Several people have asked about how The Bills Backers of Virginia Beach began so I decided to put the history of our club in words to explain all this.
Back in the late 1980s my wife Fran and I went to Awful Arthers on General Booth Blvd for lunch and found a group of about 4 or 5 people watching and cheering on the Buffalo Bills on a 27” TV, during the game they approached us at our table and introduced themselves as Ed & Scott and explained how they were starting a Bills club and asked us if we wanted to buy raffle tickets for some Bills items. While we didn’t win anything we had such a good time we came back for each Bills game that season and joined their club, which was now a recognized Charter Club of the newly formed Bills Backers International and we became The Bills Backers of Virginia Beach. (which is one of the original chapters of The Bills Backers International)
We were happy to find someone from Buffalo, N.Y. like us, and the camaraderie that we felt was just like being in a Buffalo bar with friends.
When the club became larger and Awful Arthers became to crowed we found the owner of Smooties in the Strawbridge shopping center that wanted to have us at his place and gave us an area in the back that had 6 booths that would hold about 24-30 people, there the club grew to almost 45-50 members.
The owner James was a great help in growing the club by giving us a large projection TV that was mounted on a platform so everyone had a good view of the games.
We even had our first tailgate party in the parking lot and James the owner paid to have a large 20’ canvas cover for us and put two projection TVs in it and gave us hamburgers and hot dogs and discounted drinks a food specials.
By now the Bills Backers club was gaining members to the point were we decided that an operating structure was need to run the club to be beneficial to everyone, so the Off–Season meeting were began to work on the upcoming seasons.
On one Sunday several of us showed up for an off-season meeting only to find Smooties was closed and that James had lost the business, so we had to find another place by the start of the next season and someone told us about Smokies on Harpers Road.
Fran and I went there for dinner to check it out and met the owner Okie and explained what we were doing and what we needed, he gave us one side of his bar and told us if we bring in the numbers he would help us grow, and he was a Washington Redskins fan!
We grew even larger at Smokies to where a few of our members we complaining and wanted Okie to only allow Bills fans in for the games!
(That wasn’t going to happen as we didn’t own the place)
They wound up leaving to start their own Bills club on Holland Road.
By then Ed and Scott lives were getting busier with Ed buying a radio station in Williamsburg, Va, and Scott getting married and moved to Hickory, Va.
Fran decided we would take the control of the club and I drafted the current By-Laws we now have as a way to run the club in a more Democratically fashion so every dues paying member had a voice in how the club was ran, as we had some people that wanted to challenge how we were doing things without making any effort to help fix anything they thought was wrong.
Okie was a great benefit to growing our club and let us use his garage for a tailgate party for a few years where he gave us hamburgers and hot dogs and some members brought in side dishes. He also started the Fish fries for the Miami Dolphins games! We even held our summer picnics at the Holiday Travel Park, we would pay for 4 campsites by the pool and they gave us a spot by the stage with water and electric and the members would bring side dishes, Okie would provide the burgers and hot dogs Things were doing great but we were getting to large for just the one side of Smokies, so Okie decided to build us a room off the back of Smokies! The room was much larger and we needed to change from watching the games on TVs to getting a projector and movie screen. The club bought the projector and Okie found a bar at the Oceanfront that had a screen in their basement they didn’t need. I went and what they had was our existing screen but it was not in the best shape, whoever put it down there never closed it and just rolled the screen around the case and it was sitting in dirty water. I took it home and cleaned it up, rewired it and mounted it in our new Bills Backers room and we enjoyed having our own room for our members!
There was a gentleman Robert Kreiger, who lived in Buffalo in the summer and spent the3 winters in Florida who the Buffalo Bills paid to visit clubs as he traveled from Buffalo to Florida and report what the clubs were doing. He was impressed with all we were doing and on one visit gave me a copy of the video with the charging buffaloes they show at the games in the stadium but with out the sound and told me that as long as I modified the original it was fine to use in our club. I added the Shout song just a little out of time from what the Bills use and added the word Shout at the end, so now its our original copy.
This is also where we met Mike Wilson (The owner of Mikes ak Room) our current host. Mike ran the pool tournaments for Southern Amusements and we also played in some of the tournaments there.
We had members present asking if we might want to do as a club and participate in the Polar Plunge for Special Olympics.
We had several members join to do the plunge for several years and made a great weekend event for our members and raised lots of money for a great cause
We were at Smokies for almost 10 years when Okie decided he wanted to retire and sold the bar to a gentleman names Mr. Papakostas who’s plan was to began tearing the place apart in order to rebuild everything. Well issues began with the city permits and the building inspectors for things that were never addressed in the past with the end result being The Bills Backers had to find another home once again.
During this time Mike Wilson left Southern Amusement and opened his own place Mikes Break Room! And after a year or two we approached him about using his back room for our club.
He welcomed us and let us move our projector, screen and cabinet and the first year where happy to have a place for the club, The next season he told us that we could put or Bills memorabilia on the walls and placed Karleigh in the room as our hostess making us extremely happy to have a place that felt more like home for our members.
When Covid forced many businesses to close, we were put in a awkward position of possibly looking for another place. Mike Wilson made some sacrifices to keep his place open and kept his employees, our club had to be limited to a smaller attendance, but we worked it out and hopefully helped Mike survive the hardships that Covid brought by our attendance on game days.
The 2024-25 NFL season will mark our 10th year in our home at Mikes Break Room at are looking forward to many more seasons of Buffalo Bills football with our friends and family of The Bills Backers of Virginia Beach!
We have been blessed to see just how much this club has accomplished and the friends we have made not just this club but through other Bills Backers clubs we have met that have clubs throughout the United States and in other countries.
We couldn’t have done anything without our die hard members who come to watch the games with us each week to Shout out our support for the team and make our club as successful as possible.