If you weren’t a friend of Yuri Hreshchyshyn, it’s probably because—somehow—you never met him. Yuri was one of the rare people in public life in Buffalo who didn’t seem to have any enemies, at least none that I know of.
That’s all the more extraordinary given all the things Yuri was involved in, and for so long. No matter how well you may have known him, the tributes to him (for example, here and here) will certainly tell you things he had a hand in that you weren’t aware of. The fine obituary by Dale Anderson in the Buffalo News, for example, mentions that Yuri “contributed a design for expansion of the Peace Bridge.”
I was not aware of that, but not surprised by it, either, given Yuri’s aptitude for planning. In fact, when I first met Yuri in 2006, he had—literally—a plan in hand. This was when I still lived in Ra Cha Cha but blew into town to sit in on a Buffalo Central Terminal board meeting. Why? Because during a members-only tour of the Terminal that fall, on the long stair climb to the observation deck at the very top, Mark Lewandowski regaled me with stories of board president Russ Pawlak that I found astonishing. “Come to a board meeting and see for yourself,” he challenged me. So I did. And indeed, from the beginning to the end of the meeting Russ was, well, “large[personality-wise] and in charge” was the phrase that came to mind at the time. The other phrase was “performance art”—as if Russ was an actor and this was his stage. Perhaps we’re all like that, to a degree, but Russ was simply extraordinary.
But as impressive as Russ was to watch, however, what really stuck in my mind from that meeting was seeing Yuri—the Central Terminal Restoration Corporation’s longest-serving board member—talk about an award-winning plan he’d worked on for the Broadway-Fillmore Good Neighbors Planning Alliance. The concept was to revitalize Paderewski Street by re-visioning it as a “cultural row,” including greenway elements that would have made Paderewski what we would now call a “green street.” It was a great bit of planning work and, to this day, when I walk up Paderewski with the Terminal looming in the distance, I see it through this lens. Almost two decades later—unimplemented, like most of Buffalo’s best plans—that concept can still be found online here. Here’s an image from it:
After I moved to Buffalo and got heavily involved in the community myself, I was amazed how often I would encounter Yuri, always involved in something good. I found myself dealing with him so much that I eventually learned to spell his name from memory and even (I think) pronounce it correctly.
When the Ukrainian war broke out a decade ago with the Russian invasion of Crimea, I learned of Yuri’s leadership in the Ukrainian-American community and his visits back to the “old country” as an elections observer, which I wrote about here (including a great picture of a smiling Yuri at a local Euromaidan rally) when the Buffalo Mass Mob visited his church. Two months ago, although he was in pain, Yuri was at the Dnipro Center for an event supporting Ukrainian relief.
But it wasn’t until last year that I really got the fullest sense of Yuri’s wide-ranging impact on Buffalo and Buffalonians. When the house he always seemed to be in the process of building on the Buffalo River suffered a major fire, his friends held a fundraiser to help him rebuild. Although I was blitzed with projects at the time, I couldn’t not support Yuri, so I ventured over to the Adam Mickiewicz Library. I was simply astonished at the crowd, which packed the place so tightly it was hard to move around. Clearly, Yuri’s life didn’t just mean something—it meant a lot, to a lot of us.
Last month, I consider it a deep privilege and an honor to have gotten to spend several hours with Yuri. We met up at the Ukrainian-American Civic Center in Black Rock where I found him, despite his deteriorating condition, working at the Welcome Center he helped create for refugees from the Ukraine invasion. I helped him move some furniture and then we sat down for a long conversation. He was very interested in the expressway projects I’ve been involved in for a decade, and this was an opportunity to compare notes. But instead, it ended up being mostly me taking notes on his extensive thoughts and amazingly detailed analysis, scribbling page after page, trying to keep up.
It was also our long-overdue chance to catch up about the Central Terminal master plan. After that plan was released, I spent a month or two on a deep-dive analysis of it, and drafted several articles, which for various reasons I ultimately decided not to publish. But because early in that process Yuri had given me some key insights, I wanted to see if my analysis and conclusions agreed with his. I was relieved to find that they almost perfectly aligned.
We also shared our amazement at how far the Central Terminal has come since the 2017 battle over train station citing, which seemed like a loss for the Terminal at the time, but really set the stage for everything that has come since. And of course, Yuri was a quiet yet influential presence in all of it. Here he is (far right) at the day-long hearing on train station citing at City Hall on January 19, 2017 (on the phone is Camille Brandon, a friend of Yuri, who sadly passed away last fall):
We exchanged thoughts after our meeting, but when we lost touch I feared the worst. And indeed the worst happened: We lost Yuri. Yet, in a sense, we didn’t lose him altogether. The organizations and initiatives that he helped to create and lead will live on as a legacy. The friendships and working relationships that have been built—“social capital” in planner-speak—because of Yuri’s ability to bring people together and get people working together, will continue to bear fruit for a long time to come. And, I’d like to think, Yuri’s quiet example of soft leadership will continue to be a model for everyone in community leadership to follow.
Still, this is a sad moment for Buffalo. We will mourn the loss of Yuri, celebrate his life, and comfort his family and friends. Then, it will be time to recommit ourselves to all the work at hand, and our joint mission to make Buffalo a better place for everyone. May Yuri’s memory ever be a blessing, and may Yuri’s leadership and character ever provide a guiding light.
And, as Yuri would no doubt want me to add: Slava Ukraini!
Arrangements are being handled by the Pietszak Funeral Home, details here.
Funeral Mass at the Ukrainian Catholic Church off Fillmore near the Central Terminal, details here.
A fine obituary in the Buffalo News by Dale Anderson, here.
Lead image: Yuri Hreshchyshyn at the Ukrainian-American Civic Center in Black Rock on February 24, 2023, organizing international flags to distribute to marchers in the invasion vigil and march.