To understand the owner of the Buffalo Bills and Sabres, you must know his competitive nature in Olean and how he treats employees and friends
By CHUCK POLLOCK, Wellsville Sun Senior Sports Columnist
He showed up at the Olean Racquet Club one day in the mid-80s, quiet and unassuming, and asked to join a racquetball league.
Ours was an eclectic group with a corporation owner, school teacher, corporate executives, a meat wholesaler, beer distributor, barber and sports writer among others.
It didn’t matter, players left their pedigrees at the door … the yardstick was what you did on the court.
The barber, Olean’s iconic Ray Padlo, several years older than the rest of us, with his sense of humor, sarcasm and wit was the chief trash-talker. Though he rarely beat even the lowest-level players, he would march into the locker room, spot his opponent, and announce, “I hope you brought some butter with you … because I’m gonna toast your a**”
It never stopped being funny.
However, Ray tended to leave the better players alone — the Steve Slavins, Arnie McHones, Joe Kubics and Terry Pegula, who established himself as soon as he joined our group.
I think Ray didn’t bother Terry because he didn’t engage in the banter and kept to himself … or maybe he just saw something special in him.
But he and I became fast friends.
One reason was, Terry didn’t complain about the way I played. My introduction to the game was via a Penn State alum — his alma mater — who learned it in the days of loosely-strung wooden racquets and spongy balls. He taught me my all-time weapon, the ceiling shot. In order to get my opponent out of the middle of the court, a ceiling ball would drive him to the back wall … it was fatiguing and annoying.
Aggravated Joe Lanigan, an Olean cardiologist, weary from so many trips to the rear of the court, once asked, “Do you own property back there?”
And one night a frustrated McHone moaned, “Whenever I play you, it’s not fun … you always make it hurt.” It was the best racquetball compliment I ever got.
Worse yet, I was the only left-hander in the league, another advantage.
NONE OF that bothered Terry. We just played, no griping about shot selection or handedness, and afterward headed upstairs for a beer. Invariably, he wanted to talk about the Sabres, knowing my profession and assuming I had the same passion for the team that he did. But I wasn’t a hockey junkie though back in the days when the Sabres were making the playoffs I did columns on the home postseason games. It was clear to me Terry had forgotten more about the game and the team than I would ever know.
I was aware he owned a company called East Resources in Allegany and it was somehow involved in oil and natural gas exploration. But we never talked about it, our topic of choice was sports.
He eventually moved the home base of his business operations to the Pittsburgh area but spent some time in Houston. The story goes, on Sabre game nights, he’d call a friend in Buffalo and have him put the phone next to the radio or TV so he could listen to the entire broadcast as it wasn’t available in Texas.
Who knew he would eventually own the team?
PEGULA, a petroleum engineer and geologist by education, had the knowledge and wisdom to investigate the Marcellus Shale (Formation) for its abundant natural gas supply and its availability due to hydro-fracturing (fracking). He began acquiring a massive amount of drilling rights.
Sensing the time was right, he sold much of those and a good portion of his company to Royal Dutch Shell for $4.7 billion in 2010.
Thus, he immediately became one of the most wealthy people in America. Forbes currently ranks him at 154 in the country with an estimated value of $7.6 billion. For the record, Donald Trump, who fell out of Forbes’ top 400 for two years. is now back at No. 319, worth $5.7 billion thanks to his presidential-run sale of memorabilia such as bibles, sneakers, coins and various other items.
I HAD LOST track of Terry after his move to Pennsylvania until getting an invitation to a party at Olean’s Gargoyle Park which he was holding for the Pittsburgh and Allegany East Resources offices, bussing the former to the event.
He invited members of the racquetball league but couldn’t find addresses for everybody and, to my recollection, Padlo and I were the only ones who actually got the message.
The food was incredible, the open bar endless and a country music group from Terry’s Black River Entertainment company, based in Nashville, performed.
