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

Jodi Hoffman Walshvelo met Bob Menotti about 14 years ago. She and her husband Randy, both living at the time in Liverpool, took a wintertime drive with their young sons to Song Mountain. They hoped the boys, Dylan and Lamar, might learn to ski.

The guy who made all the difference, Walshvelo told me, was Bob Menotti.

Walshvelo and her husband, like Menotti, are both deaf. One of their sons was born deaf while the other has hearing. Within the Deaf community, Menotti was a legendary children’s ski instructor. Thanks to him, as Walshvelo recalled when we exchanged messages, her sons found the courage at a young age to go downhill.

At that time, Menotti was 86 — and still going strong on the slopes.

“Bob had a great heart,” wrote Walshvelo, now of Brockport. “He will be missed by the community.”

Menotti died last week, at 100, after what his niece, Sandy Scalise, described as a brief illness. His calling hours are at 10 a.m. Friday — June 5 — at St. Lucy’s Church on Gifford Street, Menotti’s longtime parish, followed by a funeral Mass at 11 a.m. The community is welcome.

He was a Syracuse giant, a beloved figure and a pioneering leader of the Central New York Deaf community. News of his passing ignited dozens of tributes on the Facebook page of the Syracuse Deaf Club, including one written by Walshvelo — among the many countless moms and dads, over the years, who watched with appreciation at Song or Toggenburg as Menotti patiently taught children born deaf or hard of hearing how to ski.

Bob Menotti, as he often did, uses his hand and fingers to create the sign for “I love you” just before he turned 100 last year. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

As Rev. Jim Mathews, pastor of St. Lucy’s, told me for a column I wrote last summer when Menotti turned 100:

“Bob Menotti,” Mathews said, “is a beautiful ray of sunshine.”

Menotti met his wife Mary when he was playing high school basketball for the Rochester School for the Deaf. In the early 1950s, his team traveled to play a squad from what was then called the Rome State School for the Deaf, where Mary was a student. They met, began dating and became inseparable. They would be married for 72 years, together for almost 75.

With Scalise translating, Mary told me this week from her North Syracuse home that her overwhelming feeling after Menotti’s death is gratitude for everything he brought to her life, reaffirming the relentless joy with which the couple chose to embrace each day, despite all obstacles. That was certainly the emotion they projected when they walked into any room, and part of the reason they became so beloved in Syracuse.

While the Menottis never had children, their collective impact was vast and covered many generations — particularly since they both placed such emphasis on teaching and encouraging girls and boys. Scalise sent me Menotti’s family obituary, which offered this synopsis of his life:

Bob was a member of St. Lucy’s for over 40 years, serving as both an usher and Eucharistic minister. He was very active in the Syracuse area Deaf community and was particularly proud of the time he spent teaching the young people of that community. He warmly greeted everyone he met and never ever missed an opportunity to teach new acquaintances a sign or two along with his signature handshake.

Robert was an avid sportsman and through his life he had many sports adventures. He was a lifeguard in Old Forge and Sylvan beach. He played both baseball and basketball and golf and… was a very good skier. He taught the deaf children to ski at Toggenburg and Song for many years and retired from that position when he was 90 years old.

He worked as a printer at the Crouse Hinds company for 44 years and retired at age 64. Since then, Bob has been spreading his charm, Iove and much |oy to all who have had the fortune to know him.

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

A few short addendums about Bob’s life: He was born in Ogdensburg in 1925, though his family soon moved to the North Side of Syracuse. Almost nothing in life in that era was made easier or more accessible for a deaf child: He attended Percy Hughes School, where friends say he was forbidden to even communicate by sign, until he finally left at 12 to attend the Rochester School for the Deaf — meaning he had to move away, as a little boy, from the parents and siblings he loved.

Yet he thrived. He was a terrific athlete and a strong student. He came home to find a job in the print shop at the old Crouse-Hinds Electric Corp. — his mother worked in the foundry there for years — and he might have been the last person alive to remember working with Jefferson Burdick, the Crouse-Hinds employee who is considered to be the father of American baseball card collecting.

Even as Bob reached 100, he and Mary declined to use social media unless absolutely necessary, not out of fear at new technology — to the day he died, Bob was always curious about new things — but because they preferred to avoid the “meanness” they found there. In conversation, Menotti always emphasized the good fortune in his life, choosing to push through any setbacks or cruelties he endured.

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

A few days ago, I reached out to Andrew Marcum, an historian and academic director of disability studies at the City University of New York. I sent along my column from last year and told him of Menotti’s death — and how Menotti always downplayed the many cultural challenges he faced. This was Marcum’s response:

Hi Sean, I’m sorry about the loss of your friend. My condolences. As you noted in the column you shared, during their lives, the Monettis witnessed many significant and historic improvements for people with disabilities generally and the Deaf community specifically; including the advent of closed captioning, video phones, the rights protections of the ADA, and a much broader embrace of ASL and Deaf (capital D) culture that re-framed deaf and hard-of-hearing from a deficit to an aspect of human diversity with a rich history and culture.

But the lesson I draw as a scholar of disability history is that Bob’s life was one lived fully in community with others. It is true that people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing must navigate a world stacked against them. But Bob drew strength and resilience not from an isolated experience of individualistic perseverance but from a supportive family and from his deaf neighbors, deaf classmates, deaf congregates at his church, members of the sports leagues he participated in, and his deaf wife who helped him master ASL which he then to taught to others in his community.

It is this community and his contributions to, and full participation in it, that gave his life purpose and structure and allowed him to support, love, and inspire others and be loved and supported in return. When people are isolated and excluded from community, this can’t happen and we get, instead, the “meanness” of an internet-dominated culture that he and Mary consciously rejected in favor of deeper connections with the world and people around them.

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

The right to live in and contribute to one’s community is central to struggles for disability access and inclusion. Bob’s life is a moving example of how access to community, inclusion, and acceptance can break down barriers around disability and make full lives possible for people regardless of their differences from the majority or their access and functional needs.

Marcum is a distinguished historian. His take on the magnitude of Menotti’s life carries great weight and becomes a lasting tribute. But I will reserve the final words of this column for Menotti’s widow Mary, and how she responded when I asked — through Scalise — if there are memories that she’s found especially powerful, in the days since Bob died:

Over the phone, I could hear Mary say out loud in summary, as she signed her thoughts in greater detail: “Work together. Be happy together. Share together. Everything.”

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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...