The First Parksiders: the rough-and-tumble Plains Rangers

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Just north of Granger’s place (now Forest Lawn cemetery) along Main Street was the area known as “The Buffalo Plains;” its inhabitants known as “The Plains Rangers.”  This wily group of frontiersmen– most of them veterans of the Revolutionary War– and their families settled and built farms along Main Street. Their homes were generally close to the Buffalo-Williamsville Road, or the main street, but like Granger, their farmlands extended as much as a mile or more to the east or west off Main Street.

These hard working, rough and tumble men cut from the wilderness the area that would become Parkside, Central Park, and the University District, and were the first white men to physically live within the current boundaries of those districts. They were respected, but also somewhat feared by the residents of the village several miles to the south. Barton Atkins described them this way in his 1898 book Modern Antiquities: Sketches of Early Buffalo, “On Buffalo Plains were resident a band of stalwart men noted for their prowess and of their proneness to assert it when the occasion offered.”

The son of an original “Ranger,” Atkins wrote of the initial settlement by the Rangers:

The Plains were originally settled by a colony of farmers from the lake region of Central New York. First to come on a tour of inspection was Samuel Atkins, in 1806, on horseback, traversing Indian trails through a dense forest to Buffalo — not to speculate in village lots, but to purchase farm lands for himself and others who desired to settle near unto the site of the great city that was to arise at the foot of Lake Erie.

Samuel Atkins built a log home and a tavern on the land he purchased, on Main Street north of Hertel Avenue, roughly where the LaSalle Metro Rail station stands today.  Again writes Atkins:

On this property, in 1807, Mr. Atkins erected a majestic structure of logs, consisting of three separate buildings, made so by two dividing passages through the lower story, while the upper story and roof remained intact. The building entire was eighteen by eighty feet on the ground with side thirteen feet high — quite an imposing frontier establishment. Here Mr. Atkins kept a tavern, a house of entertainment for travelers and pilgrims journeying to the new West. Many veterans of the war of the Revolution had settled on the Niagara frontier, and the old log tavern was their headquarters– was where they held their camp-fires and fought their battles anew.

Atkins was joined in 1807 by eight Cayuga County neighbors and their families, including Rowland Cotton, Ephraim Brown and Roswell Hosford. In 1808, the families of Zachary Griffin and Dr. Daniel Chapin also came to Buffalo.  All of these men and their families settled along Main between Granger and what is now the UB area, both on the east and west sides of Main Street.

Ephraim Brown was the oldest of the new settlers of the Buffalo Plains. The war-worn veteran of the Revolution, cane in hand, was a favorite of the youngsters on the Plains. He’d limp along with school children, as the youngsters would gather at his knee– a knee shattered by a musket ball at the Battle of Trenton. They’d hear “Old Mr. Brown” sing, tell stories of his battles, and chant army rhymes from colonial times.   Brown’s homestead and farm where described by Barton Atkins as “opposite the County Almshouse.” The Erie County Almshouse moved in 1909, and the University of Buffalo was built on the land.

Zachary Griffin’s home survived well into the 20th century, and would have been known to the earliest residents of Parkside- as we know it today- as a part of their neighborhood. The following was written in Peace Episodes on the Niagara (Buffalo Historical Society, 1914), about the home on the east side of Main Street.

Buffalo Stories archives

In January, 1915, the oldest house in Buffalo was torn down. This was a little one-story structure at No. 2485 Main street, which according to such credible witnesses as the late Washington Russell and Barton Atkins, was built in 1809 by Zachary Griffin. When the New York Central Belt Line Tracks were laid through the district the house as moved about 100 feet northerly from its original site. Probably all of the original structure that endured was the frame of heavy hewn timbers. The story goes that it was spared at the burning of Buffalo, in 1813, because the Indians, by the time they had got as far out as this on the Williamsville road (Main Street), were too much overcome by firewater to do any further harm.

The original site of the house was about opposite Greenfield Street, and when moved, it was about where the Central Park Grill is located. The frontage of the property was split roughly in half when the New York Railroad Beltline tracks were installed in the 1870s. Next door, was the home of the widow Anna Atkins. She moved closer to the Modern Parkside area  in 1817 after the death of her husband Samuel. That means that Barton Atkins, whose works are quoted throughout this history, was among the first children to be born and grow up in the current confines of Parkside.

