The Buffalo Bills Invade London

The Buffalo Bills are my team.  They were one of the original AFL teams  The American Football league was formed in 1960 by owners in cities who were rejected by the NFL. The AFL completely merged with the NFL and became one league in 1970.  The Bills were AFL Champions in 1964 and 1965.  In 1966, they lost the Championship game (to Kansas City) which would have sent them to Super Bowl I.

My parents had season tickets to the games right from the beginning. When I was little my father brought me to see the Bills  practice at their training camps.  It was so much fun.  

At one point, they changed  their training camp to a hotel and workout facility behind our restaurant.  At the time, we had a restaurant which had a counter and was also a takeout place for subs, milkshakes, sandwiches and burgers.

All of the players would come in  after practices and games for food. My mom put up a dog house above the jukebox.   After every game  my mom  would pick the player who had the worst game and put his name in the dog house. All of the players would come to the restaurant the day after the game to see who is in the dog house. (Pete Gogolak, the kicker and punter was a frequent resident.)

My mom's favorite story was when she put Jack Kemp in the dog house., Jack was one of the the star quarterbacks in the league. .The other players went and told him he was in the dog house.  He came over to see it and sadly said, "Who put me in the doghouse?"   Mom said she hid in the back room while he was there. She was afraid to come out!

My dad knew many of the players. We were personal friends with the trainer, Eddie Abramoski (Abe) and his family. Also with a couple of the players  who used to come over to our house with their families. But most of them were patrons of our restaurants through the years as we grew into our  large Italian restaurant. The restaurant was known as Francesco's.

Regardless of which restaurant we had, we  often provided food for the front office or the team during training camp or for special occasions.  My dad used to go to the stadium, which was only 2 miles from where we lived,  and play racquetball with several of the players including (the now disgraced) OJ Simpson, and other players whose  names you may not recognize.  

When my dad passed away on Memorial Day weekend in 1992  it was heartwarming when about  50% of the team including their coach, Marv Levy and Quarterback Jim Kelly, both of whom are now in the NFL Hall of Fame,  came to the wake to pay their respects. Mom always loved telling the story of when dad invited the team to our house for a picnic.  I think she had a bit of selective memory because she'd tell how much she  had to feed them but I'm pretty sure the food came from the restaurant.

Dad never saw them have  their last Super Bowl season.  He would have loved watching them go 12-4 making their place in history...the only team ever to have made the Super Bowl in four consecutive years.  A record which still stands today.

The helmet you see in the photo is signed by Jim Kelly.  I keep it in a special display case.  I took the glass cover off to take the picture (and almost dropped it).  I'll wait for help to put it together again.

I am a super fan of the Buffalo Bills. I have lived in three states and in each of them my license plate on my car has been BFLOFAN.  After all, you can take the girl out of Buffalo but you can't take the Buffalo out of the girl!

Just a note about Jack Kemp.  After retiring from football, he entered politics and was elected as our Congressman.  He later introduced the country to something called "supply-side economics" which President Ronald Reagan embraced.  He went on to become the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate when Bob Dole ran for president against Bill Clinton (for his second term) in 1996.