Insight: Buck and The Cro

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Several famous people I have met under different circumstances exhibited an uncommon trait called kindness.

Joe Crozier, left, befriended Ed Pierce when he was the
coach of the Rochester Americans in the American
Hockey League in the 1960s. Pierce met recording artist
B.W. Stevenson before a concert in 1973.
COURTESY PHOTOS     

As a representative of the Student Entertainment Committee at New Mexico Highlands University in October 1973, my mission was to ensure the bands we booked to appear in concert had suitable hotel accommodations and their equipment was on site and available for their performance. It also meant making sure the electricity and microphones worked and that band members were fed before each of the concerts.

One of the first performers I got to meet in person was a musician by the name of B.W. Stevenson. He and his band were touring the county promoting his new album. “My Maria” and his hit single of the same name from the album. Our committee had booked him earlier that summer, when his fee to perform was reasonable enough before his hit song rose to reach the Top 10 nationally.

I hadn’t listened very much to his music, but I had noticed his first album with his photo wearing a stovepipe hat the year before. I met his bus when it arrived on campus and told the band that once they looked over the gym where they were playing, we could get them checked into the hotel and then return for early afternoon sound checks and rehearsal.

Stevenson was slightly older than I was, in fact, he shared with me that this day of the concert was in fact his 24th birthday. He wasn’t very tall but was rather stocky and quiet. He told me that he was from Dallas, Texas and learned to play the guitar as a teenager.

When I asked him what the B.W. initials stood for, he laughed and said, “It’s Buckwheat, but you can call me Buck if you’d like.”

After dinner, Stevenson pulled me aside and asked what was going on in town after the concert. I mentioned to him that our fraternity was having a party with a keg of beer afterward and that he was welcome to come by our fraternity house with his band.

The concert was successful, and my job was done as other committee members made sure everything got packed up and stored on the band’s bus.

To my surprise, Stevenson showed up at the party with some band members and thanked me for inviting him. He shared a beer with us and some stories from the road and his life as a musician. I found him to be genuine and a regular guy despite his celebrity status.

While attending a professional hockey game in Rochester, New York in 1965, I asked my father if I could walk down to the player’s bench and see if one of them would give me a hockey stick. Most of the players were out on the ice warming up before the game started and so there was just one man standing by the bench and he was dressed in a business suit, so I decided that he wasn’t a hockey player.

I introduced myself to the man in the suit and he told me his name was Joe “The Cro” Crozier and that he was the coach of the Rochester Americans. He asked how old I was, and I told him I was 11. He pointed out onto the ice to a player warming up for the Hershey Bears wearing a jersey with the numeral 8 on it. He said the player’s nickname was “The Big Bear” and that his real name was Mike Nykoluk, pronounced Nik-O-Luck.

Crozier said that if I shouted “You Stink” at Nykoluk when he skated by and if he reacted to it, that he would make sure I received a hockey stick.

Sure enough, Nykoluk skated past where I was standing and I screamed at him, “Hey Nykoluk, you stink like a skunk.” Nykoluk stopped, turned around and smiled at me, shaking his stick at me first, and then at Crozier, who was laughing hysterically.

I returned to my seat but before the game ended, Crozier motioned to the usher to bring me and my brother to the bench where he presented us both with broken hockey sticks. Crozier told me, “Someday when you are grown up, you’ll remember this moment.”

Crozier went on as a coach to lead the Rochester Americans to three Calder Cup American Hockey League championships. He later served as the coach of the Buffalo Sabres and the Toronto Maple Leafs in the National Hockey League. Ironically, when Crozier was fired as the Leafs’ coach in 1981, he was replaced by none other than Mike Nykoluk. In 2012, Crozier was inducted into the AHL Hall of Fame and died at the age of 93 in 2022.

B.W. Stevenson continued to sing and perform nationally until 1988. In April of that year, he went into the hospital to have a heart valve repaired. Following the surgery, he soon developed a staph infection and died at age 38. Brooks and Dunn later had a Number 1 country hit with their version of Stevenson's "My Maria." 

