SCHENECTADY — Tony Cristello may not have been a star athlete in Schenectady’s schools, but he is leaving his mark in the district’s Hall of Fame.

Cristello, a 1961 graduate of what was then Mont Pleasant High School, has spent countless hours designing plaques for the inductees, painting the school’s gymnasium and creating signs for the players. His latest effort is a 6-by-8-foot painting of a young Pat Riley to coincide with his induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in September.

Tony Cristello has spent countless hours designing plaques for inductees in the Schenectady City School District's Athletic Hall of Fame, painting the school’s gymnasium and creating signs for the players.
Watch Video»

“When they dedicated the [Schenectady High School] gym, I had designed a sign outside the building. I thought we should always have something for him when you walked in,” Cristello said.

That project remained on the back burner for a decade. But when representatives from the NBA’s Miami Heat were to visit Schenectady on July 28 to shoot footage for a program about Riley, Cristello was spurred into action.

“I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but I only had a week to do it,” he said. “I worked day and night.”

He finished the painting at 11:30 the night before it was installed at 6 a.m. the next day.

Cristello is modest about his work.

“Everything I’ve done, I just do what we have to do,” he said.

Up to the task

Cristello started getting involved when his daughter was on the school volleyball team. Then, in 1997, then-interim athletics director Mary Ozarowski asked him to do some painting for the high school’s gymnasium in conjunction with its rededication to Riley.

Cristello had just painted a junior Patriots logo on the wall of the gym at the Woodlawn Elementary School, where his wife teaches. Cristello eagerly took on the task. He painted both a male and female Patriots logo to honor both genders.

“Here this guy is afraid of heights, and he’s doing all this work for us. It was quite an undertaking on his part,” Ozarowski said. “He just got up there and did it and added to the aesthetic value of Schenectady High School.”

Cristello recalled overcoming his fear.

“I’m holding onto the lift. I can’t hold a paint brush in my hand. I’m shaking like a leaf,” he said.

Ozarowski said Cristello never asked for anything, but instead took the initiative.

“You couldn’t ask for a nicer guy. He’s very humble,” she said.

Cristello then got more and more involved with Schenectady athletics and its Hall of Fame.

Cristello, 65, is a retired hairstylist. He has always enjoyed working with his hands, including woodworking. He took a few classes at the University at Albany, but is mostly self-taught.

Bob Pezzano, chairman of the Schenectady City School District Athletic Hall of Fame, said Cristello came up with the idea to create plaques similar to the ones at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. The plaques consist of a line drawing on bronze base with gold lettering.

Quiet but focused

Pezzano said Cristello’s contributions are invaluable.

“He always comes through when we need him. He puts in countless hours. The Pat Riley painting he did is just off the chart,” he said. “We went over and measured the area he was going to put it. Eight or nine days later, there it was.”

Cristello is very laid-back and quiet — but very focused. “We know whatever we ask or whatever idea he has, it’s just going to come back beautiful,” Pezzano said. “He’s just so talented, it’s unbelievable.”

Cristello deflected the praise and said without people like Pezzano, events like Schenectady’s Hall of Fame dinner would not happen.

Cristello also created portraits of the two Schenectady state championship basketball teams in 1998 and 2001 and the Schenectady Little League 1954 world championship team. He also designed collages of the Hall of Fame inductees using newspaper clippings and created a board outside the gym with the names of some of the famous athletes who have played on the court.

Craig Brown, who served as principal of Schenectady High School from 1994 to 2003 and is co-chairman of the Hall of Fame, mentioned the amount of time that Cristello has donated to the district.

“There’s nobody like him,” he said. “He’s got so many ideas that it’s hard to keep up with him sometimes.”

“I don’t know where he gets the time,” he added.

“I hope he never leaves us. I don’t know how we’d ever replace him,” he said.

Red and blue

Pezzano said Cristello exhibits pride in the district’s athletic achievements. He has helped bridge the old rivalries that existed between the former Linton and Mont Pleasant high schools. When they designed the trophy case, they made the wall behind the plaques red — Mont Pleasant’s old school colors — while the background is blue — Linton’s colors.

Even Cristello acknowledges the irony of his Riley painting.

“I went to Mont Pleasant. I never would believe that I would be doing a painting of someone that went to Linton High School,” he said.