MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – For those of us who work at the WVU Coliseum, the two most familiar first names around here have always been Joyce and Tammy - not Jerry and Hot Rod.
 
Joyce and Tammy are of course Joyce Bucklew and Tammy Cavender, who combined to contribute more than 91 years of loyal service to West Virginia University Athletics. 
 
On Dec. 30, Joyce concluded her 50^th year working for the department and 53^rdoverall at West Virginia University when she opted to participate in WVU's Voluntary Separation Program.
 
Tammy did likewise following a tenure that spanned 41 years dating back to 1978 when she was hired fresh out of high school to work with Mountaineer coaches Dale Ramsburg, John McGrath, Stan Romanoski and Fred Liechti.
 
Former Mountaineer baseball standout Jerry Mahoney, a 41-year department staffer, and Sue Davis, the "youngster" of the group having worked just 26 years in athletics, also took part in the university-wide program.
 
Add recently retired Kim Calandrelli's 36 years of service to Mountaineer football and that's a combined 194 years of loyalty to WVU Athletics, which is truly remarkable.
 
Joyce worked here the longest once she was pried away from the University's Controller's Office to handle payroll for the department in 1969.
 
To give you an idea of how long ago that was, they were still cleaning up Max Yasgur's farm from Woodstock when Joyce started working for athletics.
 
She shared an office with Charley Hockenberry and Paul Miller in the bowl end of old Mountaineer Field right underneath where the bridge linked the downtown campus to Sunnyside.
 
"I can remember (the fans) used to break our windows all of the time when the football team would lose and, eventually, they had to install plexiglass because they got tired of replacing them," Bucklew recalled.
 
Joyce was also around to see an overly plump likeness of Bobby Bowden hanging from a tree in Woodburn Circle.

Back then, West Virginians didn't think twice about devouring their own and for many years, Bucklew was actually in possession of the dummy representing Bowden.
 
"Ralph Kennedy, from the maintenance crew, brought it over and I kept it," she recalled. "I have a picture of my son, Timmy, wearing the helmet they used when they hung him."
 
When Joyce began in athletics, departments across the country were predominantly male and Caucasian.
 
Eleanor Lamb was the only female staffer listed in the WVU athletics department directory in 1969, and it remained that way until the mid-1970s when Janice Stocker was hired as assistant athletic director to oversee the recently created women's sports program and to serve as the school's liaison to the AIAW.
 
In 1977, Debbie Coles was hired to manage the ticket office and soon more women were being entrusted with greater responsibility within the department.
 
Shelly Poe was named the school's sports information director in 1989 – one of the first females in NCAA history appointed to publicize a major college football program – and soon afterward, Joyce and Tammy were given additional responsibilities as well.
 
Tammy took on the role of travel coordinator in the early 1990s right around the same time Joyce was tabbed director of parking for the WVU Coliseum and Mountaineer Field.
 
"At the time, we had a lot of issues with parking, and I told Eddie (Pastilong), 'I can fix this parking,'" Bucklew recalled. "He said, 'Write me up a proposal' and I did. He said, 'It's yours.'"
 
When Cavender was working with the varsity coaches, one of her many duties was distributing to the individual teams the mountain of airline tickets that arrived each week from National Travel.
 
At the time, coaches were responsible for their own team travel, which became very burdensome when they were trying to focus on their teams.
 
"We used to have to sort the tickets out for each team and occasionally we'd have to change names," Cavender noted. "We'd just write the new name on a ticket and send it back to the travel agency and they would bring us a new one."
 
It was clear to Pastilong that one person was needed to oversee everything so he appointed Cavender the department's first-ever travel coordinator.
 
"That's when we finally got a handle on what everyone was doing," she said.
 
When Cavender began coordinating team travel West Virginia was still in the Atlantic 10 Conference, which meant more bus trips than commercial flights, but that changed when the Mountaineers joined the Big East in 1996.
 
Regarding football, it always required a more hands-on approach from Cavender because of the number of people traveling to games. The football trips were usually the most stressful for her, particularly during those rare instances when things didn't go smoothly.
 
Once, following a game at Temple, the plane that was supposed to pick up the team in Philadelphia couldn't get out of Newark. Consequently, the travel party was forced to return to the hotel where it had been staying only to see it occupied by a horde of Miami Dolphins fans.
 
The Dolphins were playing the Philadelphia Eagles the next day at Veterans Stadium and all of the available rooms in the hotel were booked.
 
A ballroom was secured for the players to use until the plane arrived and could transport them back to Pittsburgh.
 
Another time, Jack Fleming was mistakenly left at the Pittsburgh Airport because he always boarded the plane from the airport terminal instead of traveling with the team and wasn't aware the plane had left the gate. Cavender had to hastily make arrangements to get Fleming on a commercial flight so he could get to the game on time.
 
"Jack was not very happy about that," she laughed.
 
The trip from hell for Cavender happened in the mid-2000s following a victory at Rutgers.
 
As soon as the game was over, one thing after another went wrong. After the team had boarded the plane and it was preparing to taxi onto the runway, the pilot came on the intercom system to inform them that too much fuel had been put into the plane and it was too heavy to land in Clarksburg.
 
His solution was to sit on the tarmac and run the engines to burn off the extra fuel.
 
Unfortunately, the time it required to burn off the extra fuel was more than the allotted hours for the flight crew, so the flight had to be canceled and no additional crews were available to complete the trip.
 
The buses transporting the team to the airport were already on their way to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to pick up another group, so the team was basically abandoned in the Newark airport.
 
Frantically, Cavender called every bus company she could while the late Russ Sharp was looking for any available hotels that could take an entire football team.
 
Neither was having any success.
 
Finally, Sharp called his counterpart at Rutgers during the middle of the night, waking up his infant baby.
 
"You could hear the baby screaming through the telephone when he was talking to him," Cavender laughed.
 
They eventually found a bus company to take the team to a Holiday Inn back in Piscataway about 45 minutes from the airport.
 
In the meantime, some members of the travel party rented vans to return to Morgantown, one of them being Tony Caridi, who had mistakenly taken Cavender's suitcase.
 
Tammy had nothing to wear for the return trip the next day.
 
"Nothing, zero, and no makeup either," she said.
 
When the team checked into the Holiday Inn well after midnight, coach Rich Rodriguez's patience was running thin.
 
"Rich said to me, 'I'm only going to tell you one thing, when we get back to that airport tomorrow at 1 o'clock that plane better be ready to take off!'" Cavender said.

It wasn't.
 
No sooner had the team boarded the plane to conclude its odyssey when the pilot announced over the intercom that one of the tires on the plane had deflated overnight because of the extra weight.
 
A service crew was needed to re-inflate the tire before it was safe to take off.
 
One hour gradually became two when Cavender finally got up from her seat and banged on the cockpit door.
 
"Where is the can of air? I will go and get it myself!" she pleaded.
 
The team finally returned to Clarksburg at 5 p.m. on Sunday evening – a full two days after first departing.
 
"I'll never forget that one," she laughed.
 
There are many things Cavender won't forget. The same goes for Bucklew.
 
"I'm going to miss all of the friendships I've made in the department through the years," Joyce said. "(Working in athletics) has afforded my family a lot of travel, and they've got to do things they probably wouldn't have done (otherwise)."
 
Bucklew said retirement is going to allow her the opportunity to finally catch up on some things that need to be done around the house.
 
Tammy said she plans to do some traveling and visit her daughter, Whitney, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, more frequently.
 
Both said they will continue to follow the teams closely. 
 
When you've invested this much time and energy in it as they have through the years, it's impossible not to.

Enjoy your well-deserved retirement, ladies!