It was the first time I met his wife Kim, a native of South Korea who was adopted by former Olean School District superintendent, Ralph Kerr and his wife, and spent much of her early life in Houghton.
During the event, I wandered around talking to employees — that’s what nosy media people do — and, to a person, they maintained Terry was “the best boss I ever had.”
He soon donated $102 million to Penn State to build an on-campus ice arena and upgrade the men’s and women’s club hockey teams to NCAA Div. I status. Then Terry and Kim made a $12 million donation to Houghton College, her alma mater, for construction of a new athletic center and upgraded baseball and softball facilities.
SHORTLY thereafter, in 2011, Terry bought the Sabres for the bargain price of $189 million. Today the franchise is worth just over $1 billion.
Then, three years later, he purchased the Bills for $1.4 billion and in 10 years the team’s value has escalated to $4.2 billion.
The night he met with the media in the team’s practice facility — broadcast live on most Buffalo radio and TV stations — I raised my hand to ask a question. Before I could turn on the microphone, Terry blurted, “Hey Chuck,” then added, “We used to play a lot of racquetball together … a lot of racquetball.”
I asked him if he had wrapped his head around buying Buffalo’s two highest-profile pro sports teams in a span of three years. He conceded he really hadn’t … that his head was still spinning.
Of course, my cover was blown and to this day, Buffalo media-types will ask me what Terry thinks of this or that relating to the Bills as if we’re in constant contact.
I actually don’t see him much anymore.
THE LAST time we talked was during training camp at Pittsford’s St. John Fisher University a couple of years back. Terry was laughing at himself for being snookered by Rex Ryan’s charisma and personality during the coaching interview and told his staff not to let him out of the building until he was under contract. Less than two years later, Pegula fired him … on merit.
As we talked, the media was instructed to move back to the sideline and as I started to step that way, the Bills’ head of media relations stopped me, “Chuck, you don’t have to move when you’re talking to the owner.”
THE ONE thing that has made me feel badly for Terry is that he’s visibly uncomfortable behind a microphone. However, in his speech after buying the Sabres, there was a touching moment when he teared up seeing members of the French Connection — Gil Perreault, Rick Martin and Rene Robert — in the audience.
My hope had been that Kim, a communications major at Houghton, could sit him down and give Terry some tips about being less awkward when speaking before a crowd or being grilled by the media in his rare press conferences.
But that opportunity ended in June of 2022, on her 53rd birthday, when Kim suffered cardiac arrest that immediately led to a stroke. Her daughter Kelly, who was at the house, had recently taken a CPR class and literally saved her mother’s life.
But, due to prolonged lack of oxygen to her brain, Kim suffered significant aphasia (impacting speech and the ability to write and understand spoken and written language) as well as considerable memory issues.
Last year, she was legally declared incapacitated and her assets were placed in a trust managed by Terry.
I haven’t seen him since her disability but know he’s devastated after learning on her as president of both the Bills and Sabres while he tended to his oil and gas holdings and real estate properties.
THE HOCKEY team made the playoffs the year they bought it (2011) but since then has endured a 12-season lapse of such appearances.
Both Terry and Kim were blamed for the drought, critics citing four general managers and seven coaches (Lindy Ruff twice) during their tenure.
But, after two seasons of owning the Bills, their team began a live streak of six playoff appearances in seven seasons. Somehow credit for that accomplishment hasn’t flowed their way but rather the ‘critics’ focus has become, “Well, they haven’t made (won) a Super Bowl.”
Yeah, you’ve never seen or heard a word of criticism of Terry or Kim from me in print or on broadcasts since they bought the teams.
I don’t apologize for that … it would never occur to me to leverage my relationship with Terry to get a career “scoop.”
I have myriad personal flaws, but disloyalty to my friends is not one of them; especially in the case of Terry Pegula.
(Chuck Pollock, an Olean Star and Wellsville Sun senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@wnynet.net.)
