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Click here to read about more couplesPreservation Partners
They've been instrumental in saving some of Buffalo's most priceless landmarks.
By Glenn Gramigna
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Finally, at one Common Council meeting at which the repaving was supposed to be quietly pushed through, Preservation Coalition Executive Director Tim Tielman jumped up and declared that his group would , “… do the job ourselves,” a promise few politicians on the scene thought he could possibly keep.
Yet, when the time came to pitch in and start digging, over 300 volunteers showed up, finishing the job—despite sweltering conditions—in three and a half days.
How did Tielman and his preservationist compadres pull it off? Besides the undoubted power of the local preservation movement, much of the credit would appear to belong to the unique and magical enthusiasm cocktail created by the amazing personal relationship between Tielman and his long time wife and soulmate, Sue McCartney.
“That was a good example of how we work together and also of how we live together,” recalls McCartney, the Director of Buff State’s Small Business Development Center. “We tend to complement each other perfectly. I wasn’t at all sure that we could do it at first, while Tim was totally confident from the start. Once we got started, I was the organizer and he was the communicator, getting out press releases and appearing in the media.
“We were working together, but we argued all the time about strategy and tactics. Plus we each had our own areas of responsibility, which is important because both of us like to be totally in charge. So we made sure that when the big day came, he controlled giving out the shovels and masks and stuff and I was the official greeter. Above all, we both worked like mad to get it done … We have a very close relationship but really, we’re nothing like Ozzie and Harriet. True, our goals were always the same but we have our different ways of doing things … Fortunately, in this case, all the creative tension produced a good result.”
“I think one of our great strengths is that we are devoted to causes that are much bigger than ourselves,” Tielman adds. “That was one of the things that first brought us together and it’s something that definitely keeps us strong to this day. People who don’t have things like this in common would probably end up driving each other crazy.”
The two first met, appropriately enough, at a 1984 meeting at the Museum of Science to discuss the future of Martin Luther King Park. She was impressed by how forcefully he spoke. Several months later they ran into each other again while biking in LaSalle Park. From there a romance blossomed that led to living together and marriage, not to mention two children. Max now 14 and Anna, 11.
It was a love affair yes, but also a menage a trois, with the city serving as the third party object of their mutual embrace. McCartney had come to love Buffalo as a native who had earned both an art history degree and an MBA at UB before becoming a stockbroker and then joining the SBDC, first as Assistant Director also in 1984.
Tielman had come to embrace the wonders of Buffalo through a much more circuitous route as the son of Dutch and Indonesian immigrants who fought to come back here after his family returned to Rotterdam. After serving as a Walden Books manager and the evil genius behind Sharp Comics, he became ED of the Preservation Coalition in 1997.
“We’re not just interested in the community, we’re obsessed with it,” McCartney admits. “We are both really thrilled to be living in a city with such wonderful architecture and such an incredible housing stock. We love living in the city, within walking distance of Kleinhans and our jobs. So close to everything, including cultural attractions and our many friends.
We practically live at Spot Coffee and there are always friends and neighbors at our house. It’s a passion that we both share, one that really strengthens our relationship.”
Still, their disparities as well as their similarities remain important factors in their lives. They do clean the house together—but never the same part of it at the same time. They of course pursue preservation goals together from H. H. Richardson’s State Hospital to the stained glass windows of St. Mary’s—but always leading separate regiments in any attack they choose to mount.
“We do definitely have our differences and sometimes when we’re arguing over tactics in the heat of battle the language can definitely get a little pointed,” McCartney explains. “Sometimes I think he lingers over press releases or statements too long to make them perfect when he should just get them out. He thinks that I’m too nice to people who drop over when a firm adios would work better. If anything being able to acknowledge the fact that we are different in some ways makes us even stronger.”
Aside from a shared passion to save every architectural treasure and cultural artifact they can find, their greatest strength as a couple seems to be their boundless mutual enthusiasm, even in the face of overwhelming odds and bleak statistical prospects.
She works to develop small businesses at Buff State with an optimism that makes Santa look like a whiner though she knows eighty percent of her pet projects will bite the dust within five years. He labors full time as a preservationist in a city in which the constant desperate struggle for survival, not aesthetic distinction, is the order of the day.
“I feel sorry for couples whose capacity for enthusiasm isn’t similar,” says McCartney. “When we drive through the countryside, most people would look around and just see scenery. Tim looks around and sees the greatest little hot dog stand in the world carved out of a tree trunk and will get all excited about taking a picture of it. It’s just the way we are. We don’t get discouraged. We just keep going.”
Tielman, who has recently left the Preservation Coalition to become Director of the newly formed Campaign for Buffalo History, Architecture, and Culture (McCartney will be Board President), carries his enthusiasm to his new mission: “I heard that once someone asked the late Senator Paul Wellstone why he would want to endure the stress of another campaign. He said, ‘I love the stress. I live for it!’ … That’s the way we feel. We love the stress of trying to do things for the city despite the disappointments, and we love each other. We have a lot of fun together but we also get the job done.”
Glenn Gramigna writes for various local and national publications.
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