Published: October 05, 2008 12:34 am      

THE AUD: Goodbye to a grand old lady

It was best known as just “The Aud,” a hub of major events, sports and entertainment that captivated crowds in downtown Buffalo for generations.

While Buffalo Memorial Auditorium was owned by that city — until it was sold for $1 to The Erie Canal Harbor Development in 2007 — it belonged to thousands of Western New Yorkers whose lives were linked to the drama and excitement there.

Built by the Federal Works Progress Administration in the late 1930s, the arena was, in a sense, the Grand Old Lady of lower Main Street.

Today the drab structure that staged all those memorable events for more than a half century awaits a demolition crew to make way for a new Bass Pro World Store in the shadow of the Niagara Thruway overpass.

It was announced earlier this week that the Ontario Specialty Contracting, a Buffalo-based firm, had submitted the low bid of

$1.3 million to demolish the Aud.

Because it is so close to the Skyway and the Niagara Thruway, the Aud cannot be imploded. It must be taken down manually, according to a spokesman.

Since it opened Oct. 14, 1940, the Aud was host to six professional sports franchises, statewide political conventions, trade shows, the Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey Circus, Disney on Ice, dog shows, the Little Three basketball conference (Niagara, Canisius and

St. Bonaventure), the Harlem Globetrotters and rock concerts.

And much more.

Many events filled the 12,500 seats before the roof was raised in 1970, increasing the capacity to 16,400 for hockey and 18,000 for basketball.

Knoxes shoot, score!

“My life was never the same after I went to the first (hockey) game there,” said Jean Knox, widow of Seymour Knox, a co-founder of the Buffalo Sabres.

She has vivid recollections of those sellout crowds, the tense playoff action, especially a 1994 quarterfinal game against the New Jersey Devils. Buffalo won that game 1-0, in four overtimes, after Dave Hannan slapped in a back-hander.

Goalie Dominik Hasek recorded 70 saves in that mind-boggling encounter. The Sabres ended up losing Game 7 to the Devils.

“I first met my husband when I was 7 years old,” Knox said in an interview last week. “I had seven brothers and we were all interested in hockey. We lived in Purchase, N.Y., and we’d often go to Ranger games at Madison Square Garden.”

She and Seymour, a grandson of F.W. Woolworth Co. founder, were married in 1954.

Her husband was frustrated by three unsuccessful attempts to secure an NHL franchise.

“He had a hard time finding investors,” she said, a touch of bitterness in her voice regarding how Detroit Red Wings owner James D. Norris wanted to block Buffalo from consideration. Norris said Buffalo was just a mill town, she recalled.

At the same time that avid hockey fans here were hoping that the Aud would house an expansion team, Sports Illustrated ran what Knox described as a devastating article on why the Queen City’s bid should be ignored.

Buffalo, as it turned out, proved an excellent choice.

“It was sold out in those days, when Punch Imlach was coach and general manager,” she said, noting that the Sabres’ first draft pick was Gilbert Perrault from the Montreal Junior Canadiens.

“I loved all the players and I got to know their wives, I took them to the shopping malls, the galleries and the pediatricians. And Seymour always wanted the players to wear suits and ties to make a good impression when they were out in the community, representing the team at various functions,” Knox said.

Another legendary coach, Scotty Bowman, who had led Montreal to Stanley Cup championships, joined the Sabres in 1979.

Knox and her husband seldom missed a home game. “We sat on the top row in the gold section, directly behind the bench,” she said. No matter the vantage point of fans — even those close to the roof — it was easy to spot the lady with the shoulder-length blonde hair next to Seymour, constantly adjusting his earphones to hear Ted Darling, the “Voice of the Sabres” and, later, Rick Jeanneret and Jim Lorentz.

“The player who most impressed me was Pat LaFontaine (acquired from the New York Islanders in 1991), Mrs. Knox said, “He was the only player I can recall who asked Seymour and I to dinner at his home. Paddy had a wonderful relationship with us all through that illness. Pat had a beautiful bath robe that he gave to Seymour and he was wearing that in his last days.” He died in the spring of 1996.

One of the most upsetting turn of events, she said, was when Ted Nolan lost his job. “I couldn’t believe that was happening to someone who had been named coach of the year.”

From politics to professional wrestling

Long before the convention center was built adjacent to the Statler Hotel, the Aud set the stage for important political gatherings. Delegates to the state Democratic Convention during Gov. Harriman’s tenure would remember the suave Carmine DeSapio, the “Tiger of Tammany Hall” in his trademark dark glasses and $500 suit. On a larger scale, presidential candidates of both major parties also spoke at the Aud through the decades.

Politics aside, youngsters in the 1940s and ’50s were fascinated by the lion tamer or the scantly-clad women perched atop elephants stomping in the three rings. A highlight then of the “Greatest Show on Earth” was the guy shot out of a cannon and landing in the net.

More than many sports — if you called it that — professional wrestling claimed a unique place in Aud history.

Four days after the doors first opened, 6,207 fans saw the first matches there.

Forget the fake factor, the Friday night action was part of Buffalo’s social fabric. Where else would you find nattily attired couples at ringside to watch 250-pound athletes toss one another around before a packed house while thousands of other fans stayed glued at home to their black-and-white TVs?

Like ships in the night, many of those burly stars slipped into oblivion although some names are hard to forget: Illion DiPaolo, Dick “The Destroyer” Beyer, Yukon Eric, “Whipper” Billy Watson and 300-pound Eric the Red (Hanson) in Viking horns.

One of the colorful figures on the weekly card was Monsignor Franklin J. Kelliher, his “Masked Marvel” identity protected by a black hood until that night when he landed out of the ring in the wrong spot. A woman scrambled out of her seat and yanked the mask back.

