Hassina Adams, clerk of the Onondaga County Legislature, says the late Mark Cass served as a "father figure" and a key part of her success after she and her siblings arrived in Syracuse, more than a decade ago. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

A few months ago, Mark Cass asked Hassina Adams if she would serve as the keynote speaker at the Northside Learning Center’s annual dinner, set for next Saturday at the Mosque of Jesus, son of Mary, on Park Street.

She felt honored — if a little nervous — about the invitation. Cass was executive director of the learning center. He had provided steady support for Adams, now the clerk of the Onondaga County Legislature, since she and her siblings arrived 11 years ago in Syracuse as orphaned immigrants who had been living in South Africa.

Cass, through wise advice and downright love, became what Adams needed most in a new city in a new country, this place where the winters sometimes bring 10 feet or more of snow:

The late Mark Cass joins residents in brainstorming solutions to housing issues during Syracuse’s Northside Issues Forum on Housing, last February. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

“A constant,” she said last week, during an interview in a learning center classroom that to Adams will always feel like home.

She told Cass she would give the speech. The dinner is a critically important fundraiser, an autumn statement on purpose and direction in which Adams knew her main themes would be gratitude and hope. Those were both emotions she connected with Cass, a friend and mentor Adams last saw in early August, when he brought flowers to a graduation party after her sister Masturah earned a diploma from Niagara University.

Adams had one no-doubt-it expectation about her talk, a certainty that didn’t require a second thought:

Mark Cass, synonymous with the North Side Learning Center, would be in the audience to smile, to catch her eye, to provide a crackling bond of love and support.

Instead, in his absence, she’ll remember his great lesson:

“Do the best you can and leave the rest to God,” Adams said.

Cass died at home on Aug. 12, at 68, of a sudden heart attack, according to his family. After hearing the news, Yusuf Soule, a Central New York native involved almost 20 years ago in founding the learning center, put a temporary halt to retirement in Indonesia — where Soule is writing a book — to return to Syracuse with his wife Fitria.

Soule and Cass were close friends. They both saw the learning center as a desperately needed fixture on the North Side. Until the center’s board makes a permanent choice, Soule is serving in a volunteer role as interim director.

Yusuf Soule, a founder and interim executive director of the Northside Learning Center, at Masjid Isa Ibn Maryam mosque, where his organization will hold its annual dinner later this week. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

“Big shoes,” he said of Cass, who spent about a dozen years as the first paid executive director in the center’s history. Soule, a retired teacher, said the organization was created by a core of Muslim educators in Syracuse to provide language classes and other services — and, more than anything, a sense of home and shelter — for immigrant families in the neighborhood and the larger city.

“It is home,” said Adams, whose mother died from a long illness while their family waited approval to relocate in Syracuse. Adams was a child when her father was killed in Uganda. His wife and children fled to South Africa, where Adams said her mom’s dream was a new start in the United States and “a fighting chance at a normal life.”

While she died in South Africa before she could see it happen, her children arrived 11 years ago in Syracuse. Without any parents, Adams — only a teenager — assumed responsibility for her younger brother and sister, Hassan and Masturah.

In Syracuse, a caseworker immediately brought the young siblings to the North Side Learning Center, a vivid memory for Adams. “Mark was waiting in the hall,” she said. His first words to her were:

“How can I help?”

Until his death, he never stopped asking the question.

Hassina Adams: The classrooms at the North Side Learning Center provided a sense of security and home after she and her orphaned siblings arrived here from South Africa. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

Adams learned quickly that Cass didn’t see his job as something to leave behind at day’s end. He was a convert to Islam. The people counting on the mosque and the center’s classrooms were a driving passion in his life. That level of selfless connection was reflected in the wave of community love and disbelief after Cass died.

Bill Cass, an older sibling, said Mark was one of six children — also including Tim, Phillip, Cathy and Therese — raised in the Strathmore neighborhood. Mark’s son Christian and daughter-in-law Meredith have an infant daughter, Josephine, and Bill said Mark had planned on traveling to Texas this fall to see his grandchild for the first time.

“He never had the chance to hold her,” Bill said of Mark, the second of four Cass brothers lost suddenly in the last two years, after Tim died early in 2025.

Reflecting on childhood, Bill often remembers how he and Mark and their brothers — all six Cass children were close in age — used to play sandlot baseball in the spring and summer behind Roberts School. Joined by friends who lived nearby, they routinely faced off against neighborhood rivals from Elmwood.