Captain Rowland Cotton is the other Plains Ranger who owned a large portion of what is today Parkside. He owned the farm just to the north of present Jewett Parkway, and the homestead of Daniel Chapin. Cotton, too, was a Revolutionary War veteran, and was one of only three of the original Plains Rangers who did not make Buffalo home until their death. Cotton sold his plot in 1826, and settled in the Town of Lancaster. His name appears the deeds of those in the northern half of Parkside.

Dr. Daniel Chapin

The most notable Plains Rangers to the people of modern Parkside are the ones who once owned the land upon which they now live. Dr. Daniel Chapin was a veteran of the Revolution, and lived in a log cabin which was built at what is now the corner of Main Street and Jewett Parkway.  His property bordered Erastus Granger and was still considered part of the Flint Hill area.  His property stretched along Main Street from what is now roughly West Oakwood Place to Jewett Parkway. It stretched back to encompass the southern half of the Delaware Park Meadow, and reached to the fringes of the Park (now Hoyt) Lake.

In the early years, Chapin was one of a very few medical doctors anywhere on the Niagara Frontier and like his neighbor Granger, he was an early pillar of the community. An obituary was published in the Rochester Telegraph December 4, 1821:

He was formerly from Salisbury, Ct. He represented the county of Ontario in the legislature of this state, very soon after that county was settled; and was an early settler of this county. He had held the office of judge of common pleas for Niagara county (that is, Buffalo, before Erie County was split off); and various public trusts, with benefit to the community. His reputation as a physician, during a long course of practice has been of honorable standing; and he lived and died an honest man.

Chapin can also be thanked for much of the natural beauty today enjoyed in Delaware Park. His love of nature was written about in the Historical Society’s First Volume on Buffalo History:

The people of this city are much indebted to the Doctor, who was one of the pioneers of Buffalo, for the good taste and judgment exercised in clearing up his farm. Coming on to it in 1806, and ever having an eye to the beauty of native scenery and landscape, he left and always preserved with care, groups and scattered trees of various sizes and kinds, where it would add to its beauty; and we in our park enjoy the benefit of his sentiment and forbearance. He was imbued with the idea of the poet who says, “Woodman, spare that tree;’ and when he could, he always had trees left untouched by the ruthless axe, in order that man and beast should benefit by their shade, and they with their primitive grace ornament his beautiful farm. His son, the late Col. William W. Chapin, always protected and preserved those trees with truly reverential and pious care, in memory of and respect for his honored father, who left the inheritance of the whole farm to him on his decease. Without that inherited taste, he, like most of the early settlers, would have denuded the land of every tree; and that portion of our park would have been a barren expanse of mere farming land; for a large portion of this old farm now constitutes the most interesting part of our beautiful park. As one rides through it, especially that portion I speak of, he cannot help noticing those groups of trees and scattered monarchs of the forest within and on the borders of the extensive Park Meadow; beautiful reminders of those thoughtful and tasteful former proprietors.

An important historical figure in the Finger Lakes area as well as Parkside, he is written about by the Bloomfield Historical Society:

Dr. Daniel came to Buffalo village in 1807 from Bloomfield, put up a log house on the outskirts of the village, and established a large practice, visiting his patients on foot, with a dog and a gun, often traveling trails as far as Niagara Falls. Dr. Chapin died in 1821 at 60, his death due to exposure in visiting a patient.

The varied accounts of Chapin’s death all point to the difficult life on the frontier north of Buffalo. The obituary from the Rochester Telegraph, which states it was reprinted from a Buffalo paper, says Chapin was 61 and died of “a lingering disease.” Another source, A Biographical Sketch of Josiah Trowbridge (1869), he another early Buffalo doctor, states that Chapin’s death was “partly induced by the many and continued exposures incident to the practice of his profession in times when it required an amount of personal courage, self-denial, and hardship but little understood by us of the present day.”

This page is an excerpt from
The Complete History of Parkside
by Steve Cichon

The full text of the book is now online. 

