Volunteers, a few years ago, at the Jim Gifford peace cleanup in Elmwood. Credit: Sean Kirst | Central Current

A hard Syracuse memory that I will always equate with early autumn:

Thirteen years ago, on a Saturday morning in September, I made a quick drive to Green Hills Farms to bring home some lunch for my family. I was on the way back to our house when I noticed how the police and many other emergency responders had taped off the parking lot of what was then a 7-Eleven — another of our regular coffee stops — at the busy three-way crossroads of South Avenue, Glenwood Avenue and Valley Drive.

That intersection is at the heart of the old Elmwood commercial district, maybe a half-mile from where we live. I was working at the time as a columnist for Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard. I dropped off the food at our home, and then went back. The late Nick Sakran, who ran the now-closed Valley One Hour Cleaners, was sitting in a lawn chair on the sidewalk, as he often did, watching the day-to-day rhythms of his neighborhood.

On this day that meant yellow tape, and flashing lights.

I knew Sakran. He had handled our cleaning, for years. He told me how a familiar guy everyone loved around Elmwood — a guy Sakran described as a daily presence in many South Avenue businesses — had been attacked and killed as he walked out of the 7-Eleven, carrying a newspaper and a few groceries in a bag, shortly after 6 a.m.

His name was Jim Gifford. I quickly learned Gifford was an extraordinary human being, whose powerful legacy leads to this invitation:

At 8:30 a.m. on Saturday morning (Oct. 3) — and you are absolutely welcome to join us — we’ll gather in his honor as we do every autumn, at Glenwood, South and Valley. We will spend a couple of hours doing a peace cleanup in Elmwood in Gifford’s memory, an effort dedicated to those lost or wounded by violence in every neighborhood across the city.

A side note: We will provide garbage bags and litter tongs. What we can always particularly use are more trimmers, to bring down tall weeds.

The late Jim Gifford, at the old Elmwood Presbyterian Church. Credit: Courtesy Rev. Dianne Radak

We will get started 90 minutes before the city parks department hosts the annual Marketplace Mile on the nearby Creekwalk, so this is a chance to double up and support the neighborhood in two ways. The thesis is simple. Gifford — and everything his life represents — matters more than ever in his city, going forward.

Police would soon learn how Gifford was attacked and beaten by a teenager who had been drinking and taking drugs throughout the night. The attack was random, utterly without motive. The assailant was riding around the city with other young men who, as court testimony established, had held the door for Gifford and showed him casual kindness minutes before their companion launched the utterly unprovoked assault.

The madness of the crime was amplified by this truth: Gifford, at 70, embodied and lived out the ideals that are the the bedrock for success and vitality in any city neighborhood. He was retired from a long career at the Van Duyn Home and Hospital, where he delivered interdepartmental mail and was well-loved by his colleagues.

He had lived in his Elmwood flat for 30 years. For decades, he would often walk to work. In the same way, his daily routines were built around walking to the 7-Eleven, or the old and dearly missed Pizzazz Pizza, or to the now-closed Elmwood post office, or to the old Elmwood Presbyterian Church, where he worshipped. Neighbors said he was the kind of guy who would mow his lawn and then do the same thing for people who lived nearby.

The Elmwood commercial district, mid-20th century. Credit: Courtesy Onondaga Historical Association

This is the life that ended in a few minutes of violence in a parking lot, early in the morning.

His world was Elmwood, a neighborhood of staggering potential. It serves as a busy connector between the Valley, the South Side and nearby Strathmore. It is a main conduit for commuter traffic to Onondaga Hill. It is home to an eclectic mix of housing — consider the bungalows of Eloise Terrace, or the skyline vistas from Parkview Avenue — and is adjacent to the exquisitely beautiful Elmwood Park and its renovated and historic mill, which ought to be put to some wonderful use (for instance: what a coffee shop that place could be).

As for the main Elmwood commercial district, it used to have a branch library and a post office and an elementary school and so many varied businesses that retirees who grew up nearby tell me they could do their childhood Christmas shopping there. It was the kind of neighborhood business strip cities desperately need, but much of what it was — though not everything — has shut down over the years.

The Elmwood commercial strip, 2026. Credit: Sean Kirst | Central Current

Jim Gifford — in the way he found everything he needed in Elmwood — was a living representation of what the neighborhood could be. The hard fact that you can now find several impromptu sidewalk memorials to other city residents killed on nearby streets speaks powerfully to the heart and soul of so much lost.

I have no answers, but I do know this: We live in a time when people are desperate for convenient and affordable and decent housing, when vehicle costs — not to mention gasoline — are sky high. Here is Elmwood: With its bungalows and two-story wood frames, it is a short bus ride or a five-minute bicycle trip along Creekwalk from the towers of downtown.

It seems as if a civic laser focus of love, imagination and investment could transform that little district from a symbol of loss and abandonment into the kind of busy crossroads that would strengthen the neighborhoods around it, a walkable and vibrant example of what a city ought to be…

Elmwood Park, in late autumn. Credit: Sean Kirst | Central Current

In exactly the manner Jim Gifford showed us, with every minute of his life.

If you want to honor that kind of legacy, please join us Saturday morning, in Elmwood.

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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...