Thank you for that kind introduction, President Kent Gilges, and for your thought and care in bringing me to Canandaigua to discuss this exciting new project about upstate New York, its history, and its people. The project, “Remembering Upstate New York,” is dedicated to recovering and sharing inspirational and other stories from this fantastically interesting and significant part of America.
I’m grateful to be meeting in an American Legion, by the way. It brings back many memories. My Dad was a veteran who often visited the local Legion, one brother was a Marine who did the same, and other friends and relatives also hung out in various upstate Posts. So, I feel at home. Kent said that many of you Rotary members are also veterans. To all, thank you for your service.
Last night, Kent and his lovely wife Liz shared just some of the wonderful work that the Rotary Club is up to in the region. One of these, they explained, is ONSEYAWA, the collaborative efforts of local clubs in four different counties to send special-needs kids to special camps. What a beautiful example of American dedication to community in action – and not to community as an abstraction, but as a collection of real individuals, in real need.
That is a story, a wonderful story, about giving back to where we come from. And it’s a story that resonated deeply, because the project I’m here to share with you all is based on the same unbidden desire – the desire to do some good in the places we come from, and to honor and build up the places we come from.
By way of introduction, I’m a proud daughter of upstate New York myself. I grew up in villages and hamlets slightly northeast of here, mostly scattered amid the waterways of Oneida County. I was part of a large family with a bunch of brothers and sisters, and all of us spent a lot of time outdoors. I was fortunate to attend Cornell University for four years, and from there entered a life of journalism that brought me to Washington, D.C., as a speechwriter to a Secretary of State, George Shultz, and later as an author of essays and books. Along the way I met my husband, Nicholas, a demographer and author. I’ve led a fortunate life full of travel, family, friends, and other writers.
Yet despite the time spent in the nation’s capital, the desire to return to upstate NY, both literally and figuratively, remained constant. Someday, I knew, I’d return to my roots here. Someday, I have been thinking for a long time, I’d come back to try and give back in my own way – through writing, through storytelling.
That’s how the new project, “Remembering Upstate New York,” was born. It’s an ambitious, unique, multi-media, five-year project that we believe can not only educate, and restore historical pride upstate, but perhaps also become a pilot program for similar efforts at cultural restoration around the country.
Stage One of this project, 2025-2026, will consist of on-site research, extensive essays, and other writings, to be collected in the future in book form, that bring to life some of upstate New York’s past and present characters, and the American past in which they are rooted.
As one of the first examples, I’ve brought along bound copies of an essay just published, called “Finding Private Roy.” It’s about my late stepfather, a farm boy from Central New York, who survived the Battle of Okinawa as an Army infantryman, and who went on to lead an amazing life of mentorship, and quiet but important leadership.
That essay is very much an example of what we’re trying to produce with this project – authentic, often inspirational, stories that would be forgotten, or are in danger of being forgotten, without our literary efforts.
Another example of what we’re up to under the aegis of the project is the next essay, to be published in November, called “How the Erie Canal Made America.” This is a concentrated study of all the formative events made possible by that astonishing feat of engineering. It traces the explosion of commerce, philanthropy, religious fervor, and reformist movements of all kinds that were accelerated by the Canal’s efficiency of movement. On the 200th anniversary of its opening, there is no better moment to remind and educate people of the Canal’s centrality in the American history it shaped.
Those are just two examples the scope of “Remembering Upstate New York.” It’s about stories about real people, doing amazing if hitherto unknown deeds. Stories about the sometimes-haunted history of a region where self-reliance and neighborliness shine through, in a way that they often don’t in the big cities that dominate national news and politics.
In Stage Two of the project, 2027-2028, our ambition is to bring some of the stories we’ve collected to new life in different ways – as screenplays, as collections of essays, and in a couple of cases, we hope, as one-act plays for regional or college theaters, about which we’re already in early discussion with some venues. In every Project stage, our aim, again, is restoration – of regional pride, of honor for the living and dead, of patriotism.
Our mission is to make the ordinary extraordinary again – and we have a wonderful A-team for it. Writers Andrew Doran and Kathryn Jean Lopez are also researching and embarking on pieces. Andrew hails from the Southern Tier. He is an author, and an Army veteran with a distinguished record of public service in the nation’s capital and elsewhere, most recently in the U.S. State Department. Andrew will be focusing on stories of history, culture, and human interest about real, live, people and characters upstate.
Kathryn Jean Lopez hails from the area of greater New York City. An editor for years at National Review magazine, she is a book author and nationally syndicated columnist. Kathryn will be focusing especially on the amazing religious history of the upstate region. Benjamin Ranieri, our marketing and media director, manages the work of the website, media appearances, and many other project details. And our creative/artistic team members, Mike Savoy and Judy Kelly, are both graduates of the Rochester Institute of Technology, and community members highly involved in the Rochester area.
As part of Stage One, the writers among us are traveling widely in the state during 2025-2026. Because of that, our project is also beginning to serve as a center of gravity, we hope, to a small community of other regional authors. On this current trip, for example, we’ve met with two – a well-known journalist named Bill Kauffmann, in Batavia, and a professor of politics at Houghton University, Peter Mieleander, who keeps up a lively writing hobby about upstate on the side. These and other literary talents in different parts of the area will create lots of synergy for the project, for them and for us, and we’ll be showcasing their relevant work as well.
All of our writing, photos, and information about travel and appearances will be posted going forward on the project’s website, rememberupstate.org. There is a lot of content forthcoming in the next couple of years, we trust, and a lot of lively storytelling to come. After all, some of the greatest tales in American history begin right here – from Indigenous history to utopian experiments, abolitionism, and suffragettism; to the Westward Expansion itself, and the birth of several global faiths. And more. We’ll be writing and recording and sharing about all of it in one way or another.
Kent kindly asked me to share thoughts about how people might help as we launch this new initiative. One answer is, do visit our website regularly, rememberupstate.org; our team will be updating it as we go. Donations are also welcome, of course, and can be made through the website; they are tax-deductible through the Center for Cultural Restoration, which hosts this project and has 501c3 status. If anyone has ideas for stories, or other comments and thoughts, and would like to be in touch, please do so through my website, maryeberstadt.com.
And finally, keeping our project in mind, and extending your goodwill, means so much as we begin on this new adventure. It’s an honor to be here and share fellowship with you today. On behalf of the whole team, deepest thanks to President Kent Gilges and all of the Rotary gathered here, for your time and consideration.
