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In Buffalo, 12 fateful months in quotes

Wounds of hate, flashes of hope, year’s end in ‘devil’s snow’: In Buffalo, 12 fateful months in quotes

Seneca Member Lois Garlow Highlighted for AUGUST Quote

December 31, 2022 | By Sean Kirst | buffalonews.com

During my years as a columnist, I’ve always tried to collect a few emblematic quotes at each year’s end from the previous 12 months of columns, before sharing those words with appreciation for the trust and sincerity behind each thought.

This year is distinct, for the harshest reason. For much of 2022 in Buffalo, I covered the aftermath of an obscene act of hate, the murder of 10 people by a racist killer at Tops Markets on Jefferson Avenue. It led me to contemplate – out of respect and reverence – breaking quotes related to the massacre into a forum of their own.

But it seems to me that would be an action in step with exactly what the killer wanted – to separate lives of deep meaning in the Cold Spring neighborhood from the everyday heartbeat of the surrounding city. Each of the 10 lives stolen at Tops will always be of bedrock importance in Buffalo, and tributes and reflections born from searing grief need to be, more than ever, shared in community.

From 2022, here is the year in Western New York, in your own words:

August 13: “It was like he did it on purpose. We all felt like Jim Thorpe was watching us.” – Lois Garlow of the Seneca Nation, co-captain of Haudenosaunee Nationals women’s lacrosse, after her team defeated Czechoslovakia for a historic World Games win in the same week that Thorpe’s Olympic medals from 1912 were finally restored.

Check out the remainder of Mr. Kirst’s column here: https://buffalonews.com/news/local/wounds-of-hate-flashes-of-hope-years-end-in-devils-snow-in-buffalo-12-fateful/article_dc854e3a-879e-11ed-844b-c799a61b3f0e.html