Blue White Illustrated

some other people looked over and said something like, "Did you say Penn State was beating Rutgers?" I said yes and told him about getting the score over the telephone from the radio broadcast. For reasons that now escape me, I men- tioned that Fran Fisher had helped to get us season tickets. That's when I learned about Fran Fisher and the Farquel Fami- ly. "Fran's a friend of ours, too," the stranger said with big grin. His name was Bob Wilson, and he ran the AAA in- surance business in Lewistown. He not only knew Fran, but he and his wife, Evy, were really close friends of the Fishers, part of a group 15 to 20 couples from Lewistown who had been tailgating to- gether at home and away games for years. They called themselves the Farquel Family, and therein lies a classic Fisher story. As one of the "family" members, John Waugaman, recalled recently, a number of the tailgaters had gone to a restaurant near West Point after a game against Army. When the hostess asked for the name of the group, Fran instant- ly remembered some "Laugh In" come- dy bits featuring the fictitious clan. "We're the Farquel Family," he re- sponded. And from that day on they were the Farquel Family. Wilson apparently de- signed a Farquel Family crest, and they flew a flag with that symbol at every tailgate. "There were Greek or Latin words on the crest that said "Don't step in the Lion s--t," Waugaman recalled with a laugh. A framed copy of the shield was at the funeral home when hundreds of mourn- ers paid their last respects to Fran. "Most of the Farquels have passed away, including Bob Wilson just recently," said Waugaman, who broke into the radio business when hired by Fran at WKVA in the mid-1960s and went to become an executive for Westinghouse Broadcast- ing. "But we had some great times to- gether." Moving back to the Penn State area in 1996 drew me closer to Fran. After re- tiring as the first director of the All- Sports Museum in 2006, I would sit alongside Fran in the back of the Beaver Stadium media room at Paterno's week- ly news conferences during the season. We continued through the coaching changes, as O'Brien succeded Paterno and Franklin succeded O'Brien. We also would hook up at various events on campus and especially at basketball games. We became much closer friends, and I began greeting him almost every time we were together by his formal name, Francis. It was a personal thing just between us, because I don't re- member hearing many of his close friends ever call him Francis. My lasting memory of Francis always will be of the lunches and occasional dinners we spent together with a couple of his other close friends. There were two special groups, one that included longtime faculty athletic rep John Coyle, former athletic director Tim Curley and one-time trustee Ned Book, and another that I called the "Three Stooges." Francis and I were two of the stooges. Mike Poorman, who covers the Penn State football beat for statecollege.com, was the other. This one began casually when the three of us went to lunch after one of Paterno's news conferences. The next week we invited Neil Rudel of the Altoona Mirror to join us, and the fol- lowing week someone new again. We continued this "invitation only" idea throughout the fall and beyond, trying to always invite someone new to be with us. We were always off the record, so we could be frank and candid. Our guest list was too long for me to name here because I know I would leave someone out. And they were all special, adding their own flair and inside tidbits to the conversation, but Francis was al- ways the star, like Curly in the famed Three Stooges entertainment act. He was the Fran Fisher we all have seen and heard publicly, but with more wise- cracks, self-deprecating stories about his own play-by-play years and zingers about his two lunch pals and the guest. Lunch with the Three Stooges is gone forever. That will be my lasting memory of my friend Francis Evan Fisher. ■

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