A memorial for the homeless who have died on the streets in Western New York was unveiled Wednesday at the Matt Urban Hope Center. Sharon Cantillon / Buffalo News

Local advocates for the homeless Wednesday launched the longest night of the year with the unveiling of a memorial dedicated to those who have died on the streets merely for lack of adequate shelter.

The outdoor memorial rests in the earth at Memorial and Paderewski drives, just feet from the Matt Urban Hope Center, where Karen Carman serves as director. During Wednesday’s service, which included a candlelight vigil, Carman described homelessness as a social tragedy.

“We have men, women, children, veterans, the elderly homeless, [all] living on the street. We have people with mental disease living outside unable to fend for themselves,” said Carman.

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Sister Mary Johnice Rzadkiewicz and John Reed share a laugh over a singing moose during Christmas dinner in the Response to Love Center on Kosciuszko Street. - Derek Gee / Buffalo News

Twenty-six years ago, when Sister Mary Johnice Rzadkiewicz was studying at a Philadelphia seminary, Mother Teresa came to town, and the two women sat at the same lunch table.

“Mother, do you think I could come to Calcutta?” Sister Mary Johnice asked. “I want to learn how to work with the poor.”

“She looked at me and said, ‘Little sister, go back to your neighborhood. Find your Calcutta there.’”

That’s exactly what Sister Mary Johnice did.

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Buffalo’s Central Terminal is reveling in recognition and dollars.

It was awarded $10,000 after receiving the most votes in a weeklong competition co-sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation on Facebook that saw hundreds take part.

The Art Deco train station bested the Colored Musicians Club, Graycliff and Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site.

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(By Sandra Tan – Buffalo News)

In the sanctuary of St. Adalbert Basilica stand two facing paintings. One is of St. Adalbert’s martyrdom. The other depicts the story of St. Peter walking on water toward Jesus until his faith falters in the face of the wind. Peter begins to sink until Jesus reaches out to save him.

The stories offer parallels for a church community desperate for salvation in the face of Bishop Edward U. Kmiec’s ruling that the church cease all regular Masses and merge with St. John Kanty after this Sunday’s special Mass celebrating the basilica’s 125th anniversary.

“We’re basically trying to stay together as a family,” said church trustee Lori Dinero.

Parishioners spent this past Sunday with local artists from Painting for Preservation. The group, formed in March, comprises artists who visit neglected and endangered historic sites with cameras and sketch pads to keep an artistic record of buildings before they’re lost.

They mixed with long-memoried churchgoers struggling to find hope.

Longtime parishioner Irene Kupinski found it hard to look up at the church’s brick walls and 40-foot-wide dome without tears as she passed out roast beef sandwiches to fellow parishioners and supporters.

This Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood church was responsible for her indoctrination into the faith, for her sacraments, her education and three generations of family devotion.

“I’d give part of my life if I thought God would hear me and keep it open,” said Kupinski, 72, who lives a block away from the church in the house her mother was born in.

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*Brian Meyer – Buffalo New) What’s a surefire sign that business is booming at the Broadway Market this Easter season?

When the pierogi people sell out of their signature food at 10:30 a.m. on Good Friday.

“What? No pierogies?” one man asked incredulously.

Julie Czochara of Keeping Traditions Pierogi smiled politely.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “We sold out a few hours ago.”

Don’t blame poor planning. Czochara and her husband, Greg, prepared about three times as many of their doughy delicacies as last year. They were sure they were set for the onslaught. They planned on making more pierogi to cater to Saturday shoppers. In the past couple weeks, they estimate they’ve sold about 24,000 pierogi.

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(Sandra Tan – Buffalo News)

Forgotten and forsaken.

That’s how residents feel in census tract 16, the southern end of the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood.

The rectangular census tract between Broadway and William Street lost 47 percent of its population — more than 2,000 residents — over the past decade. That’s the biggest population drop of any census tract in Erie County.

Fewer than 2,300 residents remain.

Sitting in the shadow of soaring and venerable churches — St. John Kanty and Corpus Christi — are weary old homes with broken and missing windows, boarded-up doors, faded paint, sagging rooftops and broken-down porches.

In between stand vacant lots and lived-in homes struggling to fight the tide of desolation. The old Central Terminal and railroad tracks line the southern boundary of the tract, bounded by Smith Street to the west and Bailey Avenue to the east.

