Many memories remain as the Buffalo Bills bid farewell to their long-time home, dubbed 'The Ralph'

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) — Chris Clark glances out the window overlooking the Buffalo Bills’ long-time home, Highmark Stadium, and can still picture what the site resembled before it opened in 1973.

The 73-year-old Clark’s memories go beyond the days of tailgating and smashing of tables, comeback victories and miserable defeats, and the likes of Josh Allen, Jim Kelly, Bruce Smith and O.J. Simpson ever stepped foot on the artificial field.

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FILE – The Highmark Stadium, foreground, frames the construction on the new Highmark Stadium, upper right, scheduled to open with the 2026 season, shown before an NFL football game between the Buffalo Bills and the New England Patriots, Oct. 5, 2025, in Orchard Park, N.Y. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

Chris Clark, Buffalo Bills Vice President of Security walks on the field at Highmark Stadium before an NFL football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Buffalo Bills, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Chris Clark, Buffalo Bills Vice President of Security, center, meets with security personnel at Highmark Stadium before an NFL football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Buffalo Bills, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

FILE - The Highmark Stadium before an NFL football game between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals, in Buffalo, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

FILE – The Highmark Stadium before an NFL football game between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals, in Buffalo, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

FILE - The Highmark Stadium, foreground, frames the construction on the new Highmark Stadium, upper right, scheduled to open with the 2026 season, shown before an NFL football game between the Buffalo Bills and the New England Patriots, Oct. 5, 2025, in Orchard Park, N.Y. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

In the 1960s, Monsignor Leo McCarthy would send Clark and a bunch of his South Buffalo friends to the abandoned farm field and former Dupont explosives testing site, where they’d let beagles loose to chase rabbits. The purpose of the exercise was a way to keep the kids out of mischief, said Clark, now the Bills vice president of security.

“What they wouldn’t do to keep me out of jail,” he said with a laugh.

It certainly worked for Clark. In becoming an Erie County Sheriff’s deputy, he’s spent much of his life in and around the stadium, from directing traffic on game days in the 1970s to the current job he’s held since 2006.

And it’s with a sense of melancholy Clark approaches Sunday, when the Bills close the regular season hosting the New York Jets in what could well be the final game at the facility.

“I know there’s a big, beautiful prize across the street,” Clark said, referring to the Bills’ new $2.1 billion stadium set to open next season.

“But it’s like walking out the door of the home you got married,” he added. “We’re almost ready to close the doors on my second home.”

Clark’s enjoyed a front-row seat to everything the stadium has had to offer — including hosting the Rolling Stones, the inaugural NHL Winter Classic in 2008, and where country music stars Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney were arrested for taking off on a sheriff’s department horse during a concert in 2000.

Clark’s witnessed three colleagues survive getting hit by cars while directing traffic. He remembers watching in awe from the roof of the administration building as the Bills ocercame a 32-point deficit for a 41-38 overtime win over the Houston Oilers in a 1992 wild-card playoff.

And he’s handled security for various coaches, general managers, a former President, Bill Clinton, and a pop icon, Taylor Swift.

The bonds and memories made at a stadium affectionately coined “The Ralph,” in honor of the team’s late founder and owner Ralph Wilson, hold true for players and coaches.

“To be honest, when I have to call it Highmark Stadium, I do. But I love, ‘The Ralph.’ I’m like, that’s the perfect name,” Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly said.

The fondest memory over his 11-year career in Buffalo was making his Bills debut in 1986, and taking the field to greet his parents and five brothers in the stands.

Hall of Fame running back Thurman Thomas described the closing of the stadium as bittersweet.

“The only way that we can leave that stadium and leave it the way it should be with all those memories will be the best memory of all: Going to the Super Bowl and winning,” he said.

Such a feat would certainly bring closure to what Thomas and the Kelly-era Bills failed to do in losing four straight Super Bowl appearances in the 1990s.

This year’s team has as good of a shot as any in having already clinched its seventh straight playoff berth, but will open the playoffs on the road. Buffalo is currently the AFC’s No. 7 seeded team and can climb no higher than No. 5.

It’s at the stadium Mary Wilson got her introduction to football when she and Ralph began dating before marrying in 1999.

“All those years and all the people we’ve had in our box, yeah, Ralph did it right,” Mary Wilson said. “They built a great stadium. Every seat was great.”

Though large in having at one time an 80,000-plus seating capacity, the stadium’s three level seating design still provided a sense of intimacy, especially in the lower bowl where fans are mere yards away from the field.

Despite her ties to the past, Wilson looks forward to attending games across the street.

“It’s saying hello to the new,” she said.

For coach Sean McDermott, the future can wait.

“I’m emotional about it,” he said. “I look across out my window and I see the stadium and It’s almost, I don’t want to say sad — it’s not a sad day — but it is a little sad.”

