Christmas story you should not miss

Rockefeller Christmas tree is from Queensbury and it never looked better

By Ken Tingley

I’ve been talking a lot about newspapers and the challenges of doing community journalism over the past few months.

It’s the subject of “The Last American Newspaper.” As I’ve talked to groups around the region, I’ve tried to remind newspaper readers of the importance of the work, the importance of telling the narrative of a community story and the people who live it.

When the Greenwich Lions Club asked me to speak after their dinner last week, I looked for something that might connect to their community.

Twenty-six years ago, a simple Christmas card led to a column that still resonates with me today. It is included it in my collection of columns - “The Last American Editor.” It is a reminder of what we all should be grateful for at Christmas time.

One family’s very Merry Christmas

December 24, 1996

GREENWICH - It was another stack of Christmas cards on the dining room table.

You know the drill.

Rip open the envelope, read the first couple of verses of “Tis the season...” and “Wishing you and yours...,” skip to the bottom to see who signed it and do a quick mental inventory on whether you remembered to send them a card, too.

But this card was different.

This has been a wonderful year for me. I’ve had many opportunities to spend with my wife and children working on our farm, riding our horses and playing with our dogs. I’ve had the opportunity to teach my 16-year-old son, Leslie, to drive and share his joy in having his license. But my greatest satisfaction has been to watch him run and laugh and work and eat. To watch him live.”

This was no ordinary Christmas card.

It was from Steve Wright, a Glens Falls stock broker who had sold some stock for me last year. He eventually helped me out with a column I did last Christmas on buying sports stocks as Christmas gifts.

He had spoken then of his son and trying to get him interested in his business with the stock market.

I remembered that now.

I remembered that very deeply.

Last year he was diagnosed with bone cancer and began a year-long course of chemotherapy which was completed this June. Several weeks ago, he underwent a series of tests which showed no cancer present. There is no greater gift than that to me.

So here I was Monday night winding my way through some backroad somewhere outside Greenwich as I tried to follow the tail lights of Steve Wright’s car. It was the first day of my vacation. I should have been home with my wife and 10-month-old son having dinner. That Christmas card changed that.

Steve and Michele Wright live on a modest 35-acre farm with their 16-year-old son Les and 15-year-old daughter Alex. They have some horses, some cows, some other livestock, too.

This time of year, at night, you can see the house from a good half-mile off in the little ravine below the road with Christmas lights hung from the eaves in celebration of the holidays.

Inside, their three dogs greet you at the back door and you can hear laughter from the next room.

The old farmhouse is a work in progress and Michelle is the first to admit that house work isn’t one of her major priorities. There are other things more important in life, she tells you.

She is an expert on that.

It was at the end of February in 1995 when the Wrights first took their son to the doctor with pain in his left hip.

The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong.

The pain got worse, but the doctors still couldn’t find anything wrong.

By Memorial Day weekend, the Wrights had decided to take their son to Boston to get answers they weren’t getting locally. But Les’ pain was so bad, they took him to the hospital in Bennington, Vt., out of desperation.

The X-rays of Les’ hip showed the left side of his pelvis had almost entirely disappeared. The right side was full of holes.

“It was like Swiss cheese,” Michelle said.

The Wrights were told their son had cancer.

“You could see the desperation on the faces of the nurses and doctors at the Bennington hospital,” Michele said. “There’s no worse fear for a parent.”

Steve spent that long night in the Bennington hospital with is son. “I thought he was dying right there before my eyes,” Steve said.

Les was transferred to Massachusetts General in Boston the next day where he was diagnosed with lymphoma of the bone, a very rare form of cancer. It was only the third case the Boston hospital had ever seen in a child.

After the bone biopsy, the Wrights were given the news.

The doctors came in and said, `Leslie, you’re a winner. You have a cancer we can treat,’” Michelle said.

It was the beginning of a year-long chemotherapy treatment. Every three weeks, Michele and Less would travel the four hours to Boston for treatments.

The treatments made him sick.

He lost his hair.

He had to spend time in a wheelchair.

“Once we found out there was a treatment, we figured we could get through anything,” Steve said.

Les continued to get better.

The pelvis that had been eaten away by the cancer began to grow back.

In June, he was declared cancer free.

“You feel like you’ve been given a gift more precious than when you got him the first time,” Michele said. “Life is great.”

“A lot of people don’t get the second chance,” Steve said. “There were a lot of people on the ward where we were who didn’t get that chance.”

This past fall Les ran cross country for Greenwich varsity.

He was up on his horse again too, practicing team roping - his first love - with his Dad and he plans on entering his first rodeo in the coming months.

“I really think we got a miracle,” Michele said. “It came out of nowhere. We certainly weren’t expecting it.”

Each Christmas, Steve sends all his clients a Christmas card like hundreds of other people in business. But Steve always tried to personalize his. This year he went further than that, he had a message.

“I just wanted to let everyone know the good news,” Steve said.

Ken,

Where ever you be or what ever you  may be doing, I hope that this letter finds you and yours well and enjoying a pleasant holiday season. It is my wish for you that your year be filled with the simple but profound joys of life. I wish you all the best.

Steve Wright.

I stopped what I was doing.

I thought about my own little boy sleeping in the next room.

What greater gift indeed.

P.S.

By 2021, Steve Wright was still giving me financial advice, although he was now semi-retired.

To take his mind off the cancer, Steve and Michelle had Les do research on colleges. Les stumbled on Texas A & M, drawn as much by its rodeo team as its engineering program. He graduated from Texas A & M with an engineering degree and eventually made his way back to upstate New York. By January 2021, he was closing in on his 40th birthday, working as a civil engineer in Rutland, Vermont, married with a three-year-old daughter while being cancer free.

The entire Wright family continues to compete in rodeos across the region and Steve and Les have competed many times in team roping.

Merry Christmas.

The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in New York City is from Queensbury. It has never looked better.

Queensbury tree

It was hard to believe we had not visited New York City in three years. That’s what a pandemic will do to your travel.

We were surprised by some of the changes.

When we arrived at Penn Station in the middle of the construction project last time, everything looked mostly the same. This time, we arrived in the new Moynihan Train Hall. It was as nice a train station as you are going to see.

We decided to take a cab to the theater and ran into a gridlock on 8th Avenue unlike anything I’ve ever seen. What seemed to have changed was that many of the crosstown streets had been reduced to one lane with so many restaurants adding outdoor sidewalk cafes.

The highlight of course was the visit to Rockefeller Center to see the Queensbury tree. Obviously, it is the greatest Christmas tree I have ever seen at Rockefeller Center. I can’t imagine anything more beautiful.

Merry Christmas

During the past year, the number of subscriptions to “The Front Page” has more than doubled. Writing my column three times a week continues to be a great joy in my life even as I balance it with my book projects.

Thanks to all of you who continue to read my words, comment on the columns and provide you support for my books. Please share the work with all your friends and neighbors.

It was also great to be able to talk my former colleague Will Doolittle into writing his column again. I think our community will be better because of that.

Finally, I hope each and every one of you has a wonderful holiday. Please continue to support your local newspaper. A gift subscription is a great present for those who do not have one.