\t\t\t![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Mission-to-Rebuild-After-Hurricane-Katrina_RD_Nicest_Places_EF_2026_Collage_Dkedit_01.jpg\")
Emiko Franzen For Reader’s Digest (8)
Clockwise from top left: Liverpool First Presbyterian Church; a free book-exchange box outside a residence; Heid\u2019s of Liverpool; feeding the geese at Onondaga Lake; columbine flowers at the Liverpool Public Library; sign greeting incoming drivers from the New York State Thruway; Operation Northern Comfort breaks down a ramp; playground at Onondaga Lake Park.<\/p>\n
To get the best out of a crawfish, you need to work for it: You have to twist and pull to separate the tail from the head, push the meat from the tail with your thumb, then go back and suck the flavor from the head. But getting the best out of Liverpool, New York, isn\u2019t nearly the same squeeze.<\/p>\n
The village, only a square mile in size and 2,600 strong in population, fits right in neighboring Syracuse\u2019s pocket. Despite its small scale, both charity and volunteerism<\/a> pour from Liverpool at a disproportionate rate, making it a lily pad and vital leaping-off point for the entire region. The westerly side of town is almost entirely modest homes on shady, tree-lined streets; the easterly side is Onondaga Lake Park and small businesses with punny names (e.g., a yarn store called Knitty Gritty, a hair salon called Dead Ends).<\/p>\n The neon filament that lights the sky at Heid\u2019s of Liverpool, a legendary hot dog restaurant that draws crowds from miles around, serves as Liverpool\u2019s informal welcome sign. American High, an indie film studio, moved into the old A.V. Zogg Middle School in 2017, borrowing the classrooms and Liverpool\u2019s all-American good looks for the teen movies it produces.<\/p>\n \u201cMany of the suburbs of Syracuse are just that\u2014a sprawl of homes,\u201d says Rick Pelotte, project manager for Operation Northern Comfort, an area nonprofit born in Liverpool. \u201cBut Liverpool has a stronger identity.\u201d One of the biggest parties of the year for the village is an annual crawfish festival, when Liverpool\u2019s Operation Northern Comfort borrows Syracuse\u2019s bustling Clinton Square to host more than 6,000 attendees from all over central New York.<\/p>\n But that idyllic small-town vibe is only part of what makes Liverpool an amazing place. It also has a rich history of service that stretches back more than two decades, and its residents show up for one another in tangible, heartwarming ways. Read on to find out what makes this tiny town tick and why it earned the title of Reader\u2019s Digest\u2019s Nicest Place in America<\/a> for 2026.<\/p>\n Get\u00a0Reader\u2019s Digest\u2019s\u00a0Read Up newsletter<\/a> for more of the Nicest Places in America, heartwarming stories, fun facts, humor, cleaning, travel and tech all week long.\u00a0<\/p>\n Inside Operation Northern Comfort<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t always called Operation Northern Comfort. When it was founded in 2005 by the late Norm \u201cMr. Liverpool\u201d Andrzejewski, it was Operation Southern Comfort, an organization that sent central New Yorkers to Louisiana by the busload to help rebuild after Hurricane Katrina<\/a>. Cisco Gonzales Jr. was 11 when Operation Southern Comfort helped rebuild his church in Louisiana and raise a family member\u2019s house after the storm. He remembers the volunteers bringing supplies, extra hands, meals, and even donated tubas, trumpets and snare drums for local school bands. But more importantly, \u201cthey just brought hope,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n For six years, the organization made routine trips to Louisiana, equipping a class of thousands of volunteers with new building and construction knowledge. It rebranded in 2012 as Operation Northern Comfort, ready to put its volunteers\u2019 new skills to work at home, but not without taking a bit of Louisiana with it in the crawfish festival. Today, Operation Northern Comfort primarily builds ramps and lifts that give area residents with accessibility challenges the freedom to leave the house. (\u201cPeople think there\u2019s a government agency or something that you can call, but there isn\u2019t,\u201d says Laurel Flanagan, CEO of Operation Northern Comfort.) But if you can dream it, they can build it: bookshelves, desks, even DJ tables.<\/p>\n The festival, always the first Saturday in May (crawfish are no good any later), took place this year in unseasonably brisk weather, but the steam kept volunteer crawfish cooks warm as they stood over the boil. Blistering red mudbugs swirled around the pot with onions, garlic and lemon, plus a healthy serving of celery to soak up some of the Cajun spice that dyes the broth orange. Youth volunteers washed baskets of live crawfish\u2014shrieking if one clung to their shirt\u2014to replenish the stock.<\/p>\n More volunteers appeared with sport fishing nets slung over their shoulders to scoop cooked mudbugs from the boil and deliver them to a preparation station. Boxes of crawfish packed with corn and potatoes disappeared from the pickup table, toted around by merry attendees as they danced to live music and snapped photos with the crawfish mascot.