A quick addendum to my column last weekend on Joanie “Mama J” Podkowinski DeKoker, a retired pharmacist who lives in Camillus and is considered — even within the hallowed ranks of the vast alliance often called the “Bills Mafia” — one of the greatest Bills fans on the planet.
My column described how DeKoker had attended 258 consecutive Bills regular-season and playoff games, home and away — just before the high-stakes National Football League playoff game in Jacksonville last Sunday made it 259 in a row.
DeKoker was there, at EverBank Stadium — the “Godmother of the Bills Mafia” as my old friend Dave Levinthal, a terrific journalist and longtime Bills fan, calls her.
She said she was using her rosary beads — a rosary in Bills colors, which she bought years ago on the urging of her close friend “Pancho Billa,” the late and beloved Ezra Castro — to pray relentlessly throughout the tense fourth quarter, when Bills QB Josh Allen led two electric touchdown drives and a Tre White-tipped interception by Bills safety Cole Bishop on the final Jaguars possession sealed the 27-24 win for Buffalo.
Yet the euphoric celebration afterward led to what DeKoker described on Facebook as “one of the best moments of my life.”
She was physically lifted into a stadium suite just above where she had been seated — only to be embraced there by Allen’s mother, LaVonne, and greeted by LaVonne’s husband Joel, Allen’s dad.
“I’ve met them before,” DeKoker said, “but not like that.”
DeKoker said she was in the stadium’s second level, alongside old friend Ramsey Perry — another Bills loyalist who, like Joanie, began following the team on the road long before the Bills were winning — when the game ended and somber Jacksonville fans quickly filed out. DeKoker looked up and noticed a hubbub among Buffalo fans, surging toward the wall of the suite above them.
Curious, DeKoker and Perry started climbing the stairs. LaVonne Allen, from the suite, somehow spotted DeKoker in the crowd — then again, DeKoker’s every-inch-of-her-Bills game day wardrobe kind of jumps out — and LaVonne waved her arm, meaning:
Come on up.
“She loved my outfit,” said DeKoker, dressed from her head (signature cowboy hat covered in Bills pins) to her toes (Bills socks and sneakers) in Buffalo gear. Perry, a guy who paints his face blue and red beneath a wig and bison horns, was among the fans who lifted her over the wall of the suite, where DeKoker and LaVonne shared a spontaneous and emotional embrace.
They exchanged some fast stories — Allen’s mom told DeKoker that she reminded her of a fan of similar passion from her son’s college days in Wyoming, while DeKoker quickly recounted how she said the rosary — which she only gets out, she said, at playoff games.
“She (LaVonne) was crying, she was so happy” about the victory, said DeKoker — who did not want to overstay the moment, and soon descended back into the stands.
DeKoker — well-known among the Bills faithful for her warmth, humor and kindness – told me the Jacksonville story from her Camillus home Tuesday morning. Raised in Cheektowaga – DeKoker’s family moved to greater Syracuse years ago, when she was 13 – she’s catching her breath before leaving for Colorado to watch the Bills take on the Denver Broncos, the top American Football Conference seed in the playoffs.
She offers a keen and insightful analysis of what Buffalo is up against, and she appreciates how the Bills will again need to play at a superb level if they hope to win. Put it all together, and there’s one thing DeKoker knows for sure:
When she arrives at Empower Field at Mile High for her 260th Bills game in a row, so will that playoff rosary.
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