They called him The Bummer -- short for Bill Bumgarner, the veteran sports writer for the old Times-Picayune who has been a fixture on sidelines and in pressboxes for decades. The man who was a friend and mentor to many, and a prolific filler of scrapbooks.
If you met him, you never forgot him. The man was straight out of central casting.
Curmudgeon No. 1 played by Bill Bumgarner. He was loud. He seemed to be always annoyed, and you didn't have to wonder why. He told you. He told everybody. He lived on a soapbox.
Before cell phones he spent his whole day calling coaches and waiting for them to call him back. They almost always did.
He spent hours on the phone in the old TP office, grilling coaches about who their best players were and why. How big were they? How fast could they run a 40? Could they play college ball? Division I or Division II? How were their grades?
We had no choice but to listen.
And after cell phones, he still used the landline. A technophobe forever, Bummer never did figure out why today's phones are called "smart" or why laptops were better than the old typewriter he still had.
On Friday nights, he prowled the sidelines of football stadiums, somehow keeping copious stats on the players and a play-by-play of the action. After the game, he knew exactly which coach and which players to grab for a quick quote he would commit to memory with just a few jotted words. I never saw him use a recording device.
He would then take it all back to his office where he typed up his perfect story with a perfect lede on a desktop -- only because he had to. He was the master of the first paragraph and there was no fluff. He told you who won, how, why, who scored and what they had to say about it.
When his story was filed and the boxscore called in, he would check the other scores then head out to a local watering hole for a beer or two.
Bummer had been doing this for a long, long time by the time I came into his orbit. I have to admit, he was a little scary at first, being so loud and ornery. But he was really just a burnt marshmallow with a mushy inside.
He called me "Readhead" (maybe because he used to be one) until I wasn't anymore. And even as we got older, he called me "Kiddo." I'm a 63-year-old woman and he still called me "Kiddo."
For whatever reason, Bummer took pity on the new girl in the office. He helped me out when the drunks would call from the bars with stupid questions and ask for the West Coast scores. He helped me learn the finer points of baseball, hockey and horse racing as I learned to put together the results. He would take the phone when someone got a little too rude. He brought me gladiolas he had grown in his garden.
In September of 1989, my dad, who had been battling a heart condition, died. My mom called the office to tell me, but I was downstairs at lunch. I'm not sure who took the call, but she said to him, "I need someone to tell Lori her dad has died."
Whoever answered the call told Bummer. And when I returned from lunch, it was he who came up behind me at my desk, hugged me and whispered in my ear.
Years later, Bummer and Pete Barrouquere drove all the way to Houma to attend my brother's funeral.
As I got more into writing stories at the paper, my first beat was the local playgrounds. Knowing that's where old coaches and old players go to try and kill themselves on league nights, Bummer who took me around and introduced me to everybody. And I guess if I had Bummer's seal of approval, I automatically had their cooperation. I quickly became "The Leagues Lady," and was very popular among the beer drinkers of New Orleans.
When the Men in Ties decided maybe I could cover high school sports full-time (even though I was a woman), it was Bummer who took me to a game and patiently showed me how to keep a play-by-play and add up the stats. It was a perfect system for this mathematically challenged writer.
As I raced towards my upper 20s, Bummer also decided I should no longer be single. He tried to be a Cupid, fixing me up on dates with several coaches he knew and Clay from the circulation department. Then he started inviting me and some of my girlfriends to meet him and his pals at his favorite bars (places the tourists don't go). We had some fun times at the old Parkway Tavern, Par Four, the Bengal and Legends.
And that is where he finally got one right.
Bummer introduced me to my husband, Marty Luquet. Marty had been a damned good high school baseball coach on the West Bank of New Orleans, leading what others would consider a Bad News Bears team to several district championships. Bummer had written many stories about him and covered many of his games.
By the time I came around, Marty was recovering from his recent divorce and had joined the Legends softball team. Every time I'd meet Bummer at Legends, he'd tell me, "Marty with the party is here!" And I'd say to myself, "I don't know who that is." But there was this cute, fun guy who liked to dance to "Strokin'" with me. Yeah. It took me a while to figure out he was, indeed, Marty with the Party.
We were married on December 17, 1994, and one of our stops on the way to our honeymoon hotel that night was Bummer's annual Christmas party.
Once I moved out to the River Parishes Bureau in LaPlace, Bummer became my mentor from afar. He would call me to let me know I had something wrong in one of my stories or to give me a heads-up about something happening that I needed to know.
He accompanied me on my first road trip to Shreveport in my brand new Isuzu Rodeo (manual transmission) to cover a state baseball tournament, grumbling every time I had to smoke a cigarette.
We would meet up at All-State meetings, Sugar Bowl Hall of Fame meetings and Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame meetings to discuss and debate candidates. I always, always deferred to Bummer's encyclopedic knowledge of coaches and athletes. We shared press rows at basketball. I helped him cover volleyball (he had no clue). We sweat together at track meets.
In my first year on the job, I won a little award for one of my stories and Bummer encouraged me to go to the Louisiana Sports Writers Convention, which was in Baton Rouge that year. I did go and let Bummer introduce me to everyone.
The next year, I won a big award and attended the convention, which was being held in Natchitoches in conjunction with the annual Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Induction. After that, I went to just about every convention around the state. A few years later, I was asked to be on the Hall of Fame selection committee.
In 2023, I was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.
The LSWA hospitality room has always been the hub of our conventions. It's where we gather to see who is still alive, who is still mobile, who is still employed. We've watched each other age and our children grow up over beer, soft drinks, snacks and, once upon a time, Bourre games. And as you'd walk into the hotel lobby and turn the corner, you'd know the room was open and occupied because, well, you'd hear Bummer telling one of his tales. Probably one you've heard a hundred times already. Maybe not.
I will miss that sound. I will miss him.
A heart attack took Bummer down on a late summer Sunday afternoon. I admit, at first I thought it rather fitting that he would have a heart attack after a Saints game in which they lost in spectacular fashion, but ultimately it seems simple yard work got him.
Since then, my friends and I have tried so hard to express what he meant to us, to our profession, to our organization and to thousands of high school athletes and coaches.
I will never forget how he took care of me as a young, green cub.
I will never forget his care and concern -- and joy -- as we went through our roller coaster adoption process.
I will never forget his epic soapbox rants about the state of the newspaper business in general and our former employer in particular.
I will remember dancing with him at my wedding and doing the cha cha to "Because" by the Dave Clark Five at Legends.
I will remember his holding court in the LSWA hospitality room and complaining because the induction ceremonies always went on too long.
I will remember his lovely antique-filled Metairie home and his large collection of World War II memorabilia. I will remember his angst when Hurricane Katrina flooded it.
I will remember the twinkle in his eye.
And I will never forget his voice, still calling me "Kiddo."