At that moment, another fan who happened to be Kelliher’s broker, leaned over and shouted, “I sold that stock for you today, monsignor.” The word spread from ringside; the rest of the world would soon discover the real Masked Marvel.

The monsignor’s wrestling career ended a short time after someone showed the bishop of the Buffalo Catholic Diocese the story in the now-defunct Courier-Express sports pages.

In a way, boxing was as popular as wrestling. Angelo Prospero, 78, an avid fight fan and 1952 graduate of Canisius, remembers the “Battle of the Century,” at the Aud on Jan. 20, 1948, between Phil Muscato and Joe Matisi.

“It was a grudge match because Matisi had knocked out Phil’s brother (Joe) in an earlier fight,” Prospero said. “But Phil wasn’t going to let that happen. He won the 10-round decision after flooring Matisi twice to get revenge,” said Prospero, now a resident of Summerville, S.C.

According to Prospero, a respected boxing writer and historian, the 1948 bout drew 11,541, the largest boxing crowd in Western New York history.

College hoops take the spotlight

One of the biggest attractions at the Aud over the years was the college basketball doubleheaders, with the coveted Little Three crown at stake, and the high-profile teams (e.g. Kentucky, St. Louis, Bradley) that played in Buffalo during their eastern road trips to Madison Square Garden.

Canisius College had connections through its longtime athletic director Dr. James Crowdle working closely with Ned Irish, who coordinated the games at the Garden.

“It will be a sad day when that Aud comes down,” said Bob Stoetzel, a center and forward with Canisius from 1949 to 1951. “One of our biggest wins was over CCNY (City College of New York) in Buffalo,” he said, “We beat them in the Garden.”

Stoetzel played under Coach Joe Niland and his successor, Joe Curran. Top players on the Golden Griffins in that era included “Black Rock” Bob MacKinnon, Leroy Chollet, Don Hartnett, a veteran FBI agent before assuming a security post with the NHL, Herm Hedderick and Larry O’Connor, who set an Aud record (42 points) against John Carroll University in February, 1953.

Other Canisius stars: John McCarthy (1956); Henry Nowak (1957), a retired U.S. congressman; and Anthony M. Masiello (1969), a former mayor of Buffalo.

“Hedderick was one of the really solid players on our team,” O’Connor recalled. “He was the type who could always motivate people and he was key in the clutch.”

Of all the opponents during his playing days, O’Connor ranks Zeke Sinicola of NU as among the best. “If the three-point rule applied then, Zeke would have had a ton of points,” O’Connor added. (Many fans would say the same about Calvin Murphy, who starred at NU before signing with the Houston Rockets.)

In the early 1950s, O’Connor rescued a little girl struggling to survive in Lake Erie, off Long Beach, Ont. Later, she wanted to see her knight in shining armor so the family contacted the Canisius College Athletic Department and they arranged for them to attend the game and meet O’Connor.

“I had double-digit points that night and we beat St. Bonaventure,” he recalled, noting the added thrill that his special fan was watching.

Despite their strong teams, the Griffs could always count on stiff opposition from the Niagara University Purple Eagles.

John J. (”Taps”) Gallagher, a Brooklyn native and outstanding athlete at St. John’s University, recruited a number of top basketball players to Niagara University during his 31 years as coach on Monteagle Ridge.

His star lineups included Zeke Sinicola, Tommy Birch, Harry Foley, Jim Moran, Joe Smyth and John (”Squeek”) Spanbauer, father of James Spanbauer, chief administrator of Niagara Falls High School; and Baltico (”Bo”) Erias, to name a few.

George Wenz, a local businessman, played on the NU freshmen team in that era. His biggest thrill in the Aud was scoring 16 points against the Canisius frosh in the first half of a doubleheader.

“Wenz never played on the varsity but he was certainly one of the outstanding players on that splendid freshmen team,” said Frank Layden, a former coach and player with Niagara University who later coached the Utah Jazz of the NBA for seven years before moving into the executive suite of that organization.

Other Purple Eagles who made headlines at the Aud: Dan DeSantis of Niagara Falls, Ed Fleming, Hubie Brown, Larry Costello and Andy O’Connell.

The Canisius-Niagara rivalry wasn’t always good-natured. Displeased with the formula for sharing gate receipts from the Aud doubleheaders, NU boycotted the place from the 1957-58 season until 1966-67.

Layden contends to this day though that the breakup of the Little Three conference really started when St. Bonaventure built is own arena, the Reilly Center on the Olean campus.

“One scene in the Aud that I’ll never forget is when the ref called a jump ball (a rule then) and it was between 5-foot-8-inch Calvin Murphy and the 6-foot-11-inch Bob Lanier,” Layden said.

Lanier, the first overall pick in the 1970 NBA draft by the Detroit Pistons, went on to a 14-year professional career with the Pistons and the Milwaukee Bucks.

Bona coaches who compiled impressive records from the 1940s until the early-1980s included Eddie Melvin, Eddie Donovan, Larry Weise and Jim Satalin.

“Sure, Niagara and Canisius had their differences too but I can’t ever remember in the eight years of my direct relationship that (Coach) Bob MacKinnon and I ever had a cross word,” Layden added, “We got along just fine. And, in fact, we both knew it was the right thing to do — to resume that rivalry.”

Even when an agreement was reached, the revived relationship for games in Buffalo lasted a brief period. In the final college basketball game at the Aud, Feb. 13, 1996, the Purple Eagles defeated the Griffins, 58-56. A short time later the building was closed.

Contact reporter Don Glynn at 282-2311, ext. 2246. Sources for this article: Niagara Gazette files, Canisius College Athletic Department, Niagara University Athletic Department, the Courier-Express files housed in the Butler Library at Buffalo State College and the Buffalo Sabres.