“It’s a wreck now,” said 58-year-old Clark Street resident Ed Kijania, who left the neighborhood in 1987 for Florida and returned in 2000. “It used to be beautiful.”

This area was once home to a large Polish population. Most left decades ago. In more recent years, residents — both black and white — have left to flee the crime and overall neglect that has taken hold here. Others passed away.

“They’re not moving,” said Coit Street resident Diane Kilanowski, 57. “They’re dying.”

Kilanowski’s home was built in 1816 and has been in her family for three generations.

With the city’s help in 2001, Kilanowski got a redevelopment loan to side and reroof her house. But the contractors did such a shoddy job that moisture leaked into the walls and she can’t live on the first floor anymore because of all the mold.

Nobody wants to help, she said, despite the countless calls she’s made for assistance.

That’s the story in a neighborhood where the remaining habitable homes sell for $1,000 or $2,000 a pop. Redevelopment programs here have failed so far, she said.

Since 2000, this part of town has lost 1,094 blacks and 893 whites.

Morton, an M&T Bank clerk from Coit Street, doesn’t blame people for leaving.

Her own home is modest but warm. She owns it free and clear and is glad she has a working alarm system.

But the area isn’t safe, and there’s no sense of community pride. She’s embarrassed to tell co-workers where she lives and doesn’t invite them over.

Just recently, she said, someone came through the neighborhood and scraped the inspection stickers off people’s windshields to resell on the street. Her car was one of the ones left with a cracked windshield.

“If opportunity allows, and I can get enough money where I can afford to, I’d live somewhere else,” she said. “I’d move, too.”

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You’d think that after 70 years of friendship, there wouldn’t be much left to talk about.

But don’t say that to a group of former East Side teenagers who formed a club in 1941 that continues to meet every two weeks.

“It started at my house 70 years ago,” said Helen Resutek of West Seneca. “We were just friends from the neighborhood, and we decided to get together, and then it followed by itself.”

The original group of five quickly grew to 11, and they have remained close through the years. The group includes three pairs of sisters, two who married brothers, and another who married the brother of two of the sisters.

Saturday, they celebrated the remarkable 70th anniversary of their club with a limousine ride to Henry’s in Kleinhans Music Hall for dinner, followed by a Buffalo Philharmonic pops concert.

Joining in the fun were Resutek, 86; Rose Witman, 87, of Depew; Genevieve Ferenc, (CQ) 88, of Depew; Mary Legierski, 83, of North Collins; Mary Banasiak, 87, of Hamburg; Helen Pilarski, 85, of Depew; and Florence Bartoszek, 83, of Florida.

The Polish heritage is strong in the group. Most grew up in St. John Kanty Catholic Parish, and Legierski, the only Irishwoman, speaks Polish as well as any of them.

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(Lou Michel – Buffalo News) Getting a job could be getting a little easier for the poor.

A boutique clothes closet dedicated to providing financially strapped individuals with suitable attire for job interviews officially opened Friday.

The clothes closet is at the Matt Urban Hope Center, 385 Paderewski Drive, across from the old Central Terminal. Hours are 9 a. m. to 4:30 p. m. weekdays.

But the facility might not have been possible if it weren’t for two area Boy Scouts in search of an Eagle Scout project.

Alexander Fumerelle, 17, of Kenmore and a member of Troop 37, refurbished the women’s bathroom and tiled the runway.

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Photo: Charles Lewis/Buffalo News

I am so glad the Buffalo News has focused on a couple of the places in the neighborhood this week that work to make the lives better for people…without them, a lot of people would be forgotten…God bless them for all they do!

From the Buffalo News…

Twenty-four hours after St. Adalbert’s School closed in 1985, the Response to Love Center was born.

And for the last 25 years, three Felician sisters have been serving the “economically deprived, spiritually poor, emotionally battered, the isolated, wounded and broken” from the Kosciuszko Street building on Buffalo’s East Side.

Sister Mary Catherine Raczkowski is in charge of the youth program and the baby ministry, while Sister Mary Rose Szymanski works in the intake department and is one of the first people seen by new clients when they come for help.

But the women are extending their reach to include “the forgotten people who have not come forward,” said Sister Mary Johnice Rzadkiewicz, the center’s longtime director.

This is the “new direction” of the Catholic Church and the Western New York Holiday Partnership, to respond to all in need, Rzadkiewicz said.  Read full story in the Buffalo News—>

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