Years later, when I think about meeting Joe Crozier and B.W. Stevenson, and that they each chose to be friendly to me when I was a total stranger to them, I am humbled. Their kindness is not something I will soon forget. <

Insight: Looking back on an indelible friendship

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

It’s been mentioned that if you embrace the unfamiliar it can often lead to unexpected friendships.

I first met Ray Clifford in September 1971 as a freshman attending New Mexico Highlands University. I was about to turn 18 and he was five years older and 23, having served as a military policeman on a patrol boat on the Mekong River during the Vietnam War.

Ray Clifford, back row fifth from right, and Ed Pierce,
front row fourth from right, were members of the same
college fraternity in 1971. COURTESY PHOTO  

Clifford was 6 feet tall and weighed 240 pounds while I was 5 feet 6 and 130 pounds. I was in school to earn a degree and launch a career, while he was there for beer, parties, women, good times and certainly not academics.

My tuition was paid for by student loans and his was covered courtesy of the GI Bill from his service in the U.S. military. I was from Rochester, New York and he was from Breezy Point, New York on Long Island.

Somehow, both of us ended up in the same fraternity pledge class and were living in the same fraternity house off campus. After getting to know Ray Clifford for a few weeks, I determined that something was unusual about him, especially when he requested a room to live in the basement.

His ambition was to become a police officer or detective in New York City, but I sensed that his temperament wasn’t a great fit for that. He was quick to anger and often exhibited poor judgement. He drove recklessly when borrowing another fraternity member’s car and he would carry a bottle of peach schnapps in his coat to take sips in class when the professor wasn’t looking.

It just didn’t seem like he was all there at times, and I can cite examples of his questionable actions.

Once when I was carrying a laundry basket down the cellar stairs filled with dirty clothes to wash, I stopped just inside the door to turn on the light and see where I was going. Immediately after turning on the light, it went out and someone grabbed me from behind around the neck and held a butcher knife to my throat saying, “What are you going to do now?” I realized it was Ray Clifford right away because of the tone of his sing-song voice and I asked to be released, telling him I watched "Kung Fu" on television every week. He laughed and told me that I should be more careful when entering darkened rooms in the future.

During our fraternity pledge weekend where we were supposed to leave the area for 48 hours and not be found, the entire pledge class traveled more than 100 miles away to a remote cabin.

Not long after arriving, Clifford went outside to smoke and those of us inside the cabin heard a gunshot. He came running in saying he had brought a pistol and fired it indiscriminately, but a bullet had ricocheted off a fencepost and somehow hit a cow standing nearby in a field. He was scared and wouldn’t let us notify the farmer so we spent the next two days fearful that the police would arrive and arrest us all for murdering a heffer.

As the first semester exams neared and before everyone departed to go home for the holidays, the fraternity held a huge dance. Clifford made what he called “Breezy Bash,” a concoction of fruit punch and generous amounts of alcohol mixed in. While people were dancing, I observed him add six bottles of Everclear (pure alcohol) to the “Breezy Bash” and I’m sure it produced quite a few hangovers for anyone who drank it.

He shared his first semester grade report with me while we were flying home for Christmas. In Economics, he had received a “C,” but in American National Government, Psychology, English 101, and Earth Science, he received an “F.”

Before the school year ended, he was involved in a fight and melee that spring while sticking up for a fellow fraternity brother who had been called a racial slur and then punched at the Student Union Building on campus.

Many members of our fraternity and college administrators were surprised though when Ray Clifford did not return that fall for his sophomore year.

Years passed and I eventually served in the U.S. Air Force, got married, earned my college degree and began a career in journalism writing for newspapers.

In 2010, I was watching a baseball game on television in early May at our home in Florida when the phone rang. I answered it and was shocked to learn it was Ray Clifford on the other end.

He said a fellow fraternity member had given him my number. He told me that he had obtained degrees from both Saint Francis University and Florida International University and had never married. He had worked as a court officer for the State of New York and was now retired and living in New Smyrna Beach, Florida about 80 miles from me.

I told him about my newspaper career and my wife and family, and before we said goodbye, he said to me, “We sure had some crazy times in college, didn’t we?’

Years later I found out that he had died at the age of 65 in 2013.

