As 2020 nears its end, the journalists in our newsroom were asked to take part in a collective effort. The request: Select five pieces of work from this tumultuous and painful year that each of us found of particular meaning.
On one level, it was impossible. The past 12 months, above all else, built into an ongoing torrent of civic sacrifice, loss and struggle. Beginning in March, much of my work has involved Western New York lives claimed or turned upside down by Covid-19. Those accounts were often intertwined with the selflessness of those who quietly tried to save or protect others threatened by the virus: Doctors. Nurses. Home care workers. Cleaning people. Everyday family members. Teachers. Group home staff.
There is no ranking the central figures in any of these columns. To me, they are all unforgettable. Going back, then, I tried to find five columns that were simply emblematic, representative of a sensibility that held together in a legion of people I encountered or interviewed during a time of such collective tumult that only our white-haired elders – witnesses to world war and a global depression – could remember anything of the same scope.
Here, then, are five columns that I hope serve as tribute to everyone I wrote about this year:
March 31, 'Shaken doctor shares lessons from the Covid floor'
Through a friend, I learned of a spontaneous and heartbreaking Facebook post built around observations by Dr. Erik Jensen, an anesthesiologist at the Erie County Medical Center. Exhausted after coming home from a shift in March, he sent a text message to a guy he trusts about a sense of urgency and fear among patients and weary colleagues that he loves on a "Covid floor," a workplace anxiety unlike anything Jensen had encountered.
With Jensen's OK, the friend turned the text into a post that spread like fire on Facebook, and Jensen – closely involved with many patients who needed ventilators – paused at a quiet moment, from his home, to speak of what he saw as an early warning on the magnitude and danger of what his city was up against.
April 30, 'One of our own: Covid-19 claims Buffalo General X-ray technologist who put colleagues first'
In greater Buffalo, it is believed the first front-line health care worker lost to Covid-19 was John Poleon, an X-ray technologist at Buffalo General Medical Center and a 63-year-old husband, dad and grandfather. He had worked for decades at Buffalo General, emerging as a distinct and beloved presence in the corridors and operating rooms. Poleon was revered by his colleagues for his selflessness, for his casual willingness to pick up someone else's work if a colleague on his shift needed to leave early.
More than 1,000 people in Erie County alone have now died from the virus. Considering the way Poleon was mourned by those who were at his side in the hospital each day, it seemed fitting his portrait was among those selected by The New York Times to illustrate the magnitude of national loss when the death toll for the pandemic crossed 100,000 – less than one-third of what it is now, seven months later.
Aug. 22, 'High above Buffalo, Bisons' fan dream for dad comes true'
To Dr. Ryan Miller, a physician in the University at Buffalo's family residency program, it was a painful contradiction: His dad, Hal Miller, security guard at Republic Steel, was living with stage four cancer. He was also a lifetime baseball fan – a guy who always believed Buffalo would someday host a big league team – which meant Hal felt a thrill of possibility when the Toronto Blue Jays, unable to play during the pandemic at the Rogers Centre, made their temporary home at Sahlen Field.
Yet the whole reason the team was here was built around the threat of Covid-19. No spectators would be allowed in the stands. Ryan knew what seeing a game would mean to his father, a gift that seemed utterly impossible to bring about.
Then Ryan remembered: Seneca One, the tallest skyscraper in Buffalo, rises above the ballpark. He sat down and wrote an email explaining the situation to Douglas Jemal, the developer reopening the tower – and the result became a column about a father and a son.
Aug. 31, 'Knitting fabric of this community, one young life at a time'
Tommy McClam built his Breaking Barriers mentoring initiative on a simple principle, under the umbrella of Say Yes Buffalo and the national My Brother's Keeper Alliance. To really matter in the lives of the young Black men whose well-being is McClam's relentless focus, a mentor must provide one unshakeable guarantee: You must be willing to commit years of patient, face-to-face presence and concern. The isolation of the pandemic, followed by the nationwide grief and shock at the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minnesota, went to the heart of that work – but also escalated the challenge.
With Daniel Robertson, a fellow coordinator, McClam swiftly adapted. They turned to regular video conferences, masked and distanced meetings and coming together for such efforts as volunteer food distributions. Yet the parallel and far more informal result, to McClam, made the greatest of all statements: The young participants, when in need, had learned how to find strength and solace in one another.
Oct. 31, 'Henry Wesley votes because he never forgets he once had no choice'
Born with cerebral palsy, Henry Wesley was handed over as a small child to a place known at the time as the Willowbrook State School, an institution that became a grim and brutal prison for generations of Americans born with developmental disabilities. Within those walls, Wesley withstood unimaginable abuse and neglect that he faced while being called by a number, not his name.
Almost a half-century after he was finally released, he and his wife Jane live now in Jamestown, living symbols of a powerful and ongoing American movement for civil rights. Before an election held in the shadow of the pandemic, at a time when Wesley's age and condition elevated his own risk, he explained in a series of passionate emails how everything he had seen and endured in his life guaranteed, more than ever, why he had to cast a vote.
