Mary and Bob Menotti: After 72 years of marriage, Bob died last week at 100. He was a monumental figure in Syracuse and a giant of the Central New York deaf community. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

This is one of the rare times I can be sure my column — even when it appears before the big event — won’t ruin a surprise. The parishioners at Lucy’s Church on Gifford Street intend to do a little 100th birthday celebration at the 10 a.m. Mass today for Bob Menotti, a St. Lucy’s regular for more than 40 years.

If you know Bob or his wife Mary, feel free to stop in. They have no idea this surprise is coming. The only way they’d find out is if they read this column, and the only way they’d do that before this morning’s Mass is if they used a laptop, which they don’t, a decision made on purpose.

Bob and Mary choose not to go online. That’s not because they’re afraid of trying something new. They were both born Deaf. Being fearless about the new and the unknown is pretty much how they’ve faced and surmounted countless challenges and barriers throughout their long lives.

They stay offline because of a simple question about the Internet that Bob has asked before, a question his niece, Sandy Scalise, expresses in this way:

“Why the meanness?”

Bob’s 100th birthday fell on Saturday. That equates to 36,500 days and some 25 Leap Year extras since he was born, a time span that has left plenty of room for him to try and excel at a whole lot of things.

Bob Menotti, as he often does, uses his hand and fingers to create the sign for “I love you.” Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

Except meanness. This guy is as kind as it gets.

“Bob Menotti,” said Rev. James Mathews, longtime pastor of St. Lucy’s, “is a beautiful ray of sunshine.”

I promise you: That opinion’s no exaggeration. It’s shared by a legion of Central New Yorkers over, say, the last 99 years who’ve experienced Bob’s warmth and electric sense of humor, which I’ve seen him put into immediate action many times over the years. When he greets you, he makes you feel like you’re the only person in the room, even if he leads in with some joke.

And he is fast to raise his hand and offer the sign that means: I love you.

Those qualities are undiminished as he hits 100. Scalise, who’s home from Arizona for this milestone, said the gift Bob will savor most of all is the birthday crowd – like the one that showed up Saturday at his house, and then another big gathering that turns out for church today – because his absolute favorite thing in life is simply “being with people.”

As Mathews notes, that’s when he shines.

Beyond all else, at all times, he’s a teacher. Bob was born in Ogdensburg, in 1925. His parents soon moved to the North Side of Syracuse, where Bob grew up. For a time he attended Percy Hughes, a city school that provided services for children with disabilities. Unlike Bob’s innate disposition, the place wasn’t always kind. April Moore, a friend and interpreter who’s known Bob for most of her life, said Deaf girls and boys were strictly forbidden to use sign language, at least when Bob was there.

Today, Bob patiently shows any hearing person willing to stop and listen how to use the fundamentals of signing. His willingness to teach is embraced by the congregation at St. Lucy’s, where interpreters are on the altar for Mass and where Bob and his wife Mary are beloved regulars.

“What a joy,” Mathews said, “to have him in our company.”

A snapshot of Bob’s athletic prowess: He was a downhill skier until he was 91. He was a fine golfer and bowled in several leagues. As a young man, he was a lifeguard in the Adirondacks and at Sylvan Beach.

He was also a terrific basketball player at the Rochester School for the Deaf, and through some close friends — after a road game against what was then known as the State School for the Deaf, in Rome — he met a teenager from Utica who attended that school, Mary Femia.

A young Bob Menotti (bottom left) in a family image with his brothers and parents. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

They clicked, big-time. Friends recall how Mary asked around in the Upstate Deaf community, where the social circles were small and no one was a stranger: This Bob Menotti. Is he a good guy?

The answer was a resounding “yes.” They were married on Nov. 14, 1953, meaning their 72nd anniversary will be later this year. Mary, 95, has lost some of her vision, which forces her to stay home more than she’d like, though she and Bob are rarely far apart — which is why she was in the room last week when photographer Michelle Gabel and I showed up to interview Bob, with help from Scalise and Moore, the official interpreter.

Forgive me. “Interpreter” doesn’t really do Moore justice. Her parents were deaf. She grew up on the North Side, at a time when an enclave of Deaf families lived within the same few city blocks. By then, Bob and Mary were in North Syracuse, in the house they had built in the same year they were married, but Moore — who is hearing, which means she’s kept a foot in two worlds — knew them from the time she was a little girl.

“They’re family,” she said. She describes the Menottis as two of the most selfless, giving people she’s ever met. The couple was around for many of the big days in her life, and Moore was interpreting when I asked Bob and Mary what brought them together, in the early 1950s.

“I love him,” Mary said, “because he’s such a good man.”

