Ralph

Back in 1997 I received a letter from Ralph Wilson thanking me for helping with the construction work at the stadium. (It was one of hundreds of the same letter sent to a lot of construction management people). It was a letter that certainly impressed Matt a couple of years later as it was in a frame with a shot of the stadium, but it was weird for me because that was just about the time the Bills lost their glory with me.

You see, Jim Kelly had just retired, and I had always been an unabashed Kelly fan. Then and now. I've met Jim a few times through the years and I'm really saddened by his fight with cancer. It's not enough to say he's tough and he'll battle through. He has a beautiful family and he's much too young to be in such a fight to stay alive. I'm just sad for all of the Kelly's as he awaits surgery.

Yet, I wasn't in much of a mood in 1997 as the Bills fixed up the Ralph as everyone was starting to call it. Kelly had just retired. There was a lot of angst about how they'd get back to the Super Bowl and finally win one. There were threats about them leaving town, and then the deal was struck to remodel the old home.

And about 750 guys set off to work on the place.

I was there every single day.

I got to go behind the scenes, down on the field, I even tried kicking a 35-yard field goal.

(I was 28 yards short).

And what soured me was the sense of entitlement. Lockers were filled with products from every company. The players brushed by, shamed to have to co-mingle with the working slobs. The Bills were straight and to the point of what would be tolerated by the "workers."

Whatever. All the sports teams are like that. We are amusing ourselves to death.

Yet one day Ralph came by to tour the place.

Most of the scuttle around the construction was that he looked horrible and at death's door.

"What will we do when he's gone?"

"Who's going to get the team?"

"They're moving for sure!"

And a lot of admiration for Ralph Wilson around Buffalo is because he kept the team in Buffalo when he could have made even more money somewhere else, and maybe that is true.

But Buffalo has always been better than good to Ralph Wilson.

An awful lot of money went from the hands of those same types of worker bees straight to Detroit where Ralph keeps his assets.

But Ralph was a maverick and a pioneer and a friend to a lot of Buffalo hospitals and the entire Buffalo community.

Ralph Wilson's presence will be missed in this town especially if the next owner is looking for a bigger payday, and for all that he did, Ralph should be thanked.

I found my framed letter after it was announced that he died.

He thanked me as 'a member of the Buffalo community who had played a role in making the stadium a friendly place to bring a family in a tight-knit city with a proud tradition'.

I could probably send the letter back to his family now because that is pretty much exactly what he did for us.

Now...

...If his influence has grown at all...

...how about a playoff game back at the Ralph sometime soon?