It’s my contention that no friendship we ever make is purely by accident. <

Insight: Been there, done Frat

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Whatever made a diverse group of college students choose a shy 17-year-old freshman kid away from home for the first time as that year’s fraternity pledge president, I’ll certainly never know.

Ed Pierce, right, is shown with
his fraternity brother Larry Brooks
at New Mexico Highlands
University in 1971.
COURTESY PHOTO

There were 10 of us in that group and many with more worldly experience than I possessed. As we gathered at the fraternity house in September 1971, it became apparent quickly that I was way in over my head. They were all older than I was and two had served previously in the military in Vietnam. Two others were college juniors, having transferred to our school after completing junior college. One fellow only had one leg following a car crash and had an artificial leg that he would suddenly take off to surprise people at parties.

I had just met these guys, and they knew little about me but here I stood after the first vote and chosen to lead this motley group as we tried to survive our time as fraternity pledges.

The first order of business was to protect ourselves from what was described by some fraternity members as “being kidnapped.” A group of frat guys would drop by unexpectedly in the middle of the night, put you in a car, drive you three miles out of town and make you walk home. To avoid this from happening and stay under the radar, five of us slept in one dorm room on campus while the other five slept in the dorm room next door.

Yet somehow at 3 a.m., the dorm room door flung open, and we barely had enough time to grab our coats and then squeeze into the back seat of a 1965 Ford LTD. It was a miserable, desolate and long walk home. It was cold and damp, there were plenty of rain puddles to avoid and angry dogs emerging from hidden driveways nipping at your heels along the way. But we all survived and made it back to campus safely.

As fraternity pledges we had to push the school’s cannon back and forth from the gymnasium to the football field and figuring out how to do that without running anyone over or blocking traffic was a tactical nightmare. Thankfully there were only five home football games that season, and we moved the cannon on Friday nights ahead of Saturday’s game.

Pledges gathered at the fraternity house every Sunday afternoon to study for what would be on our written test for induction into the fraternity. The local chapter had provided each pledge with a handbook of pertinent facts as to when and where the national fraternity was founded, and what each letter in the Greek alphabet was. But I came to the conclusion that no matter how many times we reviewed the handbook, some of these guys were just never going to remember the material needed to pass the test.

Another of our group tasks to complete as pledges was called “Escape Weekend.” We had to go somewhere as a group for 48 hours one weekend and not be seen by any other fraternity members. As it happened, one of the pledges’ family members owned a cabin about 50 miles away that was available. We cleared everyone’s schedule, loaded a cooler with ice, beer and sandwiches and all 10 pledges squeezed into the back of an old pickup truck with a camper and took off at 4 a.m. unseen by active fraternity members.

It was an adventure to say the least. One of the pledges, who suffered from PTSD after serving in Vietnam, brought along a pistol and he would fire it off indiscriminately outside when he had consumed too much alcohol. Unfortunately, one of those gunshots struck an elk on a property adjacent to the cabin, and we huddled together indoors hiding out and wondering what to do or if the police would come and investigate after someone reported hearing gunfire. Despite our fear and apprehension, nobody showed up, the elk disappeared back into the woods and by the end of the 48 hours, we were back in the pickup truck and headed back to the college.

The next Friday night, we all took part in something called “Three Fires.” It was a fraternity exercise where we walked alone to three different campfires at night in a large field and got to spend time speaking with active fraternity members about why we wanted to join them in the fraternity. They provided evaluations for each of us as pledges and pointed out our potential strengths and weaknesses. As for me, I was praised for my organizational skills and willingness to take on a leadership role among the pledges. 

One member told me though that he had apprehensions about me. He said that he couldn’t understand why I dropped Economics at mid-term despite having an “A” in the class. I told him that I was simply overwhelmed by the amount of reading required for that class and knew that it only got tougher after mid-term, so I chose to focus on my other classes instead and hoped I could someday take Economics again. He asked me to chug a beer in front of him to prove my worthiness and even though I detested alcohol, I did it, only to barf it out on my way to the next campfire.