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t know it was a fundraiser for, like, a year,\u201d says Flanagan, a festival attendee turned volunteer before she became CEO. Gonzales, now 32, flies up for the festival every year, often staying in the homes of old pals in Liverpool and showing attendees how to peel crawfish. \u201cI always laugh, because if you ask my dad, he says, \u2018You go there every year just to drink and have fun,\u2019\u200a\u201d says Gonzales, \u201cand I\u2019m like, \u2018Yeah, that\u2019s exactly what I do.\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n Every cent of the $40,000 raised by this year\u2019s event will be poured directly back into the town and its neighbors. Festival revenue is the source of nearly all the money that Operation Northern Comfort raises each year, powering the 57 projects it completed in 2025. But Operation Northern Comfort is just one piston in Liverpool\u2019s charitable engine.<\/p>\n \u201cI nominated Liverpool because there are so many things that end up in our news of individuals who spend their time, their effort, to help other people<\/a>,\u201d says Liverpool resident Susan Edmonds, who herself volunteers at both the Humane Society and the airport military courtesy room. \u201cIf you think an individual doesn\u2019t make a difference, boy that\u2019s wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n An individual difference<\/p>\n Ralph Rotella moved to Liverpool from Syracuse 31\u00a0years ago, after having arrived in the country in 1970. The village offers a bit of space between him and the city, and more room for a garden. Around the back of his house, you\u2019ll find the tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchinis he tends with any free time he can eke out. On the doorstep, there\u2019s a good chance you\u2019ll find a garbage bag full of shoes.<\/p>\n Rotella is a cobbler, a trade that the Italian immigrant inherited from his uncle, along with his shop, Discount Shoe Repair in downtown Syracuse. Every year, the Liverpool resident gives away thousands of refurbished shoes to the Syracuse Rescue Mission so they can find the feet of someone who needs them.<\/p>\n Donations come in all forms (boots, sneakers, dress shoes, loafers), sometimes by the bag, sometimes a pair at a time. Occasionally, someone will buy and donate a new pair of shoes<\/a> just to support the cobbler\u2019s cause and save him the work of fixing heels, replacing laces or restoring soles. \u201cThe first year, I was so excited\u2014we got 35 pairs. After the third year, a few hundred pairs. Now, every day, you see how many we got,\u201d Rotella says, gesturing at the shoe-filled trash bags in his shop\u2019s entryway. \u201cThat pile is only a week old. We almost got 500 pairs.\u201d<\/p>\n Every day, at least a few people drop by the shop to add to the mountain of shoes\u2014and some drop them off at Rotella\u2019s doorstep in Liverpool. The Rescue Mission makes a pickup every three weeks so Discount Shoe Repair won\u2019t get totally overrun. \u201cI could never do it by myself,\u201d says Rotella of the thousands of donors who make it possible. \u201cThanks to you guys and thanks to me, we do a good deed.\u201d<\/p>\n Last December, when the Rescue Mission backed its truck up to Discount Shoe Repair\u2019s doors for the final pickup of the year, the shoe drive made a new one-year record of more than 45,000 pairs. It\u2019s always a celebration, complete with roasting chestnuts and jaunty Italian music, but this was a special milestone\u2014300,000 pairs collected since Rotella started the drive in 2011.<\/p>\n \u201cI reached my goal, but I\u2019m still going to do it no matter what,\u201d he says. \u201cAs long as my hands work and I can walk and dance, we\u2019ll do it. I\u2019ve been in Liverpool since 1995, and anyplace I go, in the grocery store or Home Depot, they say, \u2018Ralph, I got some shoes for you. Can I bring them down?\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf the doors are open, you are welcome here\u201d The Rev. Bruce Gowe hasn\u2019t lived in Liver\u00adpool for nearly as long as Rotella, but it didn\u2019t take long for the village to reveal itself to him. He moved to Liverpool about two years ago, when he started his ministry at St. Matthew\u2019s Episcopal Church, a simple redbrick building on Liverpool\u2019s outskirts near the highway that borders the village on the opposite side from Onondaga Lake.<\/p>\n Lots of the offerings in the region appeal to Gowe: hiking the Finger Lakes, the boisterous festival seasons, a community that cares for nature. He\u2019s among the younger priests that staff the area\u2019s 22 churches of varying denominations, and the first openly gay one at St. Matthew\u2019s. The congregation, and Liverpool, embraced him with ease, an openness that he sees extending well beyond himself.