A Union College football fan couldn't ask for a better Indian summer day to watch the Dutchmen beat key rival Hobart College Saturday. But weather isn't a factor for retired math professor Ted Bick and a loyal group of fellow Union alumni.
“Ted's a legend here,” said Dr. Don Bentrovato, a Schenectady physician and Class of '69 graduate.
Bentrovato is among about 15 or 20 alumni from the 1940s, '50s and '60s who cluster in the stands every home game to sing the Union fight song on every touchdown.
Leading the musical charge is the trumpet playing of Bick and Ed Craig, a retired electrical engineering professor.
“We got lawyers, we got doctors, we got all kinds of people,” Bick, 74, said between trumpet blasts. “We don't have many singers,” he said in a good-natured jab about the group's tune-carrying abilities.
“It's an unusual event if we're not here,” Bick said. His wife, Joan, nodded firmly.
Snow or rain doesn't stop Ted and most others, she said. “I don't go on the rainy days anymore,” she admitted. “I think it's absolutely amazing that the guys stay together. They're a band of brothers.”
Union ties span several generations. Many of the alumni also have children who are Union graduates. And some, like Bentrovato's wife Stacey, even have parents who attended the Schenectady college.
Stacey's 82-year-old father, Briggs Dunn, graduated in 1951 and lives down South, but he keeps up on Union via the Internet.
“He calls after the games to talk about it,” she said.
The fan tradition actually goes back to the late Fred Bronner, a 1946 graduate who got groups singing on good plays back in the 1980s, Craig recalled.
The trumpeting was added over the years to jazz up the sometimes erratic singing, group members agreed.
Singing the fight song, and a few less polite tunes, was important back when Union was still an allmale school with no cheerleaders, said Paul Wintrich.
“In those days we all had to learn the songs,” Bentrovato said.
With women cheerleaders now psyching up the crowd from the field, fewer students are singing the traditional songs.
“It's a losing art,” Bentrovato acknowledged.
Queensbury resident John Bulova, another 1969 grad, looked through the game program but couldn't find the fight song's words listed.
Several students questioned Saturday didn't know about Bick or the alumni group. Asking someone with gray hair turned up a different story.
Wintrich, a 1960 grad now living in Stamford, Conn., was standing below the packed bleachers but perked right up when asked about Bick, who graduated from Union in 1958, two years ahead of him.
“There he is, right there,” Wintrich said, as a tall, lanky figure stood up, trumpet at his lips, as the Dutchmen made the first score of the game.
As a dozen or so alumni began singing in the stands, Wintrich joined in from below, stomping his feet and urging other fans on.
Bick and Craig's trumpets blared and the fight song lived again as younger fans cheered the teams on the field.
A Union math teacher for 32 years, Bick also taught at Hobart for five years before coming to Schenectady.
“I enjoyed my years there,” he said of the Geneva, N.Y., school, but he said his sympathies were strictly with his Union alma mater.
Both an athlete and a sports fan, Bick played basketball in his student days, coached Union's cross country runners and regularly ran himself until recent years.
A dedicated football fan, Bick admitted basketball is his favorite sport. A knee problem ended his running, but Bick still plays some alumni hoops, friends said.
Campus activities are still important to the Bick family and his fellow band of alumni brothers.
“We grew up on campus,” said Lisa Zadoorian, one of the Bicks' five children. Though Lisa and her husband, Jan, attended other area colleges, “we went to the hockey games and the football games. We lived all of it,” she said as she cheered the Union team.