Reporter's Notebook 2023: The year in 5 great conversations

A reporter’s year is filled with conversations, some pleasant, some otherwise. I’ll remember 2023 for those times I showed up with a notebook and began asking questions of people who decided to trust me with their stories. Here’s a sampling of those conversations.

‘It was like a punch to the gut’

In June, my colleagues Steve Lieberman, Peter Carr and I went to Spring Valley’s Columbian Fire Engine Co. No. 1 on West Street. The firehouse has since been renamed the Jared C. Lloyd Firehouse for the 35-year-old firefighter who was killed in a massive 2021 fire at Evergreen Court Home for Adults.

Jared Lloyd was why we sat in a paneled upstairs meeting room ringed in trophies and plaques and photos, why we listened for more than an hour as five firefighters talked about duty, about Jared, and about what they saw as betrayal.

They had learned that Rockland DA Thomas Walsh would seek no trial in Jared’s death. Instead, he had arranged a plea bargain: Rabbis Nathaniel Sommer and his son, Aaron — whose blowtorch triggered the blaze — would plead guilty to second-degree manslaughter and reckless endangerment, pay $600 in court fees, but serve no time in jail.

The emotions in that room were raw, the outrage fresh.

John Kapral, a chaplain and life member of the Columbian company, talked about being in the courtroom on June 20, when County Court Judge Kevin Russo approved the plea that Walsh had ironed out.

"I was livid," he said. "I walked out of that courtroom and I go '$600 in court fees and probation.' To listen to them admit that they caused the fire that killed people and then nothing happened to them other than probation. It was maddening. It was like a punch to the gut."

Another moment from that conversation stays with me, a moment when words failed, when firefighter George Cich remembered being at the Evergreen Court fire and learning that his firefighter son, Eric, was being transported to Westchester Medical Center. He knew that meant Eric had suffered smoke damage or burns. Or both. The memory became too much.

"Here we go," he said softly, dabbing at his eyes and lowering his head.

READ THE FULL STORY: At Jared Lloyd's Spring Valley firehouse, a plea deal in his death hits hard

Semper Fi times 3

It was early October, with a hint of fall in the air when I showed up at Maureen and Dan Costello's Pearl River home to talk with their three sons — Danny, 24, Jimmy, 20, and Johnny, 18. Jimmy was stuck at Rockland Community College and sent his apologies, but on the Costello back deck, Danny and Johnny talked about the thing that unites the Costello boys.

Yes, they are the sons of an Orangetown detective sergeant and a theology teacher at Albertus Magnus. Yes, they're from the tight-knit Pearl River community. But what sets these Costellos apart is their decision to join the Marines.

Danny's a 2nd lieutenant. Jimmy's just been promoted to corporal. Johnny, fresh from boot camp on Parris Island, South Carolina, has moved on to infantry training at Camp Geiger, North Carolina, where he's a private.

They were answering their own call, they said, a call that had more to do with where they were raised, and by whom, than a family tradition.

"Pearl River is definitely a community of service and sacrifice, with a plethora of first responders living here, whether it's firefighters, police officers, EMS workers," Danny said. "I think we were just drawn to seeing the men and women in our community making sacrifices."

"I wasn't surprised," their detective father said. "They make their own good decisions. I'm proud of the decisions that they're making. Me and my wife are proud of them. Service to the country, I think that's important. If someone makes that decision, and they want to do it, we're 100% supportive of them."

Still, they said, there was no A-ha moment. It came with the Pearl River territory, with being raised in Rockland, they said.

"I don't think that there was ever a clear cut conversation or a moment in time where I was like, 'This is what I want to do,'" Danny says. "We just always grew up knowing we wanted to be helping people out. This was always a collective kind of thing."

READ THE FULL STORY: Brothers in arms: 3 Pearl River siblings, inspired by community, join Marines

A wounded rabbi at breakfast

Rabbi Howard Goldsmith of Congregation Emanu-El of Westchester didn't need the bagels and coffee served in a noisy gym at Iona University a week before Thanksgiving. He sought nourishment of another kind, a month after the horrific Oct. 7 attacks on Israelis and the war that had followed.

So he arrived at the 22nd American Jewish Committee Westchester/Fairfield Thanksgiving Diversity Breakfast on Nov. 16, and sat under the Latin words "Certa Bonum Certamen," which were translated on the opposite wall: "Fight the good fight."

Goldsmith craved something deeper, a salve for his aching heart. And he broke bread — well, bagels — with Hindus and Christians, Muslims and Jews, Democrats and Republicans.

