From the Buffalo News:
What’s left today of A Festival of Lights is mostly wistful memories.
Jimmy Cancemi remembers late nights spent building intricate winter scenes and fantasy landscapes in the months leading up to the annual event.
Elaine Meranto recalls organizing hundreds of volunteers who worked shifts guiding tourists and manning animated displays.
And Mildred Wiseman has memories of people’s eyes widening when they saw the moving trains and twinkling lights that brightened the city from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day for two decades.
But the whimsical displays and colorful lights are gone — sold through public auction and on eBay in 2003 to repay debts owed by the private nonprofit that ran the event. So when Meranto decided that the city needed an exhibit to remember the long-running festival, she turned to friends to scrounge up whatever they still had.