, and John. They were also from Hesse Cassel and also tailors. It’s very likely that they were related “in the old country,” but there’s no evidence of them working together, sharing business, etc in Buffalo—despite living only blocks away from one another in the Fruit Belt and the streets just south of the Fruit Belt with tree names in the Ellicott Neighborhood.
Conrad Loewer’s daughter Jeanette married Frederick W. Greiner, the son of Joseph Prentiss Greiner and Mary Atkinson-Greiner. Their daughter, Jeannette Greiner-Wargo married Stephen Wargo. They were my grandmother’s parents.
My great-great grandparents Fred and Jeanette Greiner lived on the corner of Hickory and Sycamore in a house with a corner porch. My 5’2″ grandma used to tell stories about her 4’8″ grandma chasing kids off that porch with a broom. Hahaha. Here’s a picture of Fred– a WWI cavalry sergeant and bottler at the Iroquois plant– enjoying a smoke in his living room on the corner of Hickory and Sycamore in the Ellicott Neighborhood.
Longtime New York State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno died today.
Some of my most interesting times as a reporter happened when I was the only journalist on the scene.
As a radio guy without a camera, I think it puts a lot of newsmakers at ease— or maybe it makes them feel like they’re at an advantage.
Anyway, I was at an event to ask Joe Bruno about state budget negotiations as headed by Albany’s long-infamous “three men in a room,” where the governor, the Assembly Speaker, and the Senate Majority Leader would swap and balance their special interests to make sure the budget would have the votes to pass for the governor’s signature.
Bruno was warm and overly friendly— and entirely evasive. We both played the game. I likely had at least two more stops that night and it was clear I wasn’t going to win a Pulitzer for the story that would result from the interview. It would probably just end up as a couple of quick sound bites for the morning show.
My last question was something like, so what is it like being one of the three men in the room?
With the same overly friendly approach, he said that three men in a room was a myth, not how it actually worked, etc, etc… it was a sound bite he’d been well-practiced at giving for more than a decade.
I thanked him and stopped my recorder.
“There’s no such thing as ‘three men in a room,’” he said, with calculated seriousness and determination in his eyes that hadn’t been there during the interview.
Then a gleam grew from that cold look and a faint smile appeared at the corners of his lips, but the way he straightened his spine at the same time gave more of a sinister vibe than a warm one.
He made sure our eyes were locked when he said, “but it’s great being one of those three men,” keeping that gaze long enough to intimidate but short enough to claim otherwise.
He was not only a tough old-time politician, but he was also a boxer— a good one.
WBEN signed on the air September 8, 1930—90 years ago today.
The station’s birthday is important to me because the station
has played such an important role in my life as a listener, employee, and now
alumni of the station.
I first walked into the station as a 15-year-old intern, and
would spend the next five years working my way up through the producer ranks up
to what was the highest profile producer job in radio—producer of Buffalo Bills
Football with Van Miller and John Murphy. I also met and worked alongside the
woman who’d become my wife during those days on Elmwood Avenue.
Five years later, I returned to the station, this time in
the newsroom—and over the next decade I worked my way up to news director.
Through all my years in media, I always took special
pleasure in being able to share my passion for Buffalo and Buffalo Broadcasting
with the listeners of WBEN, and the station’s birthday, I’ve dipped into the
archives to share some of the stories I wrote and produced about WBEN and the
people we all listened to at 930am.
Steve Cichon- WBEN celebrates 80 years-1
Steve Cichon- WBEN celebrates 80 years-2Steve Cichon- WBEN at the Aud-1Steve Cichon- WBEN at the Aud-2Steve Cichon- WBEN at the Statler-1Steve Cichon- WBEN at the Statler-2Steve Cichon- WBEN says Goodbye to Barbara Burns-1 Steve Cichon- WBEN says Goodbye to Barbara Burns-2Steve Cichon- Brian Meyer inducted into Broadcast Hall of Fame-1 Steve Cichon- Brian Meyer inducted into Broadcast Hall of Fame-2Steve Cichon- Remembering WBEN on 9/11 ten years later-1 Steve Cichon- Remembering WBEN on 9/11 ten years later-2Steve Cichon- John Zach celebrates 50 years in Broadcasting-1 Steve Cichon- John Zach celebrates 50 years in Broadcasting-2Steve Cichon- John Zach covers Martin Luther King-1 Steve Cichon- John Zach covers Martin Luther King-2Steve Cichon- John Zach lived the Jersey Boys-1Steve Cichon- John Zach lived the Jersey Boys-2
WBEN’s longest serving announcer
The 90th anniversary of WBEN’s first sign-on brings to mind
many of the stable and authoritative voices which have unflappably informed
Buffalo over those decades at 930am.
The longest tenured of those voices remains a daily fixture.
From her early days of airborne traffic reporting from the
Skyview 930 helicopter to the last two decades as morning drive host, Susan
Rose has been a steady, unwavering, and professional voice on WBEN and a clear
connection to the great news voices of generations past.
