A story of fathers and sons, war and peace, and second chances
BUFFALO FIVE BROKE THE LAW PROTESTING THE VIETNAM WAR IN 1971. A VENERABLE JUDGE THEN BROKE FROM CONVENTION.
Sunlight trickles through the atrium at the Old Post Office in Buffalo. The building is now Erie Community College'’s city campus. (Photo: Timothy T. Ludwig, USA TODAY Sports)
Erik Brady, USA TODAY Sports
November 24, 2016
BUFFALO — Jeremiah Horrigan’s heart sank when he saw whirling red lights reflected through the arched windows of the Gothic Revival government building where he was trespassing. He had a miniature crowbar for cracking the locks on file cabinets filled with Selective Service System records. And he understood — standing there in his underwear — that his life was over.
Horrigan and his antiwar confederates were burgling Buffalo’s Old Post Office building on a steamy August night in 1971. They’d shed their clothes because it was hot as Hades in the dust-cloaked attic where they’d hidden for hours until nightfall. They’d emerged with their faces streaked in grime, like Lenten ashes, and felt giddy exhilaration as their scheme unfolded precisely as they’d planned — until that moment when they saw those refracted red lights, pulsing like a telltale heart on the stonework.
Now police stormed in, guns drawn, their shouts ricocheting off the cavernous stone walls. A pair of armed FBI agents, who’d been called away from a summer party, arrived in Bermuda shorts and sandals. And the Buffalo Five, as they’d soon be known, were quickly thrown to the terrazzo floor, placed in handcuffs and arrested.
This peculiar tableau of trespassers caught with their pants down and federal agents in tourist attire called to mind a mix of Monty Python and Inspector Clouseau, popular comedic stylings of the era. But this was no joke: Federal charges beckoned. Prison terms loomed. And they hadn’t even gotten to destroy any draft records.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2016/11/24/buffalo-five-jeremiah-horrigan/94128312/
Long story with a couple of videos.