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Today Walter Dodge is 78 years old, still teaching and mentoring gymnastics students at Syracuse University.

Dodge’s love for gymnastics began in Philadelphia, in the eighth grade. All the guys on his track team were poll volters and gymnasts." It was simple, he saw kids older than him doing something that he had told himself he could also do. One day during track practice it began to rain and Dodge's teamates, went to the gymnastics practice room.

Ralph Minnifield never considered leather making his job.

He worked as a truck driver for pay and admired a sturdy leather backpack he once ordered from Jim DeWitt’s store on James Street in Syracuse. So when he retired in Syracuse from driving, he visited DeWitt — this time shopping for a leather-crafting mentor.

DeWitt is now one of Minnifield’s best friends.

“He taught me how to create and love what you are doing,” Minnifield said. “If there is anything he didn't know, he referred me to others who can help.”

Alfie Jacques, his black shirt freckled with wood chips and sawdust, tipped his workbench down from its side and examined a bent piece of wood.

“Every stick is unique,” Jacques said, eyeing the grain of this particular piece of Hickory. “There’s no two alike, even from the same tree.”

If you’re not from Central New York, you wouldn’t expect a discussion about colonoscopies on a top 40 radio station.

But if you are, you know that’s just an added bonus of listening to Ted & Amy.

Ted Long and Amy Robbins are the hosts Ted & Amy In The Morning, a daily radio show on the Syracuse radio station FM -93.1 (better known as “93Q”). The local community knows the two for their hilarious and heartfelt personalities.