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a sense of community and safety; you can thrive here,\u201d says Gowe. \u201cThere\u2019s that sense of being a large city, but there\u2019s also the small-town America feel too.\u201d Last August, Gowe noticed a woman using one of the church\u2019s outdoor outlets to charge her phone in the parking lot. He\u2019d seen her once before, pushing a shopping cart a bit up the road, and realized she must be homeless and had likely set up camp in the woods behind St. Matthew\u2019s. Gowe didn\u2019t mind\u2014he said hello and told her that any time the church doors are open, she\u2019s welcome to come inside.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Scripture says you never know when you\u2019re hosting angels,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n In time, a few members of the congregation built a rapport with the woman, until she eventually felt comfortable resting in the shade of the entryway and coming inside for a cup of coffee. St. Matthew\u2019s supports local food pantries and also runs its own, and a care team began regularly preparing a special basket to help her get through the week<\/a>. There\u2019s a shower in the church building\u2014they asked if she would like to come in and use it? One churchgoer offered to take the occasional load of laundry home for her, until another found a donated washer and dryer to install at the church. By fall, she was donning a Halloween mask for the trunk-or-treat event.<\/p>\n Gowe decided to contact In My Father\u2019s Kitchen, a nonprofit in Syracuse offering direct street outreach to people experiencing homelessness, after hearing about it from another parish. Upon meeting the woman, co-founder John Tumino realized he\u2019d met her before and had been trying to get her into housing for months before she disappeared to Liverpool. Today, she\u2019s in an apartment in \u00adSyracuse thanks to Tumino\u2014and the relationships she built in Liverpool. \u201cBeing part of the community<\/a> \u00adallowed her to make those steps forward of \u2018Maybe I do need help, and maybe there are folks who are safe enough for me to take that step,\u2019\u200a\u201d says Gowe. \u201cI don\u2019t think this would happen at other places\u2014certainly at other places in Liverpool, but not necessarily other places in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n What makes a village \u201cIn a time where everyone is looking straight ahead and just taking care of themselves, it\u2019s nice to know that if I get in trouble, I can knock next door and there\u2019s someone there that\u2019ll open the door and smile,\u201d says Liverpool resident Simone McCarthy. \u201cAnd that\u2019s what Liverpool is.\u201d Or, as 31-year-old Kenyan immigrant Raiss Muya puts it, \u201cWhat makes Liverpool, Liverpool, is the people<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Muya is the \u201csomeone next door\u201d McCarthy was referring to\u2014he has been her neighbor since he was 17. His kids call her Grandma, just as he used to, and spend hot summer days swimming in her above-ground pool. His parents have since gone back to Kenya and his siblings have moved out of state, but he took over the family home, unable to imagine life away from the village that welcomed him.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce we got here, everyone around just helped us out. We told ourselves, \u2018This is the place to be,\u2019\u200a\u201d recalls Muya. \u201cThey had their hands open for us.\u201d<\/p>\n So when a blizzard demolished the fence between his and McCarthy\u2019s properties a few winters back, leaving her recessed driveway exposed to snow that would drift in and be impossible to clear, she barely had to ask before Muya opened his own hand.<\/p>\n He dug up the old fence, which was buried beneath mounds of snow and ice, and tethered the panels to the posts with wire as a temporary fix until spring. A few months later, McCar\u00adthy\u2019s landlord ponied up for the supplies, and Muya, a handyman, built a 6-foot cedar fence to block the following years\u2019 snowfall. He worked in the evenings, after long days of fixing up other people\u2019s homes, with the help of his young daughters, who did more wrestling with the shovel than digging post holes but held the level and fetched water for him.<\/p>\n \u201cShe helped us with everything. There\u2019s no reason why I should say no or even think about it, you know?\u201d says Muya. McCarthy often stops over with cookies and extra meals for the Muyas when she cooks too much. (\u201cThe best place to store food is in your neighbor\u2019s stomach,\u201d she\u2019ll tell you.) To this day, she brings home groceries, dry goods and halal chicken, from the CNY Blessing Box, a food pantry in Syracuse where she volunteers. Not because they asked, but because, she says, \u201cIt\u2019s the right thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf you have new neighbors in your town, go see what they\u2019re about,\u201d says Muya. \u201cThey\u2019ll surprise you\u2014because Simone definitely surprised us.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t have to go out and save the world,\u201d says McCarthy. \u201cJust save your block.