There'll Never Be Another Georgie Buck

Our Man Buck
There once was a guy named Buck,
Was always around when teams needed luck.
Fields needed seeding, courts needed cleaning,
Clocks weren't working, lights were blinking,
Panic was everywhere, mayhem was extreme,
But a call to Buck made everything peaceful and serene.
He seeded the fields, cleaned the courts,
Fixed the clocks, turned on the lights and iced the rink,
Just when everything appeared lost and out of sync.
Buck to the rescue, he averted the brink.
He retired one day, while kids were at play,
He bowed out with grace, saying good luck from Georgie Buck,
Coaches and players may come and go,
But everyone knows that Buck ran the show.

- Pete Carril  

It's next to impossible for TigerBlog to think of George Boccanfuso without thinking about Pete Carril, and so it is that the sadness of having now lost both of them in a span of two weeks is a bit overwhelming.

Just as there will never be another Pete Carril, there will never be another George Buccanfuso. And if a fraction of the people who follow Princeton Athletics know the name "George Buccanfuso" who know the name "Pete Carril," it doesn't change the impact that he had here.

If you do know him by name, it's more likely that you know him by the only name that TB ever called him: "Georgie Buck."

If you knew him personally, you knew what a kind, gentle, giving, happy, funny — and really, really hard-working — man he was. You knew his raspy voice and easy laugh. You knew Phyllis, his wife of 67 years, almost all of that time spent on the Princeton campus. 

You might not have known that the longest time he was away from Princeton were the four years he spent in the Army, including serving in the European and Pacific theaters during World War II.

More than anything else, you knew his work ethic.

Georgie Buck passed away on Aug. 29, at the age of 96. It was two weeks to the day after the death of Coach Carril.

There's sadness to that, to be sure. There's also some sort of eternal happiness to that, knowing that two men who meant so much to each other, who gave so much to Princeton, are united again.

Carril came to Princeton in 1967, or 20 years after Georgie Buck was on the payroll. Georgie grew up in town and on campus, where his father John was the head of the athletic grounds crew beginning in 1920 and lasting 47 years. Before any of that, John worked on the crew that built Palmer Stadium — in 1914.

As for Georgie, he followed in his father's footsteps beginning in 1947. He'd "retire" from Princeton in 1989, though he never actually stopped working.

Every day in Jadwin Gym, there was Georgie Buck, mop in hand, floor to be cleaned. There was Georgie Buck, fixing the clock during a game. There was Georgie Buck, doing whatever it was that needed to be done.

He did this in his 70s. He did this in his 80s. He did this in his 90s. 

When he was well into his 80s, he fell off a scaffold and broke a bone in his neck. This was confirmed by an x-ray, which he waited five days to get. He was a tough guy. 

He and Carril were cut from the same cloth, and it's not surprising that they got along so well. Carril never called him George either. In fact, he rarely called him Georgie Buck. From Coach, it was usually just "Yo Buck."

When TB first became the men's basketball contact, Carril insisted that there be a bio of Georgie Buck in the media guide. He also wanted his poem "Our Man Buck" to be included. It's the poem that TB started with today.

TB went back and watched the 2017 video on goprincetontigers.com about Georgie Buck. He could not help but smile when he watched THIS.

You can hear Carril talk about Buck. You can hear Gary Walters and Mitch Henderson talk about him as well. Phyllis is in it as well.

You can also get a real sense of who the man was, and you can hear the raspy voice that TB mentioned. 

Georgie Buck was always good to TB. He was always good to everyone at Princeton. It won't be the same to walk into Jadwin Gym and not see him. 

Rest in peace, Georgie Buck. 

Say hi to Coach.