The original 174-page book is available along with Steve’s other books online at The Buffalo Stories Bookstore and from fine booksellers around Western New York. 

©2009, 2021 Buffalo Stories LLC, staffannouncer.com, and Steve Cichon

 

When Parkside was the Rugged Frontier

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Long before European men tread through what is today known as Parkside, portions of the area were sacred to the Seneca Nation and their fellow members of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) League of Indian Nations.

Judging by the archaeological evidence, even long before the Senecas arrived in this part of Western New York, the Erie tribe and others lived near what we now think of as Parkside.

One legend passed down through the family of early resident Erastus Granger spins the tale that native chieftains would convene “Councils in the Oaks” on ancient battlefield here, destined to become part of the Granger property.

When Granger became the area’s first permanent resident in 1804, vast wilderness was all the eye could see. Later, his son Warren built a magnificent home, what generations of Parksiders called “The Castle,” on the spot where native chiefs had met long before the scribes of modern history were there to record them.

The Granger Castle. Now the site of the Forest Lawn Sundial, Main Street. Buffalo Stories archives

Today, the area is Forest Lawn Cemetery, and this specific plot is marked with a large sundial, easily visible from Main Street. Warren’s daughter Anna Granger wrote of it:

When Warren Granger selected the situation to build his home, he fixed upon the spot where the “Six Nations” held their counsels, the elevation was crowned by a grand old oak. This part of Flint Hill was sacred to the Indians, for here many, many, many moons beyond the memory of the oldest chief, a fierce battle had been fought. The plow shares continually turned up skulls, arrow heads and tomahawks of ancient design.

There are also many early accounts of children finding bone fragments and arrowheads in massive quantities as they played in the woods along what is now Main Street. It was from the “Old Iroquois Forest,” as the woods along Main Street in the Parkside area were known, that many of the logs were hewn to build the early structures of Buffalo; many more were used after the village was burned by the British in 1813.

In the 1790’s, Western New York was bought from Massachusetts by Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham, defaulted on, and then purchased by Robert Morris. He was the financier of the American Revolution and, at the time of the purchase in 1791, the richest man in America.

Over the next two years, he sold the land to The Holland Land Company. Before that transaction could be completed, however, peace had to be made with the Six Nations, the Indians who actually inhabited the area. That peace was accomplished with the 1797 Treaty of Big Tree, which called for 1,300,000 acres of Native land to be sold for $100,000– leaving the Seneca Nation with a 200,000 acre reservation, to the south of the tiny village of Buffalo. Seneca Chief Red Jacket was paid a $600 bonus at the signing, and was guaranteed $100 a year for the rest of his life.

The Holland Land Company, under Joseph Elliott, began surveying the area today known as Western New York. It is this survey that is the starting point for most property deeds in the area, including in Parkside.

The first traces of modern Parkside are etched onto the map in 1797 when what is now Main Street is cut through the wilderness, connecting outposts in Clarence and Williamsville with the burgeoning village at the mouth of the Buffalo Creek. That village was officially known as New Amsterdam, but almost from the beginning known to locals as Buffaloe (yes, with an “e” in the early years).

Early Settlers

While many of the earliest residents of Parkside may have been Native Americans with names long forgotten to history– the names of the earliest white settlers still live on in file cabinets and safety deposit boxes. Many of the following names will be familiar to any Parkside homeowner who has read his or her property deed.

Erastus Granger was a central figure in the founding of Buffalo. He was among Buffalo’s first permanent residents, and also the first Parkside Landowner who actually lived here as well.  Having spent the early part of his life as a land speculator in Ohio, Kentucky and Western Virginia, he was to become an active supporter of the Democratic-Republican Party, and specifically of Thomas Jefferson.

It was upon Jefferson’s appointment Granger came to Buffalo in 1804. He purchased a vast tract of land along Main Street that stretched from what is now Forest Lawn Cemetery, north to the Delaware Park Meadow; and as far west as what is now the H.H. Richardson State Hospital Complex on Forest Avenue.

His homestead was built along Conjockety’s (now Scajaquada) Creek near Main Street. The area where his home stood is now the northern-most portion of Forest Lawn Cemetery, near the Canisius College campus.

