John Poleon Field.
Sprawled out in bed the other night, thinking about the events of the day, I kept going back to the same idea.
Only a few hours earlier, the Buffalo Bills and the New Era Cap apparel company had announced a joint agreement on naming rights for New Era Field will be coming to an end, and the stadium in Orchard Park will soon be known by a new name.
What it guaranteed, on a whimsical level, is that countless people with Western New York roots would start doing what I am doing in this space, which is to daydream out loud about potential names for the stadium.
Yet it also meant this entire exercise is exactly that: A daydream. Wednesday’s statement made no bones about it, noting bluntly that “the Bills are beginning the process of pursuing a new naming rights partner for the stadium."
People are also reading…
In other words, we should not kid ourselves about the way these things work. As happened with Rich Products almost 50 years ago and again with New Era in 2016, the stadium – especially during the financial anxiety of a pandemic – will almost certainly end up being named after some enterprise willing to make a hefty commitment in return for the prominence of being identified with the National Football League in Buffalo.
So all our public how-about-this-name conversations are really about taking a moment to remember what we value, hearkening back to that long ago time when the names of stadiums or ballparks served as civic memorials.
Still, the discussion itself is worth it, simply because of the character and quality of the names we say out loud.
In bed, listening to the humming fan while staring at the ceiling on a warm night, I thought of a long list of magnificent women and men of deep influence and inspiration in this community – people who were selfless, farsighted and courageous – all names that would serve as points of grace above the gates.
From those esteemed ranks, allow me to make my case for John Poleon – a guy whose name might not be so familiar – even if we all know how this will most likely play out.
To me, the honor at least is in the discussion that goes with the offering – in the same way that many of us dreamed out loud two years ago of our downtown ballpark being renamed for the legendary Luke Easter, when we already understood the decision would involve the kind of business process that led to Sahlen Field.
As for Poleon, he died in April from Covid-19. He was an X-ray technologist at Buffalo General Medical Center, and he is believed to be the first front-line medical worker in Western New York who was lost to the virus, during this pandemic.
While that alone gives him a lasting place in civic history, it is only one piece of why I think his story summons more than enough power to belong on the wall of a stadium.
The central reason? His life exemplifies the best elements and aspirations of the people who have jammed the place so many times since it went up in Orchard Park, 47 years ago.
Many of them understand how it feels to spend a long shift on their feet, which means they will appreciate why John Poleon's co-workers loved him so much.
He died at 64 from the virus, even as he was closing in on retirement. As Taneshia Davis – a colleague and close friend of Poleon’s – told me a few months ago, he had plenty of unused sick time. Poleon, she said, could have stayed home, relaxed and still received his paycheck, and no one would have blamed him at a time of such risk.
Instead, he went to work because it was who he was. With nonemergency surgeries shut down, he did whatever his supervisors asked him to do, including cleaning public corridors and elevators. He continued to demonstrate the quiet ethic that gave him such resonance with his companions on the job, the quality recalled by friend after friend when I spoke to them after his death.
Always, they said, he was ready to step in and help. If he saw someone was overwhelmed or wearing down on the job, he would quietly say, "Go take a break." He was well-known for the kind of gesture beloved to anyone who understands the weariness at the end of a long shift, which means it is understood by a lot of people around here:
Often, when his colleagues were near the end of a working day, he would tell them to get out of there, and he would finish up whatever tasks they were doing.
The list of attributes goes back to his youth. Poleon was a veteran of the first Gulf War, a union guy who went to Trocaire College to earn the degree that allowed him to be an X-ray technologist.
He was a loyal Bills, Sabres and Bandits fan who was always ready to rehash a game as he went about his work. Poleon was also the kind of person who hated to see tired colleagues exchanging harsh words, and he used gentle humor – including a tongue-in-cheek version of “Kumbaya” – to intervene when he saw workplace friction veering toward angrier conflicts.
When the pandemic came to this region – bringing with it a level of danger that has left more than 800 dead in Western New York – Poleon quietly provided an everyday example of the courage showed by thousands of others in this region who are handling front-line service jobs.
With an understanding of what it meant, he went to work. Even when he himself became a Covid-19 patient in intensive care, just before doctors placed him on a ventilator, he expressed frustration to his friends that he was on his back and could not get up and help.
Thinking of the whole idea of a person's name as a public tribute – and the way the honoree ought to illuminate the qualities we revere – this is a man whose life and death point toward a basic truth.
Some of the qualities we admire most in Buffalo and Western New York rise from the communion forged by working people – the ones you see at bus stops at 6 a.m. on bitter mornings, the ones on their feet for eight hours or more doing thankless jobs, the ones who do what it takes for years to raise their kids and pay their bills.
Poleon, an everyday guy in the greatest sense, was in those ranks. Like so many others, he showed up for work at a hospital every day amid a medical crisis, and he did a job that received few accolades, yet brought the most selfless of all results.
He gave his life for his community. Thinking of that truth, even if we know this stadium suggestion will almost certainly not come to be, allow me to at least place it on the record as a tribute.
If someone were to ask you to name one place that brings together this whole region, think how fitting it would be if you could say: John Poleon Field.
