VILLAGE OF MANLIUS – For as long as he can remember, there’s barely been a day when Paul Whorrall hasn’t been active from sunrise to sunset. But now that he’s retiring from being mayor of Manlius at the end of this month after a dozen years in the seat, he’ll finally have a bit more time to wind down and relax.
A lifelong resident of the village of Manlius, the 73-year-old has built up a vast knowledge of his community, becoming a reliable source for its history going back centuries and exact directions from street to street.
Raised on Elmbrook Drive in a neighborhood full of kids his age, he said it was easy enough to organize full rosters—and even a full bench—for impromptu basketball, football and baseball games.
In his younger days, Whorrall delivered newspapers, and for a number of years his mother Shirley was secretary to the high school principal and his father Burle was president of the local Little League.
The village had “just about everything you could ever need” back then according to Whorrall: the amusement complex Suburban Park, a candy shop, a TV and radio appliance place, a total of 10 gas stations, two lanes of traffic before there were four, and at one time a few different grocery stores, plus of course the cinema and Sno Top, which are standing strong to this day.
After graduating from Fayetteville-Manlius and playing soccer at another F-M, Fulton-Montgomery Community College, Whorrall transferred to Syracuse University, joining Manlius’ fire department in his last year there and later going through paramedic training and emergency room volunteering at Upstate Medical Center.
When he got out of school, he wanted to stick with the fire service and he didn’t want to leave the area, so he began a job working the window and sorting the mail at Manlius’ post office, where he would stay as a clerk for 33 years until retiring.
Through that same period of time, he went from being third to first assistant chief in the village’s fire department, eventually earning election to the chief position in 1978 at the age of 25 going on 26.
In 1993, after his first stint as fire chief, he ran to become a village trustee, serving until 2000, when he was appointed as Manlius’ paid fire and EMS administrator.
He also served as Onondaga County’s deputy fire coordinator for the entire eastern section, covering responses to fires in his home village of Manlius as well as Fayetteville, Minoa, East Syracuse, Jamesville, DeWitt and Chittenango.
“I had hats in a lot of different rings,” Whorrall said. “But I enjoyed it all, and I got a lot of experience. I always say I never looked back.”
In the early part of the 2000s, Whorrall went back in as fire chief until 2013, when, after some reluctance to run at first, he threw his hat in the mayor’s race at the urging of family members, friends and other local citizens.
He was voted in as mayor that year in a landslide victory, and he’s been in ever since.
Despite the whole swan situation of recent years, Whorrall said the abundance of Main Street revitalization in Manlius—from business frontage improvements to the refurbishing and filling of deteriorating or vacant buildings—has been one of the major accomplishments of his administration.
Another highlight he pointed to was the village’s joint effort this past year with the high school’s arts honors students, who painted traffic control boxes, made banners, put up the educational board by the swan pond, and did other artwork around Manlius.
As mayor, Whorrall has also sought to get the village’s businesses involved in events like Swan Fest and a storefront-decorating contest, and he oversaw the lowering of taxes by 20% from where they were two years ago.
To further spruce up the village, more decorations and tree lights lining the Village Centre have been put up for the annual Christmas parade, an ice skating rink has been put in, and playground equipment has been installed in Mill Run Park along with waterfalls, fountains and bench swings by the lower pond.
Those things, in addition to new businesses that have come into the village, have brought the village back to being the walkable, pleasant community Whorrall remembers growing up in and the type of place people want to move to, he said.
“We’ve just done a lot,” Whorrall said. “I know how this village was back in the day, and somehow we got too far away from that, and now we’re moving along and getting back to it. People can come here, they can park and walk to restaurants, they can go to the movie theater, or wherever they want to go.”
Though he’s stepping away from the mayor’s chair March 31, Whorrall intends to not leave any loose ends. He said he wants to have the village budget finalized by then and get other projects at least started, like the expansion of the village’s amphitheater to hold bigger concerts in the future.
Despite his departure from the seat, he’ll still be a member of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, a member of the New York Conference of Mayors public works training committee, and for at least another year vice president of the Onondaga County Mayors Association.
He added that he’s thankful for what he’s learned through those organizations from other mayors and fire chiefs not only locally but ones he’s met from other parts of the United States and around the world.
With 53 years in the fire service, Whorrall will also always be able to consider himself a life member of his village fire department, which he sees as a second family.
He intends to remain close with his office staff, his board members and the different department employees as well, all of whom he called “such great people” who were easy to work with even when day-to-day challenges weren’t so easy.
“We all get along real well, and we go out to dinner and have a ball,” Whorrall said. “That chemistry and support of each other is important, and I strive always to stand up for them and be behind them 100%.”
Though he says he’ll miss the role once he walks away, Whorrall said he’ll be reachable to give any guidance and that he hopes the people of the community were satisfied and happy with his 12 years as mayor of Manlius.
“I’m the type that whether I was the fire chief or the mayor or trustee, I always wanted to do what I felt was right for the community and to do my job to the best of my ability and to the level people expect of me,” Whorrall said.
He said what he wants now is to be able to spend more time watching his three grandchildren grow up.
He also seeks to more frequently visit his older daughter in the Finger Lakes region and his sons in Knoxville, Tennessee and Charleston, South Carolina, where Whorrall and his wife of 33 years, Kelly, have their winterhouse.
In the years to come, Whorrall said he might otherwise be found either at the Rogues Roost Golf Course in Bridgeport his wife owns, in Cheyenne, Wyoming for Frontier Days, at a New York Yankees game since his family’s full of diehard fans, or simply putting together photo albums tracking his life.
Considering his uncle Arkie Albanese was the mayor of Manlius before him and his other uncle Tom was police chief, not to mention the fact that all four of his kids graduated from F-M like he did, Whorrall said a connection to the village was always going to be part of his family but that his time as mayor made it that much stronger.