Susan Rose with current co-host Brian Mazurowski
Rose is not your typical “radio star.” She’s never
wanted to be. It’s exactly that which makes her a fit in the pantheon of WBEN
greats.
“A superb anchor,” wrote Buffalo News critic
Anthony Violanti. “Reads the news with journalistic style and skill.”
After graduating from Buffalo State College and starting her
radio news career at Lockport’s WLVL, Rose joined WBEN in 1985.
WBEN Newsteam 1988: Brian Meyer, Ed Little, Susan Rose, Tim Wenger, Monica Wilson, Mark Leitner
Her blue-collar approach to journalism combined with 35
years of continuous, daily broadcasting on the station puts her in the same
rarified company as past WBEN greats, many of whom she regularly worked with
across the decades.
Mark Leitner and Ed Little were WBEN stalwarts and frequent
Rose co-anchors through the 80s and 90s.
Rose was hired to join the WBEN news team by legendary news director Jim McLaughlin.
The legendary Lou Douglas was at WBEN for 30 years before
retiring, overlapping a couple years with Rose.
After three decades at WKBW, John Zach spent another 18 years at WBEN, including 16 years co-anchoring “Buffalo’s Early News” with Rose.
John Zach & Susan Rose, WBEN, 2002.
While she doesn’t have that booming voice— once considered
the most important hallmark of the then all-male radio news profession— Rose’s
even and reliable presence has been featured on the station longer than any
broadcaster, including Clint Buehlman, who hosted mornings at WBEN for 34
years.
Perhaps that’s part of the secret why Rose’s approach and
sound is still as upbeat and fresh as the day she walked through the studio
doors 35 years ago.
Rose’s husband, Tim Wenger, was her co-anchor on evening drive news program “Buffalo’s Evening News” in the early 90s.
She doesn’t project her personality into the news. Through
her career—rather than stand out in front— she has allowed her writing,
editing, news judgement, and steady on-air presence to support the team.
It’s even fair to say Rose avoids the spotlight— but it’s
also fair to say when crisis strikes in Buffalo, there aren’t many voices on
the airwaves today which bring credibility and calm like hers can.
A recent WBEN bio said “it was always her dream job to
work for the number one news station in Buffalo.”
Meet and reacquaint yourself with the people and stations that have created and reflected who we are as Buffalonians with this 432-page in-depth look at the first 50 years of radio and television in Buffalo.
Packed with more than 600 photos, it’s a look at the stories
of the people, places, and events that have entertained and informed
generations of Western New Yorkers over the airwaves– and under our pillows,
into our cars, into our living rooms, and into our hearts as a part of what
makes us Buffalonians.
From the scholarly to the nostalgic, the earliest pioneering
days of Buffalo radio will come to life with new research on Buffalo’s status
as one of the birthplaces of modern radio—and then the birth of rock ‘n’roll
radio here a decade later, about the same time television was wrangling more
and more of our attention.
We visit Clint Buehlman and Danny Neaverth; Uncle Mike
Mearian and Rocketship 7; The Lone Ranger & KB’s War of the Worlds; Meet
the Millers and Dialing for Dollars; John Corbett & Chuck Healy and Irv,
Rick & Tom; The Hound and John Otto and so many more of the great
broadcasters who were there as we experienced the best (and worst) times of our
lives.
The book’s covers by themselves are a study of the century
of broadcasting in Buffalo, with another 269 images, showing some of our
favorite stars in action.
Sales of the book benefit The
Buffalo Stories Film Conservation Initiative, which funds the storage, maintenance,
digitization, and interpretation of thousands of hours of discarded Buffalo film
and video from the 1960s-1990s.
Author Steve Cichon has spent three decades in Buffalo media
in radio, television & print. His journey started as a wide-eyed 15-year-old
at WBEN learning about radio, journalism and life. The lifelong Buffalonian sees this, his
sixth book, as a kind of family history– as these are the stories of the
people who made him the person he is today.
Today’s Marv Levy’s 95th birthday, and I was reminded by Greg Bauch on Twitter about a tape editing prank I did 25+ years ago.
Marv Levy: why do these people keep calling me?
Marv left a message for Howard Simon on the WBEN Sports voicemail along the lines of… “Hi Howard, it’s Marv Levy with the Bills, please give me a call back at 648-1800. Thanks.”
I edited out the “Howard” and left that on dozens of other people’s voicemails and answering machines. At least one friend forwarded it on to other people’s voicemails as well.
Listen to the actual message below:
The editing isn’t perfect, but it was also done before the days of digital editing. This was done with a grease pencil, a razor blade and Scotch tape– which, if I do say so myself, makes it even more incredible.
South Buffalo has been a Buffalo pizza hot spot for decades.
Some of the first pies served up in that part of the world were served over the counter of The Plaza Pizzeria in LB Smith Plaza on Abbott Road near Ridge.
