This is part of a series on the Class of 2021 of the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame. The induction ceremony is Oct. 13 at the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center. For tickets, visit gbshof.com.
Marv Levy and Bill Polian went to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, partly because of their success of building and guiding the Buffalo Bills teams that went to four consecutive Super Bowls in the 1990s.
Right there with them was John Butler, one of three deceased Western New York sports figures who will be enshrined in the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame next month in the Legends category.
Perhaps not as well known to the local sports world but important figures in their own right are the other two enshrinees, Angela Coniglio and Bill Russell.
The Class of 2021 will be honored at the annual induction dinner Oct. 13 in the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center. Tickets are available at GBSHOF.com and are discounted to $95 (or $850 for a table of 10) through Sept. 24.
Butler came to the Bills in May 1987 and made his presence felt right away in his first draft as the team's director of college scouting with the selection of future Hall of Fame running back Thurman Thomas in 1988. In subsequent years as chief scout, director of player personnel and finally as the seventh general manager in team history, he was involved in the selection of a string of players who formed one of the most talented rosters in the NFL throughout the 1990s. In 1989, he found a very useful player in wide receiver Don Beebe from Chadron State in Nebraska in the third round. Despite not drafting earlier than 23rd in seven of the nine first rounds after his arrival, Butler helped the Bills make solid selections – Henry Jones, John Fina, Thomas Smith, Jeff Burris, Ruben Brown, Eric Moulds, Antowain Smith and Antoine Winfield and second rounder Phil Hansen from North Dakota State in 1991.
Born in Chicago and raised in Urbana, Ill., Butler had the knack of divining other products of the Midwest who could play the game. He joined the Marines after high school and spent a four-year tour, including combat duty in Vietnam before enrolling in junior college in California. He moved on to the University of Illinois in his hometown and played one year as a tackle on the 1970 football team before giving up the game because of a knee injury.
After three seasons as an assistant football coach at Evansville, Butler caught the attention of George Allen, then the coach of the Chicago Blitz of the USFL, and was hired as a scouting director and part-time coach. That's where he first became acquainted with Levy and Polian and that led to him joining the Bills after two years as a scout for the San Diego Chargers.
Butler left the Bills after a contract stalemate with owner Ralph Wilson in 2001 and returned to the Chargers as general manager. He died of lung cancer in 2003.
Angela Coniglio
Coniglio came onto the scene as a stellar performer just before the dawning an era of greater acceptance of athletics for girls and women. Coniglio was a pioneer. She was a goalie on a boys hockey team at Amherst Central and stood out in soccer and softball.
She became a Nazareth College sports Hall of Fame member in 1999 after a career in which she was one of the school's all-time scoring leaders in soccer and a three-year outfield starter in softball. She scored 42 goals and posted 31 assists for 115 points in four soccer seasons when the team turned in an overall record of 50-22-5.
No slouch academically, she went on to teach high school biology in Batavia, Auburn and Port Byron before she died in 1996 at age 30.
Bill Russell
The labors of love by the third legend, Bill Russell, perhaps affected as many young athletic lives in Western New York as any other individual.
It's been 42 years since Russell died in 1979, but what he left behind is still enjoyed.
A Boston native who ran on a championship track relay team at Bennett High, Russell founded a championship Buffalo Municipal Hockey League team in 1959 that eventually became the Buffalo Shamrock organization based at Nichols School's Dann Memorial Rink. That organization lives on as the Bisons Hockey Association. He also was a founder and director of the Amherst Hockey Association and was the director of the New York State Amateur Hockey Association and AHAUS (now USA Hockey).
Russell's first experience as a sports organizer was in 1955 when he became the first president of the Central Amherst Little League, which is still in operation.
Next was his leadership as president of the Buffalo Skating Club in 1957 and 1958 when the organization promoted skating competitions and exhibitions by athletes such as Olympians Dick Button and Kit Klein. That led to Russell's involvement in ice hockey. You could say his efforts led to Buffalo planting the flag in the National Hockey League. One of the members of Russell's 1966-67 undefeated state PeeWee championship team was Peter Scamurra, the first Buffalo native to make the NHL.
