Veronica Borjon heard about the jacket Sunday morning. She received a text message from a Buffalo Bills fan in Atlanta, a woman named Julie Edmondson who goes by “Billerina” and notes her Buffalo-born grandfather was such a passionate disciple that he once felt a little lousy while watching a game in which the Bills trailed by 30, stayed with it until the end and found out later he had survived a heart attack.
Edmondson is the kind of loyalist Borjon meets as the longtime partner of the late Ezra Castro, a Dallas mortician who became a beloved legend as Pancho Billa, the Texas-raised Bills fan whose long struggle with cancer galvanized the nationwide coalition of Bills supporters known as #BillsMafia.
"Billerina" told Borjon to check the Bills Twitter feed, because Josh Allen was pictured there wearing Pancho’s jacket.
Borjon paused from helping her kids – 8-year-old Gino and 5-year-old Lourdes – as they prepared to watch what turned into a 56-26 cruise for the Bills past longtime division rival Miami. She glanced at Twitter and there was Allen, wearing a military-style jacket that proclaims “Pancho’s Army,” an idea dreamed up by Bills fan Anthony Trifilo, 39, out of admiration for Castro.
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Trifilo received a blessing from Castro and Borjon a few years ago to create an "army" that honors their ideals. He and Castro met when Trifilo's 8-year-old son Massimo ran up to Pancho Billa outside Bills Stadium, and the guy took the time to make a big deal over the child. In 2019, after Castro died, Trifilo sent gifts to Gino and Lourdes at Christmas, and last year he played a major role in a T-shirt sale to support Borjon and her family at the yuletide.
As for the "Pancho's Army" jackets, Trifilo, a union painter, said he began customizing them by hand, giving some away and selling others at cost. Borjon received one as a gift from a friend. Several Bills have jackets, Trifilo said, including a record-breaking young quarterback. Sunday, speaking with reporters after the game, Allen said he grabbed the jacket that morning after seeing it in his closet and thinking about Castro:
“What better way to have him recognized again than to wear it and have everyone talk about him again?”
Mission accomplished. When Borjon saw the images, she began to weep.
She immediately recalled a powerful dream from a few nights ago, in which Castro was with her, sick with cancer. The couple learned the Bills had earned their way to the Super Bowl, Castro's vision since even before he met Borjon in high school in El Paso, and the guy once asked in real life to call a draft pick for the Bills was asked in the dream to join the captains for the coin flip at football's biggest game.
Borjon woke up to elation, and then absence.
“It made me believe,” she said. “I have a strong feeling the Bills are going to the Super Bowl.”
Her life with Ezra breaks into two dimensions. There is the ongoing phenomenon of the Pancho story, the way a little kid in the 1980s in El Paso – challenged by his dad to choose a favorite team – looked around the NFL and picked the Bills, because their colors most closely matched the Mexican flag.
Castro was also a giant fan of the luchadores, or Mexican professional wrestlers. The Pancho Billa persona began when Castro bought a Bills luchadore mask at a "swap meet" near El Paso. He wrangled a better price from the dealer, arguing no one was in line in Texas to purchase Bills gear.
From there, it took on a life of its own. Castro locked in with Pinto Ron – renowned for his fabled tailgating ketchup and mustard showers in the parking lot – and became an informal part of a troupe of devoted Bills fans who traveled to road games throughout the country. One of his closest friends was Captain Buffalo, a teacher who does not reveal his true identity, hiding it behind sunglasses, face paint and a Flintstones-style water buffalo hat.
They were so close that the Captain – joined by such Texas-based Bills stalwarts as neuropsychologist Katie O’Brien and Stuart Renfro – kept vigil with Castro and Borjon at Houston’s MD Anderson Cancer Center during some of his final and most trying days of tests and treatment, in which talk of the improving Bills was a way to keep Castro's mind off his struggle.
Borjon knows people across the country miss the jubilant guy who shouted "Viva los Bills!" at the draft. For her part, she misses the Ezra who deeply loved his kids and was passionate about his job, the true believer in education who revered his parents and brothers and was about as much fun as possible to imagine on a dance floor, a dad who chose not to smoke or drink.
At the Anderson cancer center, not long before his death in the spring of 2019, Castro expressed similar gratitude toward Borjon.
“She’s the one watching our kids when I’m at games," he said. "She’s the one who’s with me when the cameras go away. The focus is on me, but it should be on her.”
Castro met Josh Allen twice, Borjon recalled, once at training camp near Rochester and once while she was with him in Buffalo. Last year, she watched with appreciation – not surprise – as the #BillsMafia donated more than $1 million to John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital after the death of Allen’s grandmother, and she said the quarterback's response explains why he fits so well in the jacket.
“He’s an amazing, humble, kindhearted human being,” she said. “The fans rallied behind Ezra and they rallied behind Josh, and they remind you there’s still goodness in the world.”
Sunday, Borjon followed her typical game day routine. Gino and Lourdes made a little “shoutout” to Bills fans on Instagram, and then the family masked up and went to the Hideaway, a tavern that is home to the Dallas-Fort Worth Bills Backer group that Castro served as president for years, a place where Borjon and the kids can stake out some distance and watch the game from a table.
It was impossible, seeing these Bills at full steam, for Borjon not to think about what it would have meant to Castro. Afterward, as she does each week, she took the children to Target for a small surprise, pausing before she went inside to reflect on Allen’s gesture.
Her focus is on Gino and Lourdes, who dearly miss the presence of their father. She said Gino has started to quietly do small tasks around the house – whether fixing cereal in the morning or taking out the trash – because she knows he is trying, at 8, to do what his dad would have wanted.
Their house is still filled with Bills stuff, and they have a full-size sculpture of a bison in their back yard, and they just experienced their second yuletide – a time of year Castro absolutely loved – without him.
All of that remained fresh when she saw Josh Allen in the jacket.
“Oh yes,” she said, “I was feeling very emotional today. I cried watching the Bills when it was touchdown after touchdown after touchdown, heartbroken and happy, feeling every single emotion there is.
“This is his team and his passion and he should be here seeing it, in person, with his family. I get so mad that he’s gone but I’m so happy with the love everybody shows me, and to see Josh Allen in that jacket? It comforts us, and I know what Ezra would want.
“The love, I think it’s what keeps us going. It’s in the players and the fans and the organization and the city of Buffalo – oh, I miss the city of Buffalo – and it’s in everybody, he’s in everybody. To see what I saw today? Ezra is still with us.”