In 1966, Plaza Pizzeria moved to a stand alone building on the other side of Ridge Road and was renamed Jacobi’s.
It was the first pizza many in Lackwanna and South Buffalo ever tasted.
It took months to phase in the use of three-digit area code 716 for direct dialing across all of the Buffalo area, but quietly, a switch was flipped on Sept. 29, 1960 — and telephone users in Buffalo, Akron, Alden, Amherst, Boston, parts of Cheektowaga, Derby, East Aurora, Eden, Holland, Lackawanna, North Collins, Orchard Park, Tonawanda, Wanakah, West Seneca and Williamsville were all able to use direct dial service for long-distance calls.
Until that date, Western New Yorkers had to call the operator to be connected long distance.
Folks in Angola, Clarence, Grand Island, Hamburg and Lancaster had to wait a few more weeks, but soon, they too, were officially part of the “716.”
As a part of the move to direct dialing, the old exchange names for phone numbers were replaced with numbers. In Buffalo, the Amherst exchange became TF-2, and eventually 832. Grant became TT-4, eventually 884. Evergreen in Tonawanda became NX-4, which a few years later evolved into 694.
This list, as printed in the Courier-Express, was clipped and left near phones for years.
In November 1960, the work was complete.
“Through the wizardry of electronic marvels, the 244,000 customers of the New York Telephone Co. in the Buffalo area will be able their own long-distance telephone numbers starting precisely at 2:01 AM Sunday,” reported The News a few days before the final switch.
Our identity as members of the 716 tie into that day, when people gushed about the jet-age ability to simply pick up the phone and call any of the 60 million phones in the U.S. and Canada without the help of any other human beings.
His famous laugh filled Buffalo airwaves for more than 50 years, and the jingle that opened his WBEN talk show for 23 of those years says Sandy Beach is “bigger than life and twice as loud.”
Sandy Beach, inside the KB studio
That may be, but News critic Jeff Simon added this in 2007:
Sandy Beach “may be the most talented figure in (the) storied history of Buffalo radio,” and Beach was the “last legend still heard daily on Buffalo radio.”
Aside from a brief stop in Erie, Pennsylvania and four years in Milwaukee, Beach has been a constant in Buffalo radio since arriving at WKBW to take over the night shift there in 1968.
Listening to even five minutes of his show – any of his shows – over the course of 52 years is explanation enough for why News critic Hal Crowther dubbed Beach “the Needle” shortly after the deejay landed on the Buffalo radio scene.
In a 1972 interview, legendary WKBW Program Director Jeff Kaye said that within four years of arriving in Buffalo, Sandy had “worked every shift on KB except morning drive, and improved the ratings in each part.”
Beach spent the 70s, 80s and 90s in and out of Buffalo as a disc jockey, program director and eventually a talk show host. After leaving his post as KB Radio’s Program Director in the early 80s, he held morning show jobs at Buffalo’s Hot 104 and then Majic 102.
He hosted talk shows on WBEN and WGR before leaving town for the mid-90s, but when he came back to host afternoons on WBEN in 1997, he was ready to make the change permanent.
“I liked playing the oldies,” Sandy said coming back, “but you can only play ‘Doo-Wap-Diddy’ so many times.”
Six years later, he would play oldies once again, this time at WBEN’s sister station and his old stomping grounds, now sporting the call letters WWKB. For the three years KB played music of the 50s and 60s from 2003-06, Beach was a disc jockey mid-mornings and a talk show host for afternoon drive on WBEN.
The show was never edgy or provocative just for the sake of being so—but Beach was strong in proclaiming his often-conservative views and left little room for opinions (or leaders) he thought were weak or unfounded.
Stan Roberts, Dan Neaverth, Sandy Beach. Late 60s.
When he left WBEN in 2020, management called Beach a “provocative and edgy talk show host” who entertained with “distinct humor.” And an unforgettable laugh.
Watching TV rarely gets you on the front page of the paper, but it seems appropriate that it did for the staff at Tonawanda’s Jenss Twin-Ton Department store in 1969.
That man would step foot on the moon is an unimaginable, superlative, epoch-defining feat in human history. But that more than half a billion would watch it happen live on their television sets made it a definitive moment in a broadcast television industry that was barely 20 years old at the time.
Gathered around the TV “to catch a few glimpses of the Apollo 11 events” were Mrs. James Tait, Margaret Robinson, Marian Feldt, Jack Dautch, Grace Hughes, Dorothy Wiegand, Rose Sugden and Rose Ann Fiala.
By the time of the 1969 moon landing, Jenss Twin-Ton’s future was already in doubt as city fathers in the Tonawandas were looking to expand already present Urban Renewal efforts to include the store at Main and Niagara. Jenss Twin-Ton closed in 1976 when the building was bulldozed as urban renewal caught up.
This page is an excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting by Steve Cichon
The original 436-page book is available along with Steve’s other books online at The Buffalo Stories Bookstore and from fine booksellers around Western New York.
By Steve Cichon
