My family history is Buffalo history. All eight of my great-grandparents lived in Buffalo, including my Great-Grandma Scurr, who is among the children in this Doyle family photo taken in Glasgow, Scotland.
Aside from Scotland, my great-grandparents came from Pennsylvania, Poland, and England. One branch of my family tree stretches back to Buffalo in the 1820s, and a seventh-great aunt was among the first babies baptized at St. Louis Roman Catholic church back in 1829, when the church was still a log cabin.
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One of the really cool things about my job at Timon is how family things get tied up unexpectedly.
Met a guy who is roughly the same age my dad would be… from roughly the same neighborhood.
Just chatting with him, he added a letter to two different words the same way my ol’man used to.
Cousint and concreak.
Musta been the way they said in the Valley.
I have to figure out a way to talk to this guy some more to see if I can pull out any other speech oddities he has in common with the ol’man. (like without being a creeper about it. hahaha)
My ol’man used to (somewhat proudly) tell the story about how he got suspended from South Park High School for ditching class to go see Lyndon Johnson speak in Niagara Square.
LBJ and Lady Bird with Buffalo Mayor Frank Sedita and New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller in Buffalo in 1966.In the 40 years or so I’ve had to let that story sink in, I think I have two takeaways.
The first is… When common sense dictates breaking a rule, do it. (There was nothing being taught at SPHS that day that could compete with seeing a President.)
The second is… common sense also dictates that you do your best to find an amiable solution to the breaking the rule. I’ve done plenty of things like skipping class to go see the President… but not while giving the finger to the guy who will paddle my ass and suspend me for doing it.
So thanks Dad and LBJ for the life lessons on this President’s Day.
Found a couple of new articles about my great-great-grandfather, Grandpa Coyle’s grandpa, Captain Thomas Slattery.
He was a Great Lakes ship captain. After many years commanding package freighters, he was given the helm of the SS Juniata, one of the great passenger ships of the Great Lakes.
Thomas J. Slattery was born to recent Irish immigrants in Prescott, Ontario. He moved to Buffalo as a young sailor in his 20s, living first on Orlando Street and then on Indian Church Rd.
I’ve never seen the photo of him as a young man in the one article. The only photos I’ve ever seen of of him as a much older man.
There’s a full kitchen a few doors down from my office, and someone left the tea kettle to boil and walked away.
It was going for two or three minutes before I got up to shut it off… I felt like I was back at Grandma Cichon’s house, where a lot of times it felt like I was the only one who heard the kettle going.
By the time I made it down to the kitchen just now, I was thinking back to taking similar steps towards a whistling kettle to make a couple of cups of awful instant coffee for Gramps and me… so we could sit and talk with Lawrence Welk or Stan Jasinski playing in the background.
“Perfect. Thanks son,” Gramps would say to any cup of coffee, knowing that it was made with love.
The garage is cleaned out, the Bills are winning, and Grandma Cichon’s goulash is ready for dinner. Perfect fall day.
It’s not really much of a recipe…. It’s churning out lotsa food by a mother of ten. I’ve played with the recipe before— but today it was pure Grandma Cichon as I remember her making it.
Recipe:
In a big heavy pot, brown a pound of the fattiest ground beef you can buy (it gets dry tasting with 90 or 95) with an onion, a green pepper, and garlic salt and pepper. Cook off as much fat as possible. Add a large can of diced tomatoes… and a large can of whole peeled tomatoes (I eyeball whether its too juicy… and sometimes drain the whole tomatoes… sometimes not.)
With the spatula I chop up those whole tomatoes… let that simmer.
Cook a pound of macaroni (or shells) firm (if it says 7-9 minutes, I go 7). Drain well and mix into the big pot.
I let that mixture cook a little… then turn it off. It’s much better if you can let it stand for an hour. Even better when reheated the next day.
This Hertel Avenue litter triggered an instant memory flashback:
Hey Steve-o, here’s a couple bucks. Go to the store and get your ol’man a pack of smokes. Your grandmother, too. And get yourself a candy bar, ok?
Even at 6 years old, Dad didn’t have to tell me to get him Parliament 100s or Grandma Kools.
There was never a note that I remember… and never a problem so long as I went to the corner deli and got the right brand of smokes. ( I tried to buy Marlboro for an uncle once and they literally chased me out of the store. Hahahaha.)
That was Grandma Cichon with the Kools.
Grandma Coyle, like my dad, smoked Parliaments. But the only thing she’d send us to B-Kwik for regularly was rolls for dinner.
Sometimes we’d stay late at Grandma Coyle’s house, and we’d take our baths there.
Sometimes, Grandma Coyle would have a beer– in an old school pint glass just like this one– while reclining on the couch watching TV.
It fills my heart even now to think about walking into the living room on Hayden Street in our pajamas, and seeing Grandma smiling as we walked in, all freshly scrubbed.
