The UB Football Players Were Very Helpful

by Ben Verrico

In 1955 the football team went to Lewisburg, Pa., to play Bucknell University. We stayed in an old hotel, the Thomas Edison Hotel. My fraternity brother, Ed, showed up at the hotel and was looking for a room to store some beer. At that time the drinking age was 18. I didn't know what Ed was doing, but I gave him my room. He put about 10 cases of beer in that room.

We beat Bucknell, I think, then went to the frat houses that night and had a blast. We rolled a keg of beer out and dropped it off the second floor of the fraternity house. We didn't realize there was a huge hill there. The beer rolled all the way down the hill, like in a TV commercial. We tried to roll that keg back uphill and we couldn't. It was all muddy. Meanwhile, Louis the Bull was playing some game on the second floor of the house when he went right through the railing and fell a floor. The only thing that saved his tail was that it had rained like crazy that night and the ground was all mud. He hit the side of that hill and rolled right down.

Back at the hotel, a feisty little guy named Joe O'Grady found out the beer was in my locked room. The building next door had a fire escape and a flat roof. Joe climbed the fire escape up to the roof, then ran and jumped to the Edison's roof, thinking he could climb into my window. But when he hit the Edison's roof, it was slanted and slippery. The only thing he could hold onto was the eave-drop. He held on for dear life, dangling in front of my window. They had to go into my room and pull him inside.

We got back at two or three o'clock in the morning. Everybody went out for eggs and toast. I came walking into this diner where everybody had gone, and I still had a huge can of chips. There were stools behind the door, and in the very first stool, if a guy didn't move out of the way, he got hit by the door. There was an old man on that chair. I came charging in with my can of chips and the first thing that happened was I knocked him off, and then all the guys said, "Ah, there are the chips," so they came grabbing after the can. I pulled back and left one guy with the top in his hand. I took off running down the street. He took the top and sailed it. And guess what - right at the side of the building there was a cop car. He was sitting there saying, "Car 54, where are you," when that thing spun around and went right through his windshield. And here I am running down the street, so they pick me up and take me to the hotel.

Now I'm in trouble, because I show up here at the hotel in a police car, and the guys have found Ed's beer. The hotel guy kicked us out of the hotel, the whole team. That's the last trip UB was allowed to take for quite a while.

The rains were so bad that they flooded that town, and we had to stay there an extra day. The good thing that came out of that trip was that the UB football players were very helpful with the flood situation. We helped residents get out of their homes.