By JOHN KEREZY, eyeoncleveland.com founder

CUYAHOGA FALLS, JAN 4 — It’s with great anticipation that I begin eyeoncleveland.com’s 12^th year of telling stories and sharing insights with fellow Northeast Ohio residents. I will be retiring from Cuyahoga Community College later this year, and will soon be devoting more time and resources to doing what I believe is my best destiny, teaching, storytelling, encouraging, and evangelizing.

I’m blessed.

Not every Stage 3 bladder cancer survivor gets a second lease on life. It was four years ago this month that I was diagnosed with cancer, and treatment began with an emergency surgery on January 21, 2021. My wife Kathy and I believe that God preserved my life, and my telling important stories through this web blog site is one of the reasons why He did so.

Apparently, a lot of others agree. Eyeoncleveland.com had more than 16,000 visitors in 2025, a record, but this number alone isn’t all that meaningful. When I receive a ‘thank you for sharing my story’ email from a person or a ministry leader whom we have profiled on the site, it’s another reminder about the importance of writing and sharing good news with others. Many media outlets have ignored that. I won’t, ever.

As I transition, the first eyeoncleveland.com story in 2026 will be about a woman who is a powerful and gifted storyteller and whose strengths include explaining transitions, Portia Booker. One of my former students, Portia faced a crisis in her own life about eight years ago. She overcame that, and today she’s one of the top podcasters in the United States. You’ll read about that here.

Another story you’ll see soon on our site is about Dr. Joe and Cindi Ferrini. Longtime Northeast Ohio ministry leaders and evangelizers for Christ’s kingdom, Joe and Cindi are also parents of three adult children and grandparents many times over. Their upcoming book from Moody Publishers, titled “The Special Needs Parent,”  provides advice and wisdom on how to care for a loved one with special needs. Watch for details later this month.

Also, GOOD LUCK to Eva Pate and Logan Bye, Team USA Ice Dancers, who’ll be competing in the 2026 Prevagen U.S. Figure Skating Championships this week. They’ll be skating on Thursday and Saturday in St. Louis, hoping to land a spot on the U.S. Olympic Team. Believe it or not, the 2026 Winter Olympics are only a month away.

Eva is from Strongsville. She’s also a former student. Here’s a recent eyeoncleveland.com story about them: https://eyeoncleveland.com/2025/12/06/coming-off-great-success-in-europe-olympic-hopefuls-eva-pate-and-logan-bye-aim-for-nationals-and-beyond/

If you want to see Eva & Logan and others competing at U.S. nationals this weekend, and you can’t make the drive to St. Louis, you can watch on NBC’s Peacock live stream. Here is a link with details: https://share.google/5aFR42Au4GccEOnGI

We celebrate the United States of America’s 250th anniversary this year. One of our nation’s most important documents is our Constitution. We might forget that its nickname is a “Bundle of Compromises” due to the great debates among the Constitution’s 55 framers on precisely how a United States government could function.

Article V of the Constitution is perhaps its least understood section. It provides for two methods to amend itself: One is through Congress, and one through the states which adopted the Constitution. It’s my belief that the second method is the only way whereby changes which a vast majority of Americans want – mainly term limits and a balanced federal budget – can take place. You’ll also see more about that soon.

Flashback: JANUARY 1776

The American colonies were vastly different from each other. Residents in New England colonies such as Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire made their living via trade and small farms. In the South, colonies such as Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina had wealthy landowners building large plantations and using slave labor to grow crops such as tobacco. In between, colonies such as New York and Pennsylvania had skilled tradesmen: blacksmiths, bricklayers, carpenters, and shoemakers, as well as merchants and mariners.

One thing they had in common: growing discontent with rule from Great Britain, 3,000 miles and an ocean away from America. But could they become unified in that opposition to England, then the most powerful nation on earth?

There was already warfare underway between the British Army and American colonists. General Henry Knox managed to move 58 heavy cannons, howitzers and mortars from the captured Fort Ticonderoga to General George Washington’s Continental Army, encamped  just outside British-occupied Boston. With the arrival of the large artillery pieces, the tide of war would soon turn. The British Army and Navy would evacuate Boston, never to return.

In Philadelphia, a relatively recent arrival to the New World, Thomas Paine, anonymously published a 47-page pamphlet titled “Common Sense; addressed to the inhabitants of America.” It sold an estimated 500,000 copies, meaning one in five Americans had purchased the pamphlet. “Common Sense” made the case for America forming a new, self-governing republic. It denounced King George III as being a monarchical tyrant, and provided the rationale to break away completely from Great Britain.

Eyeoncleveland.com will continue posting occasional historical look-backs to 1776 throughout 2026.

“If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.” – Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.