Bob, eyebrows raised as if he didn’t deserve that praise, responded with three words to summarize his feelings for his wife:

Love, love, love.

I’ve known Bob and Mary for about 30 years, since my family started going to St. Lucy’s. They don’t get to church quite as much as they once did — Bob no longer drives, in one concession to age — but even now, when they can make it, they always sit in the same place: Near the front, to the right of where Mathews stands on the altar.

The hands of Bob Menotti, at a moment of reflection and rest. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

St. Lucy’s used to have a large group of Deaf community parishioners who sat in that spot as a group every Sunday — it was a beautiful thing to watch their hands move in symmetry, in worship, joy and prayer — but time and age have gradually reduced that gathering.

With Bob and Mary, time and age have only polished their great enduring strengths.

Ask Scalise what they mean to her, and she says: “Oh my God.”

She said her husband Joe calls Mary “Wonder Woman” — no explanation needed — and refers to Bob as the “Marathon Man,” for his strength and persistence over the long haul.

When we did the interview in North Syracuse a few days ago, workers were putting up a tent in the back yard for a big family birthday party, on Saturday. Bob and Mary never had children, but they treated their nieces and nephews like their own kids. Many of those relatives came home for the 100th.

Scalise said her own parents moved to California when she was in her early 20s, and the Menottis stepped in, almost as surrogate Syracuse parents. They are the “most kind and generous people,” Scalise said, that she has ever met.

Bob said he simply passes on the same warmth and empathy he’s been lucky enough to experience, since he was a little kid. He was the youngest of three boys. His brothers, Roger and Gaston, looked out for him. They didn’t know formal sign language, but they could usually get across what Bob wanted when someone else needed to know.

His father worked for Porter-Cable in Syracuse, and while Bob remembers his dad as “very, very busy” with his job, he was also the guy who taught Bob to ski, golf and fish.

Always close to his mother, Bob left at 12 to live at Rochester’s School for the Deaf. As hard as that must have been, he focuses now on the result. That’s where he was taught finger spelling, the first step in opening a new world of communication, and where he flourished as both a student and athlete. Most important, his teachers trained him to be a printer.

That made all the difference. His mom worked in the foundry at the Crouse-Hinds Electric Co., and when Bob returned to Syracuse as a young man, she soon helped him find a good job in the company print shop.

Mary and Bob Menotti, family photo from early in their marriage. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

He worked there for decades. He’s one of the last people in Syracuse who can remember Jefferson Burdick, the legendary Crouse-Hinds employee who’s considered the father of American baseball card collecting. Bob excelled at the work, and at home — behind Mary’s tutelage — he became adept at using American Sign Language.

The couple grew close to others in the Syracuse Deaf community. Bob took particular satisfaction in instructing deaf children at various sports — during our interview, he demonstrated how he’d show them how to bend their knees while teaching them to ski — and it’s only in the last seven or eight years that he’s allowed himself to take a breath.

His energy is remarkable: In appearance and disposition, he still looks and acts pretty much like he did at 65. He is a person of deep faith who for years made these beautiful wooden crosses out of clothespins, for people he loved. He is a man of moderation in most situations, unless you count putting ketchup on almost anything.

Sandy says Bob usually rises early, around 5:30 or 6 a.m. In the winters, he’ll immediately turn the heat up for Mary, who likes it warm, before he has a cup of coffee. Mary, too, is also long retired: As a young woman she did industrial sewing at a pocketbook factory, and later she made a few dollars at home by caring for neighborhood children.

In their long lives, the couple saw dramatic improvements in day-to-day circumstances for the Deaf community. When someone rings their doorbell, they know it because a light goes on in their house. They witnessed the advent of a video phone service, specifically for the Deaf, that allows them to sign with friends, face-to-face. They were especially delighted, Mary said, when closed captioning became easy to access on television.

Throughout our conversation, the one theme they kept repeating was gratitude. They offered thanks to their families, and their friends, and their teachers, and to Father Mathews and St. Lucy’s, though they dearly miss Sister Pat Bergan, a church legend who died last December.

A wooden cross, made from clothespins by Bob Menotti – a kind he often shares with people he loves. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

That sense of gratitude, always, circles back toward one another.

That love and and warmth were constants in our long interview. While the world in which Bob grew up could be a harsh place, every memory he shared with me involved humor and appreciation, which is exactly how everyone who knows the couple says is the way they approach each day.

I asked Bob how he manages, always, to summon up such kindness.

He smiled that get-ready-for-it smile. “It’s just a habit,” he replied. After 100 years, that’s hard to break.

Read more of Central Current’s coverage

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...