“Like many in the Jewish community, I have felt under siege. I have felt attacked. I felt very alone," Goldsmith told me later. "And to come into this room with this incredible diversity of people with a wide range of opinions and views and everybody saying, ultimately, we stand together for humanity and for human dignity was so powerful. For the first time in a long time, I feel incredibly supported by my peers, by the community.”

He would go on to talk about the 23rd psalm, which speaks about "my cup overfloweth."

"Everybody knows that our cups are always filled with all of life, with the good things and the bad things, with the joys and sorrows, with the ways that make it easy to connect with people and the things that divide us," Goldsmith said. "And so on Thanksgiving, I lift that full cup and I say: ‘My life is not uni-dimensional. My life has a lot of texture, good and bad. Joy and sorrow, easy relationships and difficult ones. But I can lift the cup and I can drink deeply from it. And that helps to sustain me.'”

READ THE FULL STORY: Beyond hate: How lessons from a diversity breakfast can help your thorny conversations

A Metros moment

It had been a long road back for the Metro Awards, the high-school equivalent of Broadway's Tonys for theater kids from Rockland, Westchester, Putnam and Bergen counties. But after a three-year break, there they were on June 12 at the Tarrytown Music Hall, theater kids singing showtunes and celebrating the season just past.

Rye Neck's production of "Anastasia" had taken the top honor and, as the audience filed out to their waiting buses for the trip home, I spotted Talia Martelli from Rye Neck, who had wowed the crowd with a performance of "Land of Yesterday." She was breathless and excited, a live wire. We talked about the shock of the award, how she had dazzled when given the moment. And then she was off, soon to graduate and head to Fairfield University.

It reminded me, once again, of the power of live theater and the shared experience, how ephemeral theater is, and how important it is to mark moments like this.

READ THE FULL STORY: 6 Metros moments that linger

A Hogwarts for homicidalists

In April, I found myself in Cold Spring at the invitation of one of my favorite interview subjects: Tony-winning composer Rupert Holmes. But it wasn't a musical we met to discuss. It was murder.

More specifically, it was Holmes' latest novel, "Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide" (Avid Reader Press, $28), in which he has created the McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts, a secret college for killers, where each student's thesis involves planning their boss' demise, then executing their plan, and their boss.

One character calls it "a finishing school for finishing people off." The New York Times called it a bestseller.

Holmes will forever be known as the singer-songwriter who gave the world "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)," but he was twice honored with Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America. Two of his Broadway musicals — "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" (written when he lived in Tenafly, New Jersey) and "Curtains" (written when he lived in Scarsdale) — are whodunits.

Sitting in his sunroom with a sweeping Hudson view, Holmes laughed easily about the McMasters world he has created, one with rules to kill by. He was disarmingly charming, which is just what you'd suspect from a man who has spent years contemplating murder.

My favorite quote was this Holmesian killer continuum: "Everyone says, 'I could just kill him,' but we never do anything about it," Holmes said. "We also say, 'Gee, I wish I'd never met him.' Or 'My life would have been better if I'd never run into that person.' If you could go from 'I wish I'd never met them' to 'The world would have been better without them' to 'I wish they'd never been born,' you're not very far from saying 'I could just kill him' and then saying, 'I could just kill him.'"

READ THE FULL STORY: Tony-winner Rupert Holmes' new book creates Hogwarts for homicidalists

And one more ...

There was one interview I didn't get, for a story that will nonetheless stay with me.

It was about little Vaniya Velez, a girl whose father cradled her in his arms as he ran a gauntlet of fire on Nodine Hill in Yonkers 20 years ago. Vaniya lived, but five members of her family, including her dad, died that night.

I spent more than a year working that story, discovering that Vaniya, too, had died, her loss reflected in a single line in The Journal News: Yonkers – Velez, Vaniya, 12, died on 11/23/2014, arrangements by Sinatra Funeral Home.

I tried to interview Vaniya's aunt, Jasmin Velez, Vaniya's caretaker and the only member of her immediate family to survive. In a single text message in response to repeated interview requests, Jasmin proved herself to be a woman of faith, like her mother before her.

She wrote: “My life will never be the same. Life is hard for me. Every day is a struggle mentally. I’m thankful for God. Without Him in my life I wouldn’t know where I’ll be.”

I had approached the story wanting to tell the story of the girl who lived, but learned that the girl who lived was Jasmin, the woman with a broken heart.

READ THE FULL STORY: 20 years ago, a girl survived a deadly Yonkers fire. Her story has gone untold until now.

Reach Peter D. Kramer at pkramer@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Reporter Peter Kramer's 5 great conversations in 2023