By the second weekend of November 1971, our pledge class was ready to take the test and become initiated as full-fledged active fraternity members. One by one, we went down to the fraternity house basement for the test with blindfolds. Unbelievably, we somehow all passed.

When I look back now through the prism of 53 years later, I am amazed at how adept I was to survive pledging a fraternity and still maintain good grades in my first year as a college student. It’s an experience I wouldn’t trade today for anything.

Insight: A simpler life

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Nearly 53 years ago, I stepped onto a Greyhound bus for a three-hour ride to college after flying across the country from Rochester, New York to Albuquerque, New Mexico. As I settled in the front of the bus for the last leg of my trip, I noticed a tall, gangly looking red-haired young man in the back of the bus who was talking loudly in a pronounced Southern drawl and telling his life story to anyone within earshot.

Woodson 'Woody' Taylor was the first
person Ed Pierce met on his first day
of college in 1971. He died in January
at the age of 70. COURTESY PHOTO 

My first impression was that this fellow was extremely nervous and trying to make new friends and I couldn’t believe some of the personal details that he was sharing with complete strangers. He discussed growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, his family and where he was headed, which happened to be the same college that I was traveling to. In what I considered to be a totally naïve and gullible thing to say, he mentioned that his parents didn’t want him to carry cash but instead had given him $1,000 for his trip in traveler’s checks.

This guy talked nonstop during the entire bus ride and when we finally arrived at our destination, two older students from the college met us at the bus stop to take us to our dormitory on campus. I learned that my fellow bus rider’s name was Woodson “Woody” Taylor, and he was the son of a prominent family from Louisiana. When we got to the college, the resident advisor on duty that evening had Woody’s reservation for a dorm room, but somehow mine was not found.

One of those students who met me at the bus stop belonged to a fraternity and he suggested that I spend the night at the frat house and sort out the dorm room mix-up the next morning. I agreed and said goodbye to Woody, who in a way for me, was sort of like meeting Gomer Pyle in person.

I ended up as a pledge for the fraternity and Woody, who was in one of my freshman history classes, mentioned to me that he had pledged another fraternity. As the school year wore on, I saw Woody one day outside the college library, and he told me that the other fraternity had kicked him out for being “different.” I asked him to join our fraternity and eventually he became a fellow member like I was, and he also moved in to our fraternity house.

One night I got back to the fraternity house late at night after going out to a movie and I found Woody sitting alone in the dining room writing on a pad of paper. I asked him what he was doing, and he told me he was jotting down every single place he had spent the night in his lifetime so he wouldn’t forget them. Another time I found him writing down counties in America that he had visited. I found his interests to be eccentric, but they weren’t bothering anyone, so it didn’t matter.

Plenty of students at the college laughed at Woody’s southern accent or made fun of him but I never did. He went to church every Sunday and was interested in Japanese culture and those activities kept him busy. I transferred to a larger university a few years later and lost touch with him.

I saw Woody once in the late 1980s when I was a reporter for a daily newspaper and was covering an event at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He was volunteering his time helping students from Japan become accustomed to American life at the university. He was single, heavily involved with the Episcopal Church, and had gained a lot of weight.

Through the years, I left New Mexico and went on to work for several newspapers in Florida. Woody had called me a few times to stay in touch and wanted me to come back to New Mexico to visit but my work schedule was hectic and that never happened.

When Facebook was created, Woody reached out in 2010 and we re-established our friendship. He had moved from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Denver, Colorado and his parents had died. He belonged to several Japanese clubs and had traveled to Japan numerous times. Many of his Facebook posts were of colorful birds with names I had never heard of before and he posted thousands of them, one a day for more than 10 years.

A few years ago, his Facebook posts became more desperate as he struggled to pay rent and his health declined. He was unable to receive Social Security for some reason and was accepting donations from a “Go Fund Me” to keep the lights on. Before Christmas last year, I saw a post that he was going into a nursing facility and no longer had a cell phone.

When I hadn’t seen anything from him for months, I visited his page and discovered that Woody had died in January. It was a tragic ending for such a simple, kind and caring individual. I’ll certainly always think of him as that naïve kid on that Greyhound bus in 1971 and am glad to have called him my friend.