John Poleon News Today

As 2020 nears its end, the journalists in our newsroom were asked to take part in a collective effort. The request: Select five pieces of work from this tumultuous and painful year that each of us found of particular meaning. On one level, it was impossible. The past 12 months, above all else, built into an ongoing torrent of civic sacrifice, loss and struggle. Beginning in March, much of my work has involved Western New York lives claimed or turned upside down by Covid-19. Those accounts were ...

If you want a sense of just how much the Buffalo Bills mean to Vaughn Washington, here you go. Washington survived a Covid-19 infection that brought him to the edge. It began with general weakness, with the absence of taste and smell. It quickly became so difficult to draw a breath that Washington asked his brother James for a ride to the hospital. For 24 days that began in August and ended in mid-September, Washington was a patient at Buffalo General Medical Center, where he spent more than tw...