Erastus Granger’s home along Conjockety’s (Scajaquada) Creek. Around 1915, Scajaquada Creek was covered starting at Main Street, running under Main Street near Jefferson Avenue.(Buffalo Stories archives)

Granger’s life was written about at great length in the Buffalo Sunday Express, November 24, 1912. He was born January 17, 1765, in Suffield, Connecticut. As a boy, he spent part of the winter of 1777-78 encamped with the Continental Army with his father at Valley Forge. As a young man, eager for adventure, he became a surveyor of frontier lands. It was on his travels in Western Virginia in 1798-99 that he became acquainted with Thomas Jefferson, who prevailed upon Granger and his brother Gideon to campaign for him for President in their native Connecticut. Once Jefferson was elected, Gideon was named Postmaster General. Erastus was named Indian Agent for the Six Nations, and was also confirmed by the United States Senate as the “surveyor of the port of Buffalo creek.”

He reached Buffalo Creek on horseback March 30, 1804, finding a frontier village of 16 huts, and the streets strewn with tree stumps. He quickly organized a post office. This handled the incoming mail, once a week, as a single horseman “came from Canandaigua with a pair of saddlebags and the trifling mail,” and once a week he returned from Fort Niagara. Within three years of his arrival, in 1807, he was appointed as the outpost’s first Judge.

Granger’s most important work came, though, as Indian Agent. He met often with the great chiefs of the Six Nations, shared his harvests with them, and allowed them to continue to use his land on Flint Hill for their councils in the oaks.

“Flint Hill” was the name given to the Granger property and its immediate environs; well outside the boundaries of the then small village of Buffalo, about 4 miles to the north. Granger himself used the name “Flint Hill” to describe his home, but, by 1914, the name had so long fallen out of use that readers of Peace Episodes on the Niagara (Buffalo Historical Society) needed an explanation of the location of the place:

“Flint Hill” is a name little known to the present generation; but their elders in Buffalo knew it as the region mostly west of Main street and north of Humboldt Parkway, embracing most of the Parkside district and the adjacent portion of Delaware Park.

The first book ever published in Buffalo was a collection of public speeches given by Granger and his great friend, the Seneca Chief Red Jacket, made as war was declared between Great Britain and the United States. Both men spoke of the desire to keep the Six Nations neutral in the conflict which would become known to history as the War of 1812.

Red Jacket, Cornplanter, Farmer’s Brother and other brilliant chiefs of the Seneca, Onondaga, Cayuga, Tuscarora and Oneida tribes were present on July 6, 1812, just days after word of war had reached Buffalo, when Judge Granger first offered a message of goodwill and friendship to the Indians, then spoke these words to the assembled council of Native Chiefs:

Your great father, the president of the 17 fires (James Madison), now gives his red children the same advice which he gave you at the beginning of the last war (the Revolution); that is you take no part in the quarrels of the white people. He stands in no need of your assistance. His warriors are numerous, like sands on the shore of the great lake which cannot be counted. He is able to fight his own battles, and requests you stay home.

The Six Nations would stay out of the conflict until the Mohawks, who had fled to Canada after the Revolution, joined on the side of the British.

This page is an excerpt from
The Complete History of Parkside
by Steve Cichon

The full text of the book is now online. 

The original 174-page book is available along with Steve’s other books online at The Buffalo Stories Bookstore and from fine booksellers around Western New York. 

©2009, 2021 Buffalo Stories LLC, staffannouncer.com, and Steve Cichon

 

Read the whole book: The Complete History of Parkside

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo

The full 2009 book, The Complete History of Parkside, by Steve Cichon, is presented here formatted as a series web pages. The original print volume was 174 pages.

THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF PARKSIDE

Chapter by Chapter

When Parkside was the Rugged Frontier

The First Parksiders: the rough-and-tumble Plains Rangers

Parkside Goes to War, 1812

Parkside after the War of 1812

First a park, then a Parkside

Developing Olmsted’s Parkside

Parkside develops around churches

Darwin Martin brings avant-garde architecture to Parkside

The Growth of Parkside, 1890-1920

The early businesses and churches of Parkside

Getting Around Parkside and Beyond

“The Main Street” near Parkside

Former Main Street institutions of the Parkside era now part of the Canisius campus

Canisius College & The Sisters of St. Joseph

Grover Cleveland’s ties to Parkside and the birth of modern anesthesia: Sisters Hospital & The Marine Hospital

Main Street: School 54, Cars, Pharmacies & Restaurants

Prohibition, Depression, & Wars in Parkside

Urban Renewal, Social Upheaval, Integration, and the Parkside Community Association

Shifting Ideology in Parkside and Buffalo’s oldest community association

Parkside’s City living constants, places of worship, and places to learn

Parkside Goes Hollywood

Delaware Park and the Buffalo Zoo: Parkside’s Biggest Pride & Biggest Battle

National Treasure: The Darwin Martin House Renewed

Parkside in 2009 and beyond


Steve Cichon is the author of The Complete History of Parkside and five other books. 2009 photo.

Written and published by Steve Cichon in 2009, The Complete History of Parkside was uploaded in its entirety to BuffaloStories.com in 2021.

“I wrote this book to collect and share the history of the neighborhood I call home,” said Cichon.

Parts of the book have been posted to buffalostories.com before– but never as a complete book.

“Putting this whole book online, formatted as a series of webpages, makes the history of Parkside instantly accessible to anyone with an internet connection. It’s exciting– putting this knowledge at people’s fingertips, and giving more folks a chance to explore and build upon what I wrote almost a dozen years ago.”

Cichon’s greatest hope with all his writing and research on Buffalo and the city’s pop culture history is that it serves to inspire more scholarship, memory collection, and celebration of the things that make Buffalo great.

Original 2009 Thank Yous

To all of those dozens of people; scholars, journalists, and historians, who’ve collected and written individual portions of this history over the years, and left it waiting for me to find and collect here; among them, Michael Riester, George Stock, Barton Atkins, Ellen Parisi, Marjorie Quinlan, Frank Severance, Mark Goldman, Chuck LaChiusa, Pat Kavanagh, Art Lalonde, Jim Powell, Steve Powell, Donald Norton, and many others.

Also to the many, many individuals who shared their stories and historical ephemera and photos with me for inclusion in this book; Including: Jack Anthony, Michael Riester, Bernie Wagner, George Stock, Ann Marie Flett, George Zornick, Greg Lodinsky, Jan Barber, Ruth Lampe, Len Mattie, Paul Crowley, Pamela Rohring, Jennifer Fields, Tom Burns, Sr. Gail Glenn, Al Tinney, Carl Schmitter, Al Wallack, Fred Kerr, Al Kerr, Sam Hoyt, Kevin Keenan, Aaron Heverin, Msgr. Francis Braun, Rev. David Selzer, John Bisci, Tom Malamas, Dan Ryan, Al Villa, Bob Venneman,  Chief Dennis Richards, Chief Charles Fieramusca,  Marsha Henderson, Joe Crangle,  and many, many others.

And there were also many Parkside friends and neighbors who lent vital moral support over the 19 months this project dragged on (i.e., listened to me drone on about it.) Among them: David Lampe, Tom Ziobro, Mike O’Sullivan, Jack O’Sullivan, Rich Wolf, Pat Lalonde, Chris Lavey, Tom Dolan, Marlene Smith-Amaker, Bob Barends,  James Rusk, Randy Bushover, Nancy Abramo, John Warner, Amy Dembski, Kelly Barbus, Kathy Peterson, Diane Kasting, Paula Dolega, Vanessa Currie and too many others. Thanks for your patience.

Special Thanks to Brian Meyer for his invaluable expert advice; Marty Biniasz for being a partner in history and sharing history; Michael Riester for being the Godfather of this project and infecting me with his contagious life-long love of Parkside;  and my family: Greg, Lynne, Stephen, and Melissa & Jim, Mom and Dad, Mom and Dad H., Jim and Pat, Amanda and Catherine, Haley, the best grandparents anyone could ever ask for, and most of all, my wife Monica—who gave up her husband for too much time during the course of putting this book together.  Thanks Sweetie Pie, I love ya……

This page is an excerpt from The Complete History of Parkside by Steve Cichon

The full text of the book is now online. 

