Miriam Fife sits next to a portrait of her son 12-year-old Raymond Fife who was fatally beaten and sexually assaulted 35 years ago on Sept. 10, 1985.

CORTLAND — Raymond Fife has been gone 35 years, but the stories of a joke-cracking, lovable, sometimes mischievous 12-year-old live on in the minds and hearts of his grief-stricken siblings and mother.

Miriam Fife, now 80, and her four children, Michael Fife and wife Debe of Howland, Yvonne Landis of Bristolville, Regina Manson of Pennsylvania and Paula Lazzari met last week on the back patio of Lazzari’s Cortland home to share some stories of the boy’s short life.

Fife’s brutal murder on the southwest side of Warren in September 1985 galvanized as well as sent shock waves throughout the community.

“It seems like yesterday,” said Debe Fife, who joined the family the same year Raymond was killed in 1985. “I can’t believe it has been that long ago.”

All the siblings except Lazzari were adults when Raymond died.

“It was a different time,” said Debe’s husband Mike, who has a son a year younger than Raymond. “You didn’t have to worry about your kids riding their bikes in the neighborhood.”

The impact of Raymond’s murder was most immediate and devastating for Mike’s son and Lazzari, who was just two years older than Raymond.

“I couldn’t deliver my newspaper route on a bicycle anymore. I had to be driven around it,” she said in recalling that Raymond was riding his bicycle on the secluded wooded paths when he was attacked. “I couldn’t go to school for the rest of the nine weeks. My parents got me a tutor.”

At the time, Mike and Debe Fife said they tried their best to shelter him from the gruesome details, but said their son kept up with the case in the news.

“I feel he hasn’t been the same since then,” Debe Fife said about Raymond’s nephew.

RECOLLECTIONS

Instead of dwelling on the passing of this milestone, the family shared some laughs and recollections about the 12 years they had Raymond. They all had one word to describe the boy: “ornery.”

Miriam Fife said Raymond could not be called a role model of the classroom because he had a habit of speaking out of turn.

“It wasn’t anything bad, but he just could not resist a wise crack or two in the classroom. Raymond told me he probably set a record for getting 43 cracks while in the third grade,” Miriam said, talking about the now-forbidden practice of corporal punishment.

“I remember talking to his teacher, Mrs. (Ernestine) Brogdon, saying he should have received 143, but she had always tried to stifle a smile because of how funny Raymond was.”

The family members all agreed that the boy loved baseball, animals, camping and sitting around the dinner table taking his time eating. And he loved practical jokes, they all said.

Paula noted that one Halloween, she convinced Raymond to dress up as a pregnant lady.

“It was the whole works, lipstick, big earrings,” she laughed.

Raymond also made meals an adventure, the family recalled.

“We had to make sure we had to clean our plates, that was the rule, before leaving the table, but Raymond often had trouble doing that,” Mike Fife said — noting he sometimes fed food to the dog or hid it under the microwave. “When he was young, he used to fall asleep in his high chair.”

The family remembered Raymond even took his time eating his favorite dish of chicken and dumplings.

“I could image my mother in heaven not letting him get away with anything, but still cooking his favorite dump dumps,” Miriam said with a laugh.

His sisters remember the little snickers Raymond would emit after pulling one of his practical jokes, while Paula said he had the “best freckles” and talked about the “cute cowlicks” in his hair.

Miriam remembered his fair complexion would make Raymond burn easily in the sun.

“He could wear three T-shirts and still burn,” she said.

His hobbies included baseball, camping and especially fishing. Sister Yvonne remembered one painful experience on the water.

“He had one of those fancy lures and on one of his casts, he caught me deep in my shoulder sending me to the emergency room,” she said.

Older sister Regina recalled riding her young brother in a basket on West Market Street and losing the toddler.

“He just popped out, and the first thing he said was, ‘do it again,'” she said laughing.

PERFORMER

Mike Fife recalled that his younger brother was “a little bit of a performer,” and Paula recalled one day when she passed by the door of Raymond’s bedroom and heard the sounds of the old vinyl record player belting out tunes from Michael Jackson’s hit 1980s album “Thriller.”

“Raymond loved Michael Jackson and that day he was doing a really good singing impression of him, and I snuck up on him and scared him,” Paula said.

The family took a few moments at the end of the conversation to wonder what career Raymond would have ventured into if he had lived to be an adult. Some said his love of animals would have him working at a kennel, others said his knack of captivating people would have made him an entertainer or a salesman.

But perhaps Miriam had the best answer.

“He would have been a clown,” she said with a laugh.