Those are some of the best and most enduring memories of Bill’s life, how all these city kids — free of worry, free of grownup tensions or supervision — would gather in a place of absolute joy and safety.

“Every single night,” Bill said softly, thinking of a brother whose focus — until the day he died — was building a similar kind of community for today’s children, on the North Side.

That concern was life-changing for Hussein Yerow, operations director at the learning center. His family fled relentless violence in Somalia to live for years in a Kenyan refugee camp, before arriving 17 years ago in Syracuse.

Yerow, now 34, loves to write. Years ago, he had stopped one day at the learning center’s original location above Pavone’s Pizza on Butternut Street, long before the operation moved into the old Holy Trinity campus on Park Street. Cass — noticing how Yerow was jotting down thoughts on a sheet of paper — stopped to talk.

Before long, Yerow was working closely with Cass, who helped him learn to read and write in English — a partnership of such success it led to Yerow’s 2015 “student of the year” recognition, with several others, from LiteracyCNY.

“Monday to Sunday, I miss him,” Yerow said.

It would be impossible, Yerow said, to fully measure the impact Cass had on countless lives. Cass spent much of his career focused on literacy, including many years at ProLiteracy Worldwide. He brought that passion to the learning center, Yusuf Soule recalled, shortly after it was founded with particular help from the Allyn Family Foundation.

Syracuse city officials recently placed street signs identifying “Mark Cass Way” on Park Street, beginning at Butternut Street and ending at the center. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

Certainly, as Adams and Yerow both emphasize, Cass believed in the importance of formal education. But he also had deep appreciation for the practical and life-changing ability to fix the things right in front of you. Yerow said Cass understood that everyday knowledge of drywalling, plumbing, painting or electronics could not only provide a living, but might save big money for immigrant families on tight incomes capable of doing repairs themselves.

If Yerow was intimidated by a task, Cass would tell him: “Don’t say, ‘I don’t know.’ Always try it out. That’s how you make a decision. You fail and you try again.” Yerow, following that advice, quickly learned many skills. He said Cass taught him to do the painting and other repairs that kept Yerow busy when I visited the center, last week.

His friendship with Cass was so rich in trust, Yerow said, that the two men knew each other’s passwords for their phones and other devices. Because of that, Yerow said he’s confident of what Cass would want them all to do, right now.

The dream is seeing the North Side Learning Center prosper as a place of warmth, of renewal, for so many who have suffered. Cass approached that goal with such intensity that Syracuse Common Councilor Chol Majok, who came to this city as a refugee, led a successful effort to have signs reading “Mark Cass Way” erected along Park Street.

Adams says Cass had a profound impact on her own trajectory. He was the one who recommended she seek an equivalency degree in Syracuse and then go straight to Onondaga Community College — predicting that would be a wiser and swifter course than formally finishing high school after her arrival here.

Yusuf Soule, a founder of the Northside Learning Center,, talks with Nazir Hossein, who often leads prayers at the nearby mosque. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

It paid off. In 2015, Adams was a teen in what she calls “survival mode.” She was still grieving the absence of her mother. Money was tight while she tried to care for her younger siblings. “When everything could be so bleak and exhausting,” she said, Cass was always finding ways to help.

For instance: When Adams graduated from OCC, he offered her a job teaching middle school girls at the learning center. That paycheck made a giant difference as she moved on to study at Syracuse University. Throughout her college career, as her grade point average soared, Cass would always show up when Adams received academic honors.

“He was honestly like a father figure to me,” said Adams, recalling how Cass realized his presence didn’t matter only at moments of crisis.

Hussein Yerow, operations manager at the Northside Learning Center: His life was changed by his friendship with Mark Cass. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

It mattered on the long and quiet days when things are simply hard.

“Constant,” she said again of his support.

Soule, the interim director, said Adams’ speech at the dinner will serve as a major statement, a reminder of how the center remains “good and strong” as it moves forward, keeping faith with Cass. As for Yerow, he said that even now he’ll sometimes catch himself walking toward the main office, with questions to ask Cass.

Then he stops. While Cass isn’t there, he spent years quietly reminding Yerow of the one consistent answer.

You see big problems that need fixing? You think. You do your research. You never quit before you start.

Do that, and give it everything, then leave the rest to God.

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Sean Kirst is a columnist with The Central Current. He has been an Upstate journalist for more than 50 years. He held his first reporting job as a teenager and worked for newspapers in Dunkirk, Niagara...