The original 174-page book is available along with Steve’s other books online at The Buffalo Stories Bookstore and from fine booksellers around Western New York. 

©2009, 2021 Buffalo Stories LLC, staffannouncer.com, and Steve Cichon

 

12th annual class of the Buffalo Broadcasting Hall of Fame

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

This was originally published in Forever Young Magazine

Roger Baker 2008 Golden Age of Broadcasting Award
Roger Baker
2008
Golden Age of Broadcasting Award

One of the original superstars of Buffalo Radio in the 20s and 30s for the Buffalo Broadcasting Corporation on WGR and WKBW, Baker was the Queen City’s first definitive sportscaster.

Those who remember him in the sports booth remember the ultimate professional– no focus on personality, so much as the product on the air. Calling Bisons games in the 30s from Offermann Stadium, he was straight, and by the book.

After being tapped by Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis to call the 1933 World Series to a nationwide audience on CBS, Baker landed a job in Cincinnati calling the National League Reds on WLW.

After the war, Baker returned to Buffalo, reading news on WKBW Radio, but eventually moving into the General Manager’s office at the short-lived Buffalo UHF pioneer WBES-TV–where he also read news.

Along with Bill Mazer, Baker was also an original member of the WGR-TV sports team when the station signed-on in 1954. Baker moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico for health reasons, continuing his broadcast at KOB for several more years.

 

John DiSciullo
John DiSciullo

John entered his first TV studio as a boy with his grandma in Philly to watch a taping of the Mike Douglas Show. It was the most fun he’d seen adults have, ever, and he was hooked. A decade later, his early mentor Dave Thomas (A TV icon in both Buffalo and Philly), sent the fresh out of college DiSciullo up to his hometown for an interview at his old stopping grounds, Channel 7. That was 1982.

Save a few weeks since then when he tried his hand at producing TV in New York in 1988, he’s been at 7 Broadcast Plaza as a driving force behind AM Buffalo and The Variety Club Telethon, while keeping busy with everything from news, to promotions, to programming. In an age where telethons and locally originated TV talk shows might seem like a vestige of the past for some, DiSciullo points to his two pet projects as examples of how, with plenty of pure passion and a lot of fighting and kicking along the way, doing the right thing on television can continue to have a positive impact on the community.

The Goodyear Award is named in honor of George Goodyear, the Buffalo philanthropist who co-founded WGR-TV, and is awarded each year to those in Broadcasting’s front office who have made a career of advancing the ideals of the Buffalo Broadcasters

Pat Feldballe
Pat Feldballe

The name would leave most wondering, but the smooth, consistent voice is one you’re unable to escape in Buffalo. From Channel 2’s promo pieces to Valu Home Centers and Paddock Chevrolet, on on-hold messages, to the national Time/Life commercials, for a quarter century, Pat Feldballe has been Western New York’s go-to independent voice-over king.

In 1970s we all heard him at WBUF, WGR, WGRQ, and WUWU playing rock ’n’ roll and hosting a magazine program (and working with Terry Gross) at WBFO. He eventually got the point when he’d show up for his jock shift and find a handful of production orders taped to the console for him to do.

Figuring it was his destiny, he did a stint as a radio production director, but quickly decided, in 1982, that he could do production on his own. He hasn’t looked back.

In an industry where many production guys will try to sell clients on the latest and greatest gadget, Feldballe has used the same microphone since 1986. It’s a part of all his success.

“I’m the most consistent guy I know. I always sound the same, and I take pride in making sure reads time out,” says Feldballe. He’s the best at showing up and doing the work, doing it well, and making it easy for whoever is using his work. “I just hung out the shingle 27 years ago, and here I am.”

 

Ron Jaworski Buffalo Bob Smith Award
Ron Jaworski
Buffalo Bob Smith Award

His fate at the man who’d become the “The Polish Rifle” was sealed just before his senior year at Lackawanna High School. Drafted to play baseball at 17, he wanted to forget college to have a shot to play with Bob Gibson and the St. Louis Cardinals. But two weeks of a real Buffalo summer job of bending rods in a steel mill was enough motivation to get an education.

