Love of Lyons history: Forgione’s lifelong love of Lyons leads to major donation

LYONS — When Lynne Forgione Sculli’s parents moved from their Layton Street home to assisted-living facilities a few years ago, Sculli hastily gathered up photos, books and maps that her father had collected all his life and stowed them in a storage unit she rented in town.

Nicholas “Buck” Forgione, 90, died in 2019 at the Canandaigua VA facility. His wife, Cecelia “Sis” Forgione, 91, died in the Wayne County Nursing Home this past November.

Earlier this summer, Sculli figured that it was time to go through the unit and see exactly what her father, who lived in Lyons all his life except for the time he fought in Korea and earned a Purple Heart, had squirreled away all these years.

What she found was astounding:

• Boxes and boxes of photographs of the Erie Canal being built in 1918, pictures of the New York Central rail yard on Franklin Street where Forgione’s father, Antonio, worked; even pictures of women at their sewing machines in the glove factory in the early part of the 20th century.

• There was a picture of the trolley that ran from Rochester to Syracuse, as it was going down Canal Street. The last time the trolley ran was in the 1930s.

• There were copies of the Lyons Republican, the precursor to the Wayne County Star, street directories, Wayne County atlases, pictures of buildings long gone, but significant in Lyons history, and trade cards from dozens and dozens of businesses that had thrived in a vigorous downtown that boasted all kinds of stores.

“Dad did say that on Friday nights, the farmers used to come in for dinner,” Sculli said. “It was a hopping town.”

What to do with all of this history? Sculli immediately thought of her sister-in-law, Patricia Sculli Alena, the Lyons Peppermint Museum director, who was in Florida at the time.

“She called me and she said she had all of this stuff, and could she put it in my garage?” Alena said. “When we came back, there were boxes and boxes. I saw them and I thought, ‘Eureka! Oh, my goodness,’” Alena said. “I now call it a treasure trove, and I am overjoyed with the donation.”

What Sculli gave her, and what Buck Forgione collected, excited Alena, who also had grown up in Lyons.

“What you gave me is astonishing,” she told Sculli. “It’s all going to be saved.”

It was a town that Forgione clearly loved.

A Southsider, where many of the village’s Italian families lived, Forgione obviously felt a strong affinity and sense of ownership of the community. He was a high school sports hero, a war hero, and when he returned, a civic leader. He was a village police officer, a town justice, and a member of the Lyons Board of Education.

“Buck was a very good friend of my father’s,” Alena said. “They served on the school board and played ball together.”

The huge collection given to the museum contained photos rarely seen, such as the intersection of Montezuma and Geneva streets before Taylor Park was built. Also in the collection are directories of names of families who lived in Lyons and what they did for a living. There was even a Wayne County map, circa 1858, the same one that hangs in the H.G. Hotchkiss Peppermint Museum. Alena said that there are photographs that she’d never seen before, and books that are essential to the history of Lyons.

Sculli said she’s not sure exactly where her father got a good deal of what is in the collection. She recalled that her brother, Nicholas Forgione Jr., would go with her father to flea markets all over the area.

“He told Nicky, ‘Buy anything you find that’s connected to Lyons,’ so I think that’s where a lot of it came from,” Sculli said.

He talked about the items with either Sculli or her two sisters infrequently, but managed to do meticulous research on many of the photos. They have his neat handwriting on the back, noting what the picture was, when it was taken — even the names of the people in some of them.

There is a photo of the first Lyons girls basketball team from 1896, as well as large amount of other local sports photographs. Alena has lent some of the sports photos to her husband, David, for use by the Lyons Sports Hall of Fame. She believes they are going to use some of these photos at the Hall of Fame banquet as part of their slide presentation in the November induction ceremony.

All of the items are going to be stored in a new, temperature-controlled room on the second floor of the museum. Alena said the timing of the construction could not be better because most of what Forgione had is paper and it needs to be preserved.

Each item that Sculli donated will be catalogued and entered into a database so that future researchers can access them. The items themselves will be numbered and tagged and put into archival boxes, then stored in the new room.

Alena said that longtime Lyons Heritage Society member Annette Harris, curator of the museum, will oversee this task. Along with Harris, Sandy Wetmore and new member Diane Marquis will be working on the accessioning process.

“We’ve already used some of the atlases,” Alena said, showing off a display on the first floor. “I had a visitor come in recently who asked permission to look up his town boundaries. He got down on the floor with one and was looking through it.”

She said she wasn’t too surprised that Forgione would have some items because he would often stop into the museum or call her up to talk about some of the things he had, and to ask questions, but Alena said she never realized the extent of the collection until Sculli made the donation.

“There’s just a wealth of information here,” she said.

Some of the other items discovered include:

• A photo of an airplane thought to be the first to land in Lyons on Aug. 20, 1911.

• A photo of four mounted police officers of 1917.

• A photo of the Lyons baseball team as Wayne County champions in the 1913-14 season.

• An inside view of the mailbag factory on the corner of Montezuma and Geneva streets, and many photos of the trains and railroad station and downtown shops with their owners.

“The photo of the glove factory became very personal to me as my mother had mentioned working there at one time,” Alena said. “I plan to use many of these for new exhibits in our museum’s Lyons Room.”

Forgione also amassed quite a collection of clocks. Sculli donated one; family members have kept the others.

Alena said she will share some of the artifacts that pertain to other historical societies, like those in Newark, Clyde, Wolcott and Palmyra.

“When I find donated artifacts that signal another historical society, I feel the need to share with them,” Alena said.

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