Everybody called him “Cush.” CU Cush. Anyone who loves the state of Colorado should know his story.
Leaford Cushenbery was a small-town lawyer who bled for the Buffaloes. Gassed up the car and drove in from Kansas for every home game. Cush loved the football team so much, you could get a transfusion of school spirit just by sitting next to him at Folsom Field.
Tradition is born of a love that never dies. At CU home games, ever wonder why the blue sky goes on forever?
On a football Saturday in 1979, a nasty autumn when the Buffaloes lost to lowly Drake and the name of coach Chuck Fairbanks was taken in vain, there was nothing that could erase Cush’s chronic pain. Football was not the source of his agony. A degenerative spinal condition had reduced Cush to a broken shell of a man. Forced into retirement, prayers for health unanswered, the last blow to his aching neck was a rear-end collision while leaving a CU game.
A shotgun, purchased without a word, hid as quietly as a dark secret in Cush’s house.
On that Saturday morning in ’79, Cush kissed his wife as she departed for worship at the local Seventh-day Adventist Church. Professed eternal love. Waved goodbye.
“Ever hear how the road to hell is paved with good intentions? When my father decided something ought to be done, he just did it,” recalled Kit Cushenbery, who grew up at the knee of the best lawyer in Oberlin, Kan. “He had watched ‘The Phil Donahue Show’ where the guest was Jack Kevorkian or one of those doctors who advocated suicide as an honorable thing to do if you’re terminally ill.
“After my mother left for church, my father called 911 and then blew his head off.”
Cush served in World War II, graduated from CU. Raised a family. Made a big difference in his little town. Left behind more good than he took with him, a fair way to tally the score on any life.
A kid raised in Cush’s house – where the walls rattled with loud demands for the radio to reveal “Who’s got the ball?” if the Buffs fumbled – grew up a sports fan. It was as natural as love passed through the generations.
As the young son of a devoted CU alum, everybody called him “Little Cush.”
His loyalty to CU still runs prouder than Ralphie the Buffalo rumbling on the turf.
Kit Cushenbery is now 54 years old. Has paid his taxes in Colorado and called this state home all his adult life. Watched new citizens arrive in numbers that defy imagination and clog highways. After three long decades working for the telephone company, a heartless corporation handed Little Cush a pink slip.
“I’ve been unemployed for the last year, and haven’t had much money to pay for anything other than my monthly bills,” Cushenbery said.
When the Buffaloes open the season against Colorado State on Saturday, however, count on hearing Little Cush cheering from way up in the 59th row at Folsom Field, where he has not attended a game since 2001.
It has not been an easy time of late to wear CU colors. Blame scandalous talk of a football program gone wild. Or blame the media for stories that ended in resignations of university officials.
In a state populated by indifferent transients and bedroom communities of big houses and small trees, the Buffs don’t always feel at home. Seats in the stadium often are empty on game day.
“The reason my family became such devoted University of Colorado fans was because of my father’s loyalty to old CU,” Cushenbery said. “The reason the residents of this state don’t have a burning passion for a football feud between (the Buffs and Rams) is because the majority of Colorado residents are from another state, and their fathers were loyal to another institution.”
Every family has skeletons in the closet, gathering dust on the same shelf as old photo albums full of smiling faces. Football tries to divide the world into heroes and enemies on the basis of school allegiance, with no gray area allowed. Life is usually a more complicated game.
So Cushenbery remembers both the awe a 9-year-old boy felt as his hand was swallowed in the grip of CU All-American Joe Romig, just as he recalls his father telling how personal checks covertly mailed to a drugstore on the Hill in Boulder helped finance a Buffaloes’ stampede to the Orange Bowl in the 1961 season.
Ten years ago, Cushenbery said he reluctantly surrendered the family’s prime seats at Folsom Field when the CU booster club began requiring an annual $1,000 “donation” as proof of loyalty, as if driving all the way to Florida to watch the Buffs beat Notre Dame 10-9 for the 1990 national championship had not been sufficient down payment.
All families fight. The strong ones figure out a way to forgive.
“Perhaps sometime in the future, when we have two or three generations of Coloradans that have graduated from our state schools, we can boast of a rich rivalry and sold-out stadiums,” said Cushenbery, who plans to sit alongside his daughter in Section 205 when the Buffs play Colorado State. “Until then, I will be proud of both institutions for running Grade A programs.”
Anywhere in the American West where tumbleweeds blow across dusty soil, only the hardiest souls put down deep roots, because the wind invites the weak to move on when that endless blue sky suddenly disappears behind dark clouds.
The Buffs are lucky to have Little Cush on their side after all these years.
A football history is only as rich as the people who lived it. Loving the home team. No matter what.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-820-5438 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
