Photo by: WVU Athletic Communications
Priceless Family Heirloom Returned After 53 Years
April 07, 2023 09:00 AM | Football, Blog
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Here is a Good Friday story worth reading today.Jill Stevenson, the daughter of West Virginia University football player Bill Underdonk, got a phone call a couple of weeks ago from a dear friend passing along a message to call a mysterious-sounding man from New York. He wanted to speak to someone related to a "W. Underdonk" but would not elaborate on the nature of the call.
Immediately, Jill had a pretty good idea what it was about though.
Fifty-three years ago, her father's 1954 Sugar Bowl watch and other valuable heirlooms, including Jill's grandfather's World War I rifles, were stolen from their family residence in Cheektowaga, New York, a suburb of Buffalo. Cheektowaga was one of the many stops her father made while setting up new 84 Lumber stores around the Northeast.
Jill, one of six Underdonk children spaced 13 months apart, was only 6 at the time, but she remembers the crime scene vividly.
"We pulled into our garage, and it was snowing," she said. "We opened the door and noticed that our trophies were all over the ground in the TV room, and I remember the police coming."
According to Jill, her father was "the least materialistic person" she knew, but having that watch stolen really bothered her mother, Dolores. Bill and Dolores were a couple from the time they were in high school growing up in Moundsville and remained together until his death two years ago.
Dolores always encouraged her husband to attend the Sugar Bowl reunions the team had through the years, and among the players who regularly attended, Bill was the only one who didn't wear his Sugar Bowl watch.
Because he couldn't.
"It bothered my mom more than I think it bothered my dad," Jill said.
Dolores religiously collected her husband's athletic memorabilia, the game programs that are now going for as much as $150 on Ebay and other personal items such a letter Paul Brown sent congratulating him on signing his $6,500 professional contract with the Cleveland Browns.She also kept the trophy he won as the "most outstanding lineman" during the 1957 Senior Bowl. Underdonk was a backup end on the 1954 Sugar Bowl team, appearing in just six games that season, but he developed into one of the team's best two-way linemen in 1956, earning All-Southern Conference honors and honorable mention All-America status during his senior season.
However, military service requirements cut short a possible professional football career and ultimately led to Underdonk's 37-year association with 84 Lumber.
As the years passed, Jill and her sister would occasionally go on Ebay to see if her father's watch might show up on auctions, but to no avail. It was a sentimental piece of their father's memorabilia they figured was lost forever, that is until a couple of weeks ago when Jill received that fateful phone call.
The man, who wishes to remain anonymous, had purchased the watch at a flea market for $15 and began researching its origins on the internet. He searched for a W. Underdog and other names close to that before coming across Underdonk's obituary posted on Beard Mortuary's website.
He called the mortuary and Lisa McComas, who happened to be a dear friend of Jill's, answered. Lisa had handled the funeral arrangements for Jill's father.
"She called me and said, 'Jill, there is some guy from New York who is looking for someone from your dad's family, but he is using all of these other names.' He was looking for Bill Underdog, and we'd heard that all our lives," Jill laughed. "Well, evidently, he found my dad's obituary and he called Lisa and told her that he only wanted to talk to somebody in the family and to call him.
"So, when I called him, I don't know what came over me because I am the fifth child, and he said, 'Well, I have something with a W. Underdonk' and it just got quiet. He wouldn't tell me what it was and then I said, 'Do you have my dad's watch?'"
She knew it had to be her father's long-lost watch because all the other stuff taken from the house didn't have their name on it.
"This guy said he was a watch collector, and he bought it for like $15. We're going to send him a reward and he doesn't know that. I said, 'Sir, how much is this going to cost because we have looked for years on Ebay.'
"He said, 'I can't take anything for something that was stolen' so he sent it back free," she said.
Jill received the watch in the mail recently and didn't tell her 90-year-old mother, who lives a few houses down the street from her in Huntington. She was casually wearing her father's watch when she took her mother out to dinner.
"I said, 'Mom, look at this new piece of jewelry that I got.' She put her hand out and she started bawling."
Since then, Jill has posted pictures of her father's watch on her Facebook page, and everyone has been asking to see it, including me!
Her post was passed along to me by a mutual friend, Tim Bolling.
"When you sent me a message I thought, 'Man, this watch is really getting popular,'" she laughed.
Indeed, it has.
Fifty-three years later, and on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the 1954 Sugar Bowl season, a priceless family heirloom has finally made its way back to its rightful owners.
A happy Good Friday to you and yours!
Mark Kellogg, Sydney Shaw & Gia Cooke | Arizona
Saturday, February 07
Alumni Series | Lori Sherlock
Saturday, February 07
Jimmy King & Tina Griffith | 25 Years of Rowing
Saturday, February 07
Rowing Facility Tour
Saturday, February 07
