EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Without Bob McKeon, the end of Lot L outside MetLife Stadium would have seemed empty Saturday afternoon.

If not for McKeon, the tailgate would not have been possible. There would be no RV carrying Notre Dame fans to Metlife Stadium that day to cheer on the Fighting Irish against the Orange, and the sounds of bagpipes and drums wouldn’t have filled the air.

McKeon was the cook, and Richie Hartnett, the man whose RV provided the spectacle’s home base before SU’s football game against Notre Dame, said McKeon saved his life.

On March 4, 2008, Hartnett, a Franklin Township (New Jersey) policeman, was coming back from a Policemen’s Benevolent Association convention in a cab when it was T-boned. The accident jolted him up into the roof of the cab, breaking his neck in two places. But when Hartnett went to Atlantic City Medical Center, he was released later that night.

“They didn’t even want to give him a neck brace,” McKeon said.
But McKeon stayed with him in his hotel room at Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City and snored all night, keeping Hartnett awake. Unknowingly, McKeon prevented Hartnett from being paralyzed from the neck down. He lay in the same position all night, unable to move or sleep.

The next morning, Hartnett got a call from the hospital.
“They were like, ‘Where are you?’” Hartnett said.

A review of his scans revealed a broken neck. Doctors later said that if Hartnett had turned to his left or his right in his sleep, he would have been paralyzed.

Six years later, Hartnett moves freely.

McKeon sipped Miller Lites inside Hartnett’s RV and said that, despite what his friend says, he’s not actually a professional chef.
“I like doing food that goes with beer and tastes a little salty,” he said.

Unlike most everyone else in the group of 40 that arrived in Lot L on Saturday afternoon, McKeon is not a member of the Central Jersey Emerald Society — a fraternal order of local policemen and firemen of Irish descent. But he is Irish, a Notre Dame fan and a volunteer firefighter in Franklin Township.

Through playing softball on a fire department team over a decade ago, McKeon met many of the same people he was cooking for Saturday, who showed up hours early for the game.

McKeon became the Emerald Society’s go-to event chef after his friends learned that he worked at Marriott hotels as a food purchaser, and often ended up working in the hotel’s kitchen.

They tip him out, call him by his nickname “Belush” and let him drink on the job.

He had spent all Friday afternoon and most of Saturday morning preparing food for his friends. And at about 5:30 p.m., someone shouted “pipes up,” and a crowd gathered around four bagpipe players, a bass drum and a snare.

The spectacle drew the attention of nearby Syracuse University students who had just gotten off a bus in the lot. The bass drummer marched in place, lifting his sticks above his head to let the beats ring out.

McKeon prepared to grill 60 burgers, shrimp in his own special herb sauce and the flank steaks he had been marinating for 24 hours. There were dozens of people in replica Joe Montana jerseys and Orange t-shirts alike, marveling at the Celtic scene.

Said Kenny Daly, an Emerald Society member: “To see my college team play, to root for my team, for Notre Dame, and spend a good day out with my brother in the Emerald Society and the pipe band — just make a great day out of it.”

Published on September 29, 2014 at 12:55 am

Contact Jacob: jmklinge@syr.edu | @Jacob_Klinger_