A standout at Youngstown State, Jaws played 17 years in the NFL for 4 teams, including the Philadelphia Eagles, where he was he 1980 NFL MVP. He also backed up Dan Marino for 2 seasons with the Miami Dolphins. But no matter where he played, and now, no matter from which city he analyzes Monday Night Football, Ron hasn’t forgotten his years as a season ticket holder at the Rock Pile, and certainly hasn’t forgotten his friends and family in Lackawanna.

His compatriots on the ESPN MNF staff are just glad he hasn’t forgotten where the good wing joints are.

Named after one of Buffalo’s most famous sons, the Buffalo Bob Smith Award is given to broadcasters with local roots who made his or her mark away from the Niagara Frontier, but is still a Buffalonian at heart.

 

Barry Lillis
Barry Lillis

Always wearing a smile like no other, Barry’s best known for his 20 years (1976-96) in front of WGRZ-TV weather maps. But that earnest grin, and the personality that went along with it, also made Barry a natural as the local host for annual the MDA telethon, and well as the Kids Escaping Drugs Campaign, which Barry himself named in 1987.

Just before Barry left the air in 1994, he was ordained an Orthodox Catholic Priest. To this day, much of his ministry involves counseling those battling drug and alcohol dependence. Its a challenging and rewarding vocation, which is often helped along by those thousands of weather forecasts where Barry made it feel like he was trying to make just you smile.

Often someone will say they remember the time he wore a t-shirt promoting their scout troop’s soup dinner on TV. People love to share memories of Barry’s zany overnight presentation of poorly lipsynched movies on Barry’s Cats Pajamas. But for Fr. Barry, it means so much more; maybe opening a door to help someone else along in life. It makes his career in broadcasting one of Buffalo’s most special ever.

 

Bill Stachowiak 2008 Behind the Scenes Award
Bill Stachowiak
2008
Behind the Scenes Award

Bill’s love of electronics growing up led him to broadcasting in college, where he was the college station’s chief engineer. That, he thought, was the end of radio business for him, which he lived and breathed as a kid. He started a business that did use his engineering background, however, selling and installing two-way and CB radio equipment for companies around WNY.

His voyage back into radio started with a tour of WPHD in 1979, where PD Harv Moore decided he was the right fit to fill an open engineering job. Since taking that job, Bill’s run his own broadcast engineering firm, building studios and performing maintenance all over New York state and all over the country, often explaining to someone hundreds of miles away over the phone how to fix what’s wrong.

Its a story made more incredible when you find out he did all of that without sight. Bill is blind. “I realize I have limitations, but made my mind up to live like everyone else. I was scared when all the sudden I was responsible for two stations (in 1979), but I rely on memory a lot, and I’ve had the help of a lot of great people over the years.” And a lot of people have relied on, and rarely been disappointed with Bill.

The Behind the Scenes Award celebrates the many people who make any broadcast possible, but don’t usually get the credit: The directors, producers, photographers, writers, engineers and office staff.



2008-Art Wander 120Those of you who know the him as “Artie Baby Boo-Boo, The Tiny Tot of the Kilowatt,” as Art might say: Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute! As a kid growing up on Buffalo’s East Side, Art would ditch school to watch Foster Brooks and Buffalo Bob Smith do their WGR show live from Grant’s Department Store.

After a stint in the Navy, Art was the Radio Director for the VA Hospital, before landing at WKBW in 1956, where he eventually joined the news staff as a Pulsebeat Newsman under the direction of Irv Weinstein. By the late 1960’s, Art had programmed radio stations all around the country, including WOR-FM in New York, where he met the Beatles and became close with their manager Brian Epstein. Its this work done in music radio where Art feels more accomplished.

He’d return to Buffalo in the early 80s, first to program, but then to talk sports on 1400-AM. After Bills General Manager Bill Polian told Art to “get out of town,” he was picked up by WGR and later Empire Sports Network to talk sports. He always pictured his show as guys in a barroom. And opinions could be right, wrong, or indifferent, so long as they were entertaining.

 

Elephants roaming Parkside… Really!

