Famous Faces of WNY
National Celebrities with Local Roots

By Carol Fisher Linn

     Buffalo born, Father Nelson Henry Baker (1842-1936) was a Catholic Monsignor in Lackawanna, New York, whom the Vatican has declared as venerable in 2011 by Pope Benedict XVI. After graduating from high school, Baker worked in his family grocery store on Batavia Street in Buffalo. Enlisting in the NYS Militia during the Civil war, his 74^th regiment participated in the Battle of Gettysburg. Returning home, he stated a successful grain and feed business. Around that time, in 1869, he joined the Our Lady of Angels Seminary. On a trip to Rome and a quick stop in Paris to tour The Basilica of Notre-Dame in 1874, he developed a lifelong devotion to Our Lady of Victory, a title for Mary. Ordained in 1876, he moved around with one place being a diocesan reform school for boys. The facility was in debt and he used all his personal fortune to help bail it out. Starting out in a parish deeply in debt, Nelson developed a national fundraising campaign that allowed him to build social institutions over the next 54 years that benefited the entire Western New York Region. A devotee of Mary, mother of Jesus, he constructed the Our Lady of Victory Basilica in Lackawanna. Baker founded the OLV Infant Home for unwed mothers and abandoned infants. In 1919, Baker opened Our Lady of Victory Maternity Hospital in Lackawanna. Baker by 1920 was ready to start construction of a shrine to Our Lady of Victory. In 1923, the Vatican honored him with the title of monsignor, an honor held by only five other priests in the United States at that time. In 1926, Our Lady of Victory Shrine was dedicated. Later that year, the pope named it as a minor basilica, the second one in the United States. The OLV institutions provided food, shelter and clothing during the Great Depression of 1929. He will always be remembered for his generosity of heart and pocketbook. (And for those who grew up in that era, the parental threat of being sent to Father Baker’s if we misbehaved!) Baker died in1936, in Lackawanna, at age 94. His remains are interred at the Our Lady of Victory Basilica in Lackawanna NY. A section of NYS Route 5 in Lackawanna was named for Nelson Baker as well as Father Baker Boulevard in Lackawanna.  

    Buffalo claims as its own Mason Winfield, the founder of New York’s original “supernatural tourism” company Haunted History Ghost Walks, Inc. in East Aurora. Winfield studied English and Classics at Denison University and earned a master’s degree at Boston College. In his 13 years as a teacher/department chair at The Gow School (South Wales, N.Y.), he won a 50K cross-country ski marathon and was ranked among the Buffalo area’s top ten tennis players. A specialist in upstate supernatural folklore and an award-winning fiction writer, Mason has written or edited 11 books, including the regional sensation Shadows of the Western Door (1997) and Iroquois Supernatural (Inner Traditions International/Bear & Company, 2011). A lecturer whose talks have been sponsored by Poets & Writers, New York Council for the Humanities, “The Big Read,” and the National Endowment for the Arts, Mason is also a spoken word artist who has appeared at City of Night, Buffalo; Rochester Fringe Festival; and Piccolo Spoletto Festival (Charleston, S.C.).

   Although Kimberly Pressler was not born in NYS (1977) this Air Force brat and her family spent her early childhood living the military life in Nevada, California and Germany before coming to Buffalo. Here she graduated from Ten Broeck Academy in Franklinville then continued her education at Pennsylvania’s Clarion University, finally working fulltime for the DOE at the nuclear facility in West Valley. In 1994 Ms. Pressler won the title of Miss New York Teen USA. In 1999 she was crowned Mis New York USA and then that same year, Miss USA. These days she is a sports reporter, businesswoman, and model. She currently works for FOX on Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) telecasts. Ms. Pressler has been featured in People Magazine, TIME, and voted one of Stuff Magazine‘s “101 Sexiest Women in the World.” Additionally, Pressler is also Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Dane Herron Industries, an award-winning, California-based company that specializes in the construction of dirt bike parks, skateparks, track building, event production and stunt coordinating, worldwide.

   Reuben Eaton Fenton (July 4, 1819 – August 25, 1885) was born near Frewsburg, in Chautauqua County and graduated from Fredonia Academy.  He was an American merchant and politician from New York. In the mid-19th century, he served as a U.S. Representative, a U.S. Senator, and as Governor of New York.