She smiled every time we walked into a room… and if that isn’t the greatest thing ever.
I’m so glad I decided to have a beer tonight– and that it took me to this story.
This Hertel Avenue litter triggered an instant memory flashback:
“Hey Steve-o, here’s a couple bucks. Go to the store and get your ol’man a pack of smokes. Your grandmother, too. And get yourself a candy bar, ok?”
Even at 6 years old, Dad didn’t have to tell me to get him Parliament 100s or Grandma Kools.
There was never a note that I remember… and never a problem– so long as I went around the corner to Quality Food Mart at Seneca and Duerstein, and got the right brand of smokes.
(Tried to buy Marlboro for an uncle once and they literally chased me out of the store. Hahahaha.)
Sometimes we’d stay late at Grandma Coyle’s house, and we’d take our baths there.
Sometimes, Grandma Coyle would have a beer– in an old school pint glass just like this one– while reclining on the couch watching TV.
It fills my heart even now to think about walking into the living room on Hayden Street in our pajamas, and seeing Grandma smiling as we walked in, all freshly scrubbed.
She smiled every time we walked into a room… and if that isn’t the greatest thing ever.
I’m so glad I decided to have a beer tonight– and that it took me to this story.
It’s been 22 years now– and sad for me to think about the fact that I’ve been without Grandma Cichon longer than the time we were here together. But there’s happiness, too, of course…
She’s so much a part of who I am, what I do, and the way I do it… She’s very much here with me. She never said goodbye when someone would leave, it was always “Toodaloo,” with a smile and the knowledge we’d be seeing each other again soon.
After helping raise her six brothers and sisters, ten kids and a million nieces, nephews, and random kids from the neighborhood by the time she got to me– she had an incredible way of finding the thing she could help develop in a person and quietly make an impact.
When I was 6 or 7, she saw something in me that displayed a love of Buffalo History– and gave me a wonderful Buffalo historical photo-filled magazine (which of course I still have– I’m a pack rat just like her.)
More than just a love of history and the past, Grandma loved what was new and exciting, too. She took us kids on the bus from South Buffalo to Hertel Avenue for the first year of the Italian Festival in its new location there.
She took us (again on the bus) to the “new show” when the new downtown movie theaters opened. Of course, her handbag was filled with cans of Faygo pop and that cheap waxy candy from D&K.
When I was 8 or 9 and started sneaking up to watch Johnny Carson’s monologue, she was the only person I knew who also watched Carson, so she was the only one I could talk to about all the great jokes. It was Grandma Cichon who suggested that I might like David Letterman, too… Even though I was in fifth grade and his show started at 12:30am.
Uncovering Buffalo’s history and trying to make people smile are the very foundation of who I am– in no small part thanks to Grandma Cichon. But it’s not just me, it’s dozens of people, and the people they’ve since touched.
She was really tough, and definitely not the type to tell you that you were a special snowflake. But even better, she saw what was special in you, and without pomp, circumstance, or self-congratulation, she helped you cultivate it, whether you realized it or not.
What would have been her 90th birthday comes up on July 4th. She remains a definitive example of The Greatest Generation and a definitive example of a wonderful grandma.
I will never forget the satisfied, heart-filled smile Gramps gave me when I told him that I cleaned up his parents’ grave. I didn’t know it, but not being able to tend to his family’s graves was one of the things that weighed on him when he was in a nursing home, the last of ten siblings still alive.
John & Mary (Jan & Marjanna) Cichon
“Our Dear Son” Roman Cichon
porcelain portrait of Roman
Chester was buried near the fence without a marker.
“You’re a good guy for doing that, son,” Gramps said to me. It rang in my ears and filled my heart today when I stopped by the cemetery to look after my great-grandparents’ grave, and the graves of Gramps’ brothers who died in childhood.
Roman was hit by a truck and killed, Czesław (Chester) had Leukemia and died at three months old. Chester didn’t have a stone– they couldn’t afford one– Gramps’ older brothers cast a cross in concrete, which eventually wore down and was toppled. But he was right next to the fence, Gramps said. There are other makeshift headstones nearby which survive.
Czeslaw Cichon burial information
Roman (sometimes called Rajmund) Cichon burial information
John (Jan) Cichon burial information
It’s deeply gratifying to honor my grandfather by honoring his parents and brothers.
Map to Roman & Chester’s graves in the old part of the cemetery, on the east side of Pine Ridge Heritage Blvd
Map to Jan & Mary Cichon’s grave, newer west side of Pine Ridge. “You know you’re almost to ma and pa when you get past the nuns,” Gramps used to say. Hahaha. (The Felician and Franciscan Sisters’ plot is just about across the street.
May they all Rest In Peace. Spoczywaj W Pokoju.
Steve at the entrance to the old part of St. Stanislaus Cemetery, Cheektowaga, NY.
By Steve Cichon