\u201d<\/p>\n Block by block Stacy Finney, Liverpool\u2019s mayor and a public school art teacher, doesn\u2019t think most people in town realize how special the place is. She remembers a friend passing through on his way to Chicago, and the way he marveled at their kids and other townsfolk, blissful and carefree at Onondaga Lake Park.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was like, \u2018Look at them thinking this is totally normal.\u2019 And it was true, you know, they do,\u201d she says. \u201cThey genuinely think that this is normal.\u201d<\/p>\n They were biking that day along Onondaga Lake, on whose shores the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca people once brokered peace, making it a sacred space to be respected. Decades of industrial dumping at the turn of the 20th century rendered Onondaga one of the most polluted lakes in the country, but tremendous effort has made it fishable again, and birders flock to photograph the eagle\u2019s nest near the Sk\u00e4\u2022no\u00f1h Great Law of Peace Center.<\/p>\n \u201cI do think there\u2019s a spirit of volunteerism<\/a> in Liverpool,\u201d Finney continues. \u201cBecause people love the area they live in, they want to enhance it. You\u2019ve got to love where you live, and invest your time where you live.\u201d<\/p>\n Why trust us<\/p>\n For more than 100 years, Reader\u2019s Digest has been known for its heartwarming true stories and focus on community. In 2017, we launched the Nicest Places in America, an annual contest that honors kind, inspiring people making a difference in their hometowns. Readers send in nominations, and Reader\u2019s Digest\u2019s editorial team vets the entries and whittles them down with the help of a panel of judges. This year, the judges included Today\u2019s Al Roker, Tuesdays with Morrie author Mitch Albom, author and podcast host M\u00f3nica Guzm\u00e1n, StoryCorps CEO Sandra Clark, Today co-anchor Craig Melvin, and Molly Irani, the co-founder of Chai Pani Restaurant Group in Asheville, NC, which was 2025\u2019s Nicest Place in America. We are committed to producing high-quality content by writers with expertise and experience in their field in consultation with relevant, qualified experts. Read more about our team<\/a>, our contributors and our editorial policies<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emiko Franzen For Reader’s Digest (8)Clockwise from top left: Liverpool First Presbyterian Church; a free book-exchange box outside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,55,54,13256,56],"class_list":["post-356765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-not-set","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"About](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Mission-to-Rebuild-After-Hurricane-Katrina_RebeccaFlanagan_US261041_CrawfishFest_DKedit_02.jpg\")
REBECCA FLANAGAN (2)
About 28,000 pounds of live crawfish were FedExed up from the Louisiana Gulf.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Mission-to-Rebuild-After-Hurricane-Katrina_RD_Nicest_Places_EF_2026_Collage_Dkedit_03-1.jpg\")
Emiko Franzen For Reader’s Digest (2)
A ramp installation for a neighbor who is losing her sight (top); Operation Northern Comfort CEO Laurel Flanagan (below).<\/p>\n![\"Nominator](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Mission-to-Rebuild-After-Hurricane-Katrina_RD_Nicest_Places_EF_2026_Sue_Edmonds_Nominator-1.jpg\")
Emiko Franzen For Reader’s Digest
Nominator Susan Edmonds at the military courtesy room where she volunteers.<\/p>\n![\"Cobbler](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Mission-to-Rebuild-After-Hurricane-Katrina_RD_Nicest_Places_EF_2026_Ralph_Rotella_Shoes_DKedit_04.jp.jpeg\")
Emiko Franzen For Reader’s Digest (2)
Cobbler and Liverpool resident Ralph Rotella has repaired more than 300,000 pairs of shoes to give away to the needy.<\/p>\n
\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Mission-to-Rebuild-After-Hurricane-Katrina_RD_Nicest_Places_EF_2026_Rev_Bruce_Gowe-1.jpg\")
Emiko Franzen For Reader’s Digest
The Rev. Bruce Gowe\u2019s small hello opened the door to a life-changing experience.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Mission-to-Rebuild-After-Hurricane-Katrina_RD_Nicest_Places_EF_2026_Ltpost_Liverpool_England-1.jpg\")
Emiko Franzen For Reader’s Digest
The lamppost at Gleason Mansion was gifted by the British Liverpool in memory of Americans who died in World War II.<\/p>\n
\n![\"In](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Mission-to-Rebuild-After-Hurricane-Katrina_RD_Nicest_Places_EF_2026_Raiss_Simone_Fence-1.jpg\")
Emiko Franzen For Reader’s Digest
In the case of Raiss Muya\u2019s family and Simone McCarthy, it\u2019s the good neighbors who make the good fences.<\/p>\n
\n![\"Onondaga](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Mission-to-Rebuild-After-Hurricane-Katrina_RD_Nicest_Places_EF_2026_Couple_Lake_Sunset-1.jpg\")
Emiko Franzen For Reader’s Digest
Onondaga Lake Park is called The Central Park of Central New York.<\/p>\n