Workers on Wednesday began to demolish the fire-ravaged South Buffalo home where Tim Russert lived long before he became the face of "Meet the Press."
Stories and nostalgia flowed from neighbors and other onlookers as the process began to raze the 2½-story house on Woodside Avenue.
"I was a little bit proud he lived on this street," said Dan Millick, who has lived on the street for 35 years. "I'm sorry to see the house go, but it must be in bad shape to take it down so quickly."
The interior and rear exterior of the house were damaged by a fire July 19. City inspectors subsequently deemed the property unsafe, officials said.
A Buffalo native, Russert was Washington bureau chief of NBC News and host of NBC's "Meet the Press" when he died in June 2008 of a heart attack while at work. He was 58. An unabashed Buffalo booster, Russert often ended "Meet the Press" with the words "Go, Bills!"
Russert referenced the Woodside home in a January 2000 article in The Buffalo News in advance of his work moderating the Democratic presidential primary debate that year between Bill Bradley and Al Gore.
"This all began in 1955 at 174 Woodside Ave.," he said of his journalism career.
"It was one mile to Holy Family School. No cafeteria. I walked to school and home for lunch. It was four miles a day, sometimes against the wind. That is hard. Everything since has been easy."
Peggy Krasowski said she once sold Girl Scout cookies to Russert when she was a youngster and he was high school or early college age. Since 1990, she has lived next door to his former home.
A Japanese maple tree in her backyard was damaged when part of the roof from the Russert home fell into her backyard. Firefighters picked the debris off her tree, which stood about two stories high, and pulled it back over the fence into the yard of the burnt out building, she said.
Also, the half of the tree that was burned from the fire had to be cut off, Krasowski said, but she's counting her blessings.
"It could have been so much worse," she said.
Two commemorative green and white signs that were unveiled two months after Russert died to designate Woodside as Tim Russert Way will remain, said Oswaldo Mestre, director of the Division of City Services for Buffalo. One is located at Woodside and McKinley Parkway. The other is at Woodside and South Park avenues.
"The house is gone, but at the end of the day, he still lived on this street. He still walked the block. He still played on this street.
He still walked to school on this street," said Mestre, who was among the onlookers along with Christopher Scanlon, Common Council member from the South District.
"He was a great Buffalonian, and it's sad to see the house has come to this, but obviously, the safety of neighbors comes first," Scanlon said.
Marge Ryan was among several neighbors hoping the signs would remain. She is the president of South Buffalo Live, a group that established Tim Russert's Children's Garden on South Park Avenue in 2002.
A wood carving of the late television newsman was placed in the garden in 2009.
"When people come to the garden and see his statue, they want to know where he lived," Ryan said. "The signs will tell them that.'
