Die-Hard Illini Fan Duo Is Living Example Of Loyalty
October 23, 2005 | Football
Oct. 23, 2005
- Coach Ron Zook on Sunday media teleconference
by Jared Gelfond, Illinois Sports Information
One has golfed with Illini coaching legend Ray Eliot and the other has shared polish sausages with hall of fame linebacker Dick Butkus. One remembers watching Bob Zuppke roam the Memorial Stadium sidelines and the other first stepped foot in the stadium while Buddy Young was galloping around in the backfield.
They have lived through the exhilarating wins, cheered on every one of the program's Rose Bowl teams and suffered through all of the losing seasons and anguishing losses. Longtime Illinois football fans Bob Suter and Arnie Yarber have both lived in the Champaign-Urbana community for more than 60 years, but they have certainly lived very different lives.
They reside on different sides of town and their career paths have gone very different ways. They don't know each other and can't recall ever meeting. But for two men so different, they have one deep passion they share in common: Illinois football.
Arnie Yarber has been a staple in the Champaign-Urbana community for as long as most can remember and a staple at Illinois football games. Up until a few years ago when health problems kept him away from a few games, he had attended every single Illinois home football game since he returned from the service in the late 1940s.
Legions of Illini football players over the years patronized super-fan Arnie Yarber at his Champaign restaurant.  |
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As owner of the legendary Po'Boys Bar-b-que, he has served hundreds of thousands of people over the years. With his unique voice and towering presence, Yarber has become almost as much an attraction as his restaurant as generation after generation has flocked to Po'Boys on Friday nights to get his famous barbeque.
Growing up in the Champaign-Urbana area, Yarber was drawn to Memorial Stadium at a very young age and witnessed his first Illinois football game in the 1930s. He knew he wanted to be there every Saturday, but there was a problem early on. He didn't have money for a ticket. But that wasn't going to stop Yarber.
"Even though the tickets were only $2 or $2.50, we didn't have that kind of money," laughed Yarber as he recalled his early days as an Illinois football fan. "But we had to be in there, so all the kids would get to the stadium early. They used to have these tarps they would have to roll on the field in case it rained. We would get inside the tarps, get rolled in, and just before the game started and people were coming in, we would get out from under the tarps and go into the stands."
One of his first Illinois football memories comes from the 1939 season when Illinois, behind the heroic performance of Mel Brewer, defeated Michigan and their legendary back, Tom Harmon, 16-7 in the stadium.
"One of the first stars I remember was 'Flip' Anders," Yarber said. "He was a great player and was a big part of that win. There had been a lot of talk about Zuppke retiring,l and when we beat Michigan that was really his last big win as Illinois football coach."
Eventually just being in the stands wasn't enough for Yarber. In the mid 1950's he joined the team as a trainer and got to be up close with some of the great Illini of all-time.
"Illinois was the first team in the Big Ten to have an all-black backfield with J.C. Caroline, Mickey Bates, Abe Woodson, Harry Jefferson and Bobby Mitchell," said Yarber who has been a mainstay at Illinois football practices for decades. "J.C. Caroline is one of the nicer people you will ever meet and they used to call him 'rickets' because his legs were so large, but boy, he could play the game of football."
Unlike Yarber, Bob Suter didn't grow up around the Champaign-Urbana community. As a kid in Jacksonville, Ill., he was a big sports fan but never had the chance to get to Memorial Stadium for an Illinois football game.
That all changed in 1946. After being in the service for two years, Suter came to the university as a student, and he knew right away where he wanted to be every single Saturday in the fall.
"I was kind of a sports nut so I went to all of the basketball and football games right from the beginning," Suter said, as he remembered his first year in Champaign. "Dike Eddleman was on the team then, Art Dufelmeier from Beardstown was there as well and, of course, Buddy Young was still around. Buddy was such a great scatback. Every time he touched the ball there was a chance he was going to go score, and there was that moment of anticipation when he got the ball because you never knew what he was going to do."
By the time Suter left school, he was completely hooked on Illinois football. In the 1951-52 season, Suter was a spotter for legendary voice-of-the-Illini, Larry Stewart, and he wasn't going to miss the trip to Pasadena.
"I drove from Champaign all the way to California for the game and it took me about three days to get there," recalled Suter, who later served for 37 years as a member of the Illinois Quarterback Club. "I remember taking someone with me, and I remember going to the East-West Shrine Game up in San Francisco while we were there, but in the end it was all worth it because the Illini won the game."
As we all know, things happen on Saturdays. People have weddings to attend, there are funerals to go to and just in general, things come up that may take you away from a football game once in awhile. Even with those possibilities, nothing was going to keep these two away from a game.
"My grandma made a statement one time that I will always remember," said Yarber. "She said if she dies, they shouldn't have her funeral on a Saturday because I will be at the game."
"In 1985our daughter got married," recalled Sutter. "She made sure to call me ahead of time to see what weekend I could come to Seattle to walk her down the aisle, because she knew it would be an issue if she had it on a football weekend."
Ever since his first game as a freshman in 1946, Suter hasn't missed a single home game. If you are counting, that is 60 years and 330 straight home games. It's a Cal Ripken-like streak that is a truly remarkable feat, but the incredible run didn't come without a few close calls.
"I had an emergency gallbladder operation about three years ago. I had gone to see my primary physician on a Wednesday and he never let me get out," recalled Suter. "He called in a surgeon and they operated on me at 6:30 that evening. I got out of the hospital on Friday afternoon and called Dana Brenner at the Illinois athletic department and asked him if they could put me in the south end zone because I was in a wheelchair.
Eleven years earlier I had a cancer operation and the chief of police drove me over to the game and picked me up. I was there for one quarter and then went home and back to bed."
Thousands of players have come through and graduated, coaches have come and gone, teams have won and teams have lost, but through it all, Arnie Yarber and Bob Suter have been there. Even though they are so different, in many ways they are a lot alike. Other than columns and the façade of Memorial Stadium, nothing has stood the test of time like these two men.