On Sunday, following a 13-12 loss to Philadelphia, McDermott was one of the last to leave the stadium after spending a few extra moments savoring the memories of his nine seasons in Buffalo.

“Life moves fast. And it’s been a special place for a lot of people,” McDermott said, before looking ahead to Sunday. “We owe it to the stadium and to the memories that exist in that stadium to go out the right way here.”

The game provides an historical bookend. Buffalo’s first regular-season game at the facility was a 9-7 win over the Jets in which kicker John Leypoldt hit three field goals.

There’s been many duds and breath-taking outings since.

Fans flooded the field after a 1980 season-opening 17-7 win over Miami, ending Buffalo’s 20-game losing streak to the Dolphins. There was Buffalo’s 51-3 rout of the Raiders in the 1990 season AFC championship game. And what few fans were there in December 2017, witnessed a 13-7 overtime win against Indianapolis in a game played in near whiteout conditions.

Clark laughs at how a former explosive testing and storage site became home to a stadium that’s electrified so many.

Though so many of the faces have changed, the one thing that’s remained the same to Clark is what the Bills and the stadium have meant to a rust-belt community.

“This is an anchor. It’s what brings people together,” he said, noting how many former Buffalonians travel from far and wide to attend games.

“These people spread out to Atlanta and Carolina and where ever, and they’re still Bills fans. And their children are Bills’ fans,” Clark said. “To know how many families, how many couples have met here. It’s like a Hallmark movie.”

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CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland (AP) — Dozens of people are presumed dead and about 100 injured, most of them seriously, following a fire at a bar in a Swiss Alps resort town during a New Year’s celebration, police said Thursday.

“Several tens of people” were killed at the bar, Le Constellation, Valais Canton police commander Frédéric Gisler said during a news conference.

Work is underway to identify the victims and inform their families but “that will take time and for the time being it is premature to give you a more precise figure,” Gisler said, adding that community is “devastated.”

Beatrice Pilloud, Valais Canton attorney general, said it was too early to determine the cause of the fire. Experts have not yet been able to go inside the wreckage.

“At no moment is there a question of any kind of attack,” Pilloud said.

Officials called the blaze an “embrasement généralisé,” a firefighting term describing how a blaze can trigger the release of combustible gases that can then ignite violently and cause what English-speaking firefighters would call a flashover or a backdraft.

“This evening should have been a moment of celebration and coming together, but it turned into a nightmare,” said Mathias Rénard, head of the regional government.

The injured were so numerous that the intensive care unit and operating theater at the regional hospital quickly hit full capacity, Rénard said.

Helicopters and ambulances rushed to the scene to assist victims, including some from different countries, officials said.

Swiss President Guy Parmelin said in a social media post that the government’s “thoughts go to the victims, to the injured and their relatives, to whom it addresses its sincere condolences.”

Thursday was Parmelin’s first day in office as president as the seven members of Switzerland’s government take turns holding the presidency for one year. Out of respect for the families of the victims, he delayed a traditional New Year address to the nation meant to be broadcast Thursday afternoon, Swiss broadcasters SRF and RTS reported.

A witness who spoke to French broadcaster BFMTV described people smashing windows to escape the blaze, some gravely injured, and panicked parents rushing to the scene in cars to see whether their children were trapped inside. The young man said he saw about 20 people scrambling to get out of the smoke and flames and likened what he saw to a horror movie as he watched from across the street.

In a region busy with tourists skiing on the slopes, the authorities have called on the local population to show caution in the coming days to avoid any accidents that could require medical resources that are already overwhelmed.

With high-altitude ski runs at around 3,000 meters (1.86 miles) in the heart of the Swiss Alps, Crans-Montana is one of the winter sports centers of Switzerland’s ski-crazy Valais region, also home to Zermatt, Verbier and other resorts nestled in the snowy peaks and pine forests drawing winter sports enthusiasts from across the planet. The resort is one of the top race venues on the World Cup circuit in Alpine skiing and will host the next world championships over two weeks in February 2027.

In four weeks’ time, the resort will host the best men’s and women’s downhill racers for their last events before going to the Milan Cortina Olympics, which open Feb. 6.

Crans-Montana also is a premium venue in international golf. The Crans-sur-Sierre club stages the European Masters each August on a picturesque course with stunning mountains views. Le Constellation bar is about 250 meters (273 yards) down the street from the golf club.

Crans-Montana is less than 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Sierre, Switzerland, where 28 people including many children were killed when a bus from Belgium crashed inside a Swiss tunnel in 2012.

The Swiss blaze on Thursday came 25 years after an inferno in the Dutch fishing town of Volendam on New Year’s Eve, which killed 14 people and injured more than 200 as they celebrated in a cafe.

Many memories remain as the Buffalo Bills bid farewell to their long-time home, dubbed ‘The Ralph’

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