Buffalo Bills football fans might remember Patrick J. McGroder Jr. as a force in paving the way for the team to take up residence here decades ago.
His son, Patrick J. McGroder III, has spent his life in another arena - the courtroom, where the St. Joseph's Collegiate Institute graduate has won cases that have thrust him into the top tier of lawyers in Phoenix, his home of 40 years.
There was the successful battle to force Ford Motor Co. to fix Crown Victoria police cars that were known to explode on impact. And there was the fight to keep an embattled Catholic bishop from going to prison in a fatal hit-and-run crash.
But none of those high-profile cases matches the one that now pits McGroder against President Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in the government's attempt to track guns sold to Mexican drug cartels.
Gun shops in the Phoenix area, with the blessing of agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, sold as many as 2,000 weapons to "straw buyers" who turned around and delivered the firearms to members of the Mexican drug gangs, McGroder says. When one of those guns ended up killing U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry, outrage followed.
The intent of "Operation Fast and Furious" was to lead investigators to the cartels' power brokers who rely on secrecy, but the investigation unraveled.
Obama invoked executive privilege when the congressional investigation began, shielding Holder from releasing all of the Justice Department's documents from Fast and Furious. The Republican-controlled House fired back by holding the attorney general in civil and criminal contempt of Congress, in addition to filing a lawsuit earlier this month to force release of the material.
In the middle of all this high-level jousting is McGroder.
He has filed wrongful-death proceedings in federal and state courts on behalf of the Terry family. "Brian was killed by a pack of outlaws along the border in December 2010, and the government has not taken responsibility," he said, adding that he is determined to obtain justice for Terry's survivors.
At 66, the husband and father of three grown children says his Buffalo roots push him to succeed.
"My successes relate directly to being from Buffalo. I was raised and infused with a sense of values, ethics and hard work that are emblematic of what I believe the people of Buffalo stand for," McGroder said, adding that he often returns home to visit relatives.
Local attorney Terrence M. Connors said McGroder's rising star speaks well for Buffalo. "The higher he rises in legal circle makes Western New York look all the better because he never forgets his roots," Connors said.
For the McGroder family in Buffalo, it started in the late 1800s when the attorney's paternal grandparents left County Monaghan, Ireland, and opened a grocery store on Busti Avenue, on Buffalo's West Side, which at the time was home to a large Irish immigrant population.
The McGroders wasted no time making their mark. Patrick Jr., a high school football star, went on to serve as a senior vice president and interim general manager of the Bills; his sister Alice became a member of the Grey Nuns and was chief financial officer at D'Youville College.
Another brother, Elmer, graduated from the University of Buffalo Medical School and served as chief of staff at the former Deaconess Hospital, where he was a surgeon. Other siblings rose to high positions in the newspaper and insurance industries during Buffalo's prosperous years.
So with all that momentum, McGroder said it was natural for him to carry on the family tradition of high achievement, after graduating from the University of Notre Dame and later the University of Arizona College of Law. Then, there is his ties to the Buffalo sports scene.
Not only was his father instrumental in arranging for Ralph Wilson's football team to have its first home at War Memorial Stadium, but Patrick Jr., who served as the City of Buffalo's sports coordinator, also became a minority owner of the Sabres when they arrived in 1970.
"I'm an avid Bills and Sabres fan and host a number of Buffalonians when those teams come to Phoenix and play the Cardinals or the Coyotes."

email: lmichel@buffnews.com