“What we lost in the fire, we find in the ashes” is an old saying that means there is something to be found and treasured on the other side of even the worst of catastrophes. Such has been the case for the city of Buffalo and for its most recently elected city Councilwoman Zeneta B. Everhart. Both are emerging from proverbial ashes as the community marks the third anniversary since a racially motivated mass shooting.

Everhart’s son, Zaire Goodman, was one of the few surviving victims of the tragedy that unfolded at Tops Friendly Markets on Jefferson Avenue in Buffalo’s mostly Black Masten District on May 14th, 2022. Goodman was a Tops employee.

But Everhart’s road to her present day circumstance started long before that.

Everhart graduated from Canisius College with a bachelor’s degree in communications. She worked for six years in her dream job as a producer for the local Spectrum News affiliate. She never imagined herself in politics. 

“I’m a background person, all my jobs have been in the background,” she said.

You wouldn’t know it but to this day, being the center of attention still makes her gut wrenchingly nervous. 

After she’d been working at Spectrum six years, a colleague floated her name to state Sen. Tim Kennedy of New York’s 63rd district. He was looking for a liaison between his office and the Buffalo Black community. She says of their meeting, “Listening to Tim, hearing his passion for this work, it sold me, right? But it really was his understanding that it couldn’t be him.” 

She was taken aback by his racial humility. 

“A lot of our white political leaders, they like to be the savior. He wasn’t looking to be the savior” she said. “He wanted to be a partner.” 

In 2017, Everhart jumped in with both feet and worked for the senator for seven years.

Then came that horrible day.

May 14, 2022, started out like any other unassuming Saturday. It was an unusually beautiful day for Buffalo, a city known for being just as likely to have beach weather or a foot of snow in the spring. Everhart and her son live just a few blocks from the supermarket, so Goodman walked to work that day. Everhart was shopping at B.J.’s Wholesale in the suburbs when her son’s name rang through her phone’s caller ID. Expecting nothing out of the ordinary, she answered with her usual whimsical, “Hey kid, what’s up?”

On the other end Goodman was screaming hysterically, barely able to get the words out: “Mom, mom, mom…”

Everhart recalled that moment. “My whole body just froze up,” she said. “I knew that something really bad had happened.” 

Goodman went on, “Mom, get here now! I got shot!” 

Everhart left her shopping cart in the middle of the aisle and darted through the front doors to her car, all the while keeping Goodman on the phone.

Goodman was working the parking lot at Tops that afternoon, helping 77-year-old Pearl Young take her cart of groceries to her car. He was wearing headphones and absorbed in his music when Payton Gendron, a white 18-year-old man armed with an assault rifle, parked in that same lot and shot two people, including Pearl Young. Goodman turned his head and the shooter, right in front of him, let loose a bullet that ripped through Goodman’s neck. Goodman was lifted off the ground to safety by coworkers while the gunman went into the supermarket and shot more people, killing 10 altogether and injuring three, the majority of them Black. 

Goodman was placed safely in an ambulance across the street. He was still on the phone with his mother, who heard nothing but screaming, sirens, and chaos on the other end. An EMT took Goodman’s phone and told her not to come to the site, but to meet them at the county hospital. Just as she was turning into the hospital parking lot, the call, her only lifeline to her son, abruptly dropped.

“I lost it at that point,” Everhart said, having no idea what she would find. “I remember asking the universe to spare my baby.”

In the hospital, police escorted Everhart to a quiet room. Between the dropped call and the lack of forthcoming information, she could only assume the absolute worst.

“I was like I’m going to go into this quiet room and wait for them to tell me my son is gone.” 

Everhart sat on the floor in a corner, inconsolable, for what felt like days.

Finally, hospital staff took her to see her son. She described the scene as a frightening mess. There was blood on the floor, on the sheets, in Goodman’s hair, everywhere. Amid the chaos, he raised his head, looked at his mother and facetiously quipped, “Ma, I knew you’d be a mess.” 

The bullet went through Goodman’s neck and came out of his back, sparing any significant arteries or vital organs. It was an exploding bullet, so there is remaining shrapnel in his body that he will have to contend with for the rest of his life. Miraculously, Goodman was able to go home with his mother six hours later.

At this point in the retelling, Everhart needed to take a breath and get recentered. She is taken back to that time and the entire nightmarish roller coaster of emotion and feeling.

The next day Everhart saw a newspaper headline that read something to the effect of, “Son of staffer of New York state senator shot in mass shooting.” 

Before this, people had been telling her for years she should run for the Buffalo Common Council but she had no real interest. With this event, the tide had changed. She said that headline told her, “That means that people see me, and … I have to use my voice.” 

June found Everhart in Washington, D.C., testifying in front of Congress about the mass shooting. She told lawmakers, “No citizen needs an AR15. These weapons are designed to do the most harm in the least amount of time.”

She told Congress members that if her testimony did not move them to act on gun laws, “I invite you to my home to help me clean Zaire’s wounds so that you may see up close the damage that has been caused to my son and to my community.”

Everhart returned to the nation’s capital a few weeks later to participate in a lobbying effort to pass the Safer Communities Act. She and her delegation met with New York Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, Both Democrats, members of the office of then U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and others.

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act closes loopholes on background checks, funds mental health and violence prevention initiatives, and increases domestic violence provisions on gun purchases. The measure passed both chambers of Congress and was signed into law by President Joe Biden on June 25, 2022. Having a solid political win under her belt and “getting the real work done” resolved her to step into politics., she said.

At that time, the sitting Common Council representative for the Masten District had already announced his intention not to seek reelection, leaving the road wide open for Everhart. In the November 2023 election, Everhart won by a landslide with 90.8% of the vote, defeating fellow Democrat Murray Holman.

As the first anniversary of the shooting approached, Everhart didn’t want to throw a party, say a prayer, and send everyone home. The shooting brought up a lot of conversations about what was lacking in the Masten District, such as easy access to mental health resources, more supermarket options, and activities for children. 

Everhart wanted to do something impactful based on the community feedback she was hearing. Out of that was born the Buffalo Black Caucus, which celebrated its third year this past Saturday. It is an all day event with morning sessions to choose from, lunch, and afternoon sessions. This year participants had access to Black lawyers, the district’s police chief, experts on managing debt and building wealth, Black journalists, and interfaith clerics. There was even a separate track for kids focused on public speaking, youth leadership and activism, and of course games and snacks.

A year and a half into her first term, now that she’s gotten her feet wet so to speak, is Everhart entertaining bigger political ambitions?

“Do you know people ask me this all the time? And I just think to myself, like, I’ve been here for five minutes. I have no idea.” 

For now, she says she is “dug into being a council person. I’m in it, I love it,” and she’ll have this seat on the Common Council for as long as her constituents want her to have it — although she holds a firm belief in knowing when it’s time to leave.

“I’m not one of those people that’s like, ‘This is my seat, I own it, nobody ever can run against me, nobody can have it.’ My thing is, I am here to inspire my replacement …. I want somebody to come behind me and be like, ‘Look, I saw what she did, she did good, I want to do better.’ “ 

For now, she said, Masten District constituent concerns keep her plenty busy.

“I ain’t goin’ nowhere,” she said.