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

On my way to church Sunday morning, I was making the right onto Jewett Parkway from Parkside Avenue, and there they were– the elephants from the zoo were eating maple tree branches right off the trees on the edge of the Buffalo Zoo parking lot!

The handlers say the “helicopters” on the maple trees are like candy for them. These three elephants are all babies and that this was the farthest they’d walked outside the elephant house.

It’s a bit reminiscent of a story that happened  in the ’20s or ’30s, when Frank the Elephant walked out of the zoo unnoticed, and made his way almost to Hertel Avenue before being brought back to his home at the zoo.

Just another great reason to love living in Parkside!

Photos taken with my Motorola Razr flip phone.

Buffalo Morning Radio around the dial in 1989

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Don Postles... NewsCenter 2.It was a NewsCenter 2 sweeps week special series… Don Postles visited with the most popular radio personalities. It opened with an explanation of how Buffalo’s morning radio choices had just been radically changed when two former KB Staffers– Sandy Beach and Danny Neaverth– found new homes along the dial.

In wonderfully cheesy 80s TV style, this was graphically represented by two heads moving along an analog radio dial.

Sandy had left KB only a few years ago, and stopped at Hot 104 WNYS before heading to Majic 102 WMJQ.

When KB went satellite, Danny went to WHTT after Sandy left. Snortin Norton and 97 Rock had also recently returned after an absence of a few years.

All the moves help to make Bill Lacy and WBEN number one in Morning Drive. NewsCenter 2’s Don Postles met with each of these jocks… Plus WPHD’s team of Taylor & Moore.

All told, the 5 part series is a nice snapshot of Buffalo Radio in 1989.

 

Remembering Mr. Dressup

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo


Steve and the Tickle Trunk
I visited the tickle trunk at the CBC museum before the place was closed after budget cuts.

As I write this, I wonder how much of my bizarre personality can be attributed to the late great Ernie Coombs, known to Canadian Children (and those like me just over the border) as Mr. Dressup.

The daily half hour filled with drawing, creating cool stuff out of things that I had laying around the house, Dressing up in costumes, and using funny voices always set my imagination into motion.

This is me at the CBC museum… Just inches away from the tickle truck. My wife and I were also able to visit Mr. Dressup’s drawing easel, and Casey’s tree house (as well as The Friendly Giant’s castle).
stevegregxmas79Mr. Dressup was a 10:30 appointment for most of my childhood. My brother Greg and I would stop fighting the moment we heard the piano open on the show (this picture is of us Xmas ’79).

And we’d sit together on a big chair and be quiet for the half hour. My sister Lynne soon joined our love for Mr. Dressup too.

In true Mr. Dressup fashion, the Cichon kids made our very own Tickle trunk… We drew flowers on an empty beer case box, and stored our dress up gear in it. It seemed that just about every other day, the show ended with either Mr. Dressup or Casey asking about lunch… which then made us start bothering my mom about lunch, too.

Included here are some stills from the Mr. Dressup special that aired on CBC after his death in 2001, as well as some from a Casey and Finnegan episode that I taped in the late 80s or early 90s.

I’m glad that even after his death Mr. Dressup lives on every day on TV (even if without Casey and Finnegan.) It’s the finest kids show I’ve ever seen. It’s fun and spurs kids to be creative and think… without being preachy.



Reformatted & Updated pages from staffannouncer.com finding a new home at buffalostories.com
Reformatted & Updated pages from staffannouncer.com finding a new home at buffalostories.com

Celebrating 60 Years of Buffalo Television

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

60 Years of Buffalo TV

Featuring over 2 dozen current and vintage Buffalo Television logos, this fundraiser for the Buffalo Broadcasters and the Preservation of Buffalo Television History was made possible through the cooperation of Buffalo’s Television stations, The Buffalo Broadcast Pioneers, and staffannouncer.com.

A great way to celebrate 60 years of Buffalo Television History, and help save it at the same time.

This 11×17 poster is printed in full-color on archival heavy 80lb gloss stock, and will be delivered in a mailing tube.


Reformatted & Updated pages from staffannouncer.com finding a new home at buffalostories.com
Reformatted & Updated pages from staffannouncer.com finding a new home at buffalostories.com