As soon as I arrived on campus, I threw myself into playing football. I was so proud to be playing for the University of Missouri. What a team we had in 1978. The highlights were shutting out Notre Dame at their home field with Joe Montana as their quarterback, beating Nebraska at Husker Stadium, and finishing the season by winning the Liberty Bowl over a strong LSU team in Memphis. It was just a wonderful experience all around. I was strong and healthy; being far away from home suited me. I felt like I was heading in a good direction, and for the first time, I had a sense of what I wanted to do with my life. Even though I was taking courses in nutrition, agriculture, and business (a mixture of all the subjects I loved), all I really wanted to do was play football. When I wasn’t in class or on the field, I was living in a dorm room with my best friend from St. Louis. Everything just felt easygoing and relaxed. I was no longer coming home to an awkward or stressful situation every day. By the time I left Grant’s Farm, I was totally convinced that my father was going to die. But word came from back home that he was rallying. I also heard that he and his secretary, Margaret, were an official item.
It was truly the perfect time to be away. I felt more at home at college than I did in my own home. That’s what I loved and appreciated most about Mizzou. I wasn’t ever lonely. Even though I wasn’t in an official fraternity, being a part of the football team made me feel like I was. I had so many friends, I could hardly keep up. I lived for the weekend—the games and the parties that followed (and thanks to the movie Animal House, wild toga keggers were all the rage). All these years later, I can still feel the exhilaration of Saturday afternoons and running out of the tunnel to hear the roar of seventy thousand people cheering us on. It made my hair stand on end every time, and just thinking about it today makes it do the same. At night there was ample beer and beautiful college girls. I didn’t have a care in the world. It was the kind of start to a college career every boy dreams about, but it wasn’t a dream. I was living it. It didn’t even register that my parents weren’t there in the stands on game day. Dad was off with Margaret now, and Mom had her Italian boyfriend keeping her busy. Still, I felt like Grant’s Farm had prepared me well for life on a college campus. In many ways, the “bubble” that was college was similar to the one I’d lived in on Grant’s Farm. I felt protected and special in both places.
As a football player, I enjoyed the celebrity status that came with wearing a Mizzou uniform. For the first time in my life, I felt like this was something that I did all by myself, without riding the coattails of my father. He didn’t even have an interest in football. This was all me. But some aspects of living on the farm I took with me. Just like at home, I made friends like it was my business. I became friendly with all the coaches and all the hardworking people on campus. I had been raised to understand that I wasn’t better than anyone just because we had more money than most people. Even though the Busch name meant something to every Missourian, it didn’t change the way I behaved. I was taught to respect everyone. Nevertheless, I was still very much shielded from the hard truths of the real world as a football player on campus.
Of course, when I wasn’t playing games or when we had a holiday, I went home—mostly to duck hunt and visit the farm. Grant’s Farm was only about two hours from Mizzou, even if it felt like a million miles. Andy was playing high school football now, and I enjoyed going to see him play. Like most kids, I went home for the summer and worked on the farms (both Grant’s and Belleau) and played as much polo as I could. Adolphus, Andy, and I played together, and we won the Inter-Circuit Cup, which qualified us for Nationals that September. I was supposed to be back at Mizzou in August for football training; however, Adolphus was adamant. He said, “Come on, you’re going to get hurt playing football. Let’s go to Nationals.”
I was torn between my love of football and college and playing polo. But in the end, my brother’s persuasion was hard to resist. Reluctantly, I agreed to move back home. I called Warren Powers, who was the head coach at Mizzou at the time, and told him that I wasn’t going to be returning. I was raised to honor my responsibilities and let people know personally when I couldn’t do so. He was as nice as could be.
“Thank you for your time,” he said. “We had great hopes for you and really appreciated having you on our team.”
It was a difficult phone call for me. I knew I wasn’t the star of the team, but the coaches made me feel like a big part of it. I also knew the coaches would be disappointed. Thankfully for me, Coach Powers made it easy.
In the fall of 1979, I enrolled at the University of Missouri–St. Louis (UMSL), thirty minutes from Grant’s Farm, and went straight into training for polo Nationals. Within a matter of months, my entire life spiraled. During a practice match, I broke my arm. So much for Adolphus’s comment that I would get hurt in football and not polo. The irony! My cousin had to sub in and play in Nationals on my behalf.
Being unable to compete in either polo or football was painful. To add insult to injury, college was different at UMSL. Without the football team, it wasn’t as much fun. In fact, I hated it. I went from feeling like I had my whole life figured out to suddenly not having any idea what I wanted to do. I hated living at home at Grant’s Farm too. Margaret was there all the time. Over the next two years, she took control of everything and continued to do her best to separate Dad from us kids. In many ways, I felt like I was losing the Grant’s Farm I’d grown up on. While living at Mizzou, I’d felt like I belonged everywhere, but now I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. I felt like a stranger in my own home.
My father secretly married Margaret in 1981. She was now, indeed, what she had hoped to become all along: the new “queen of the castle.” And she wanted nothing to do with the former queen’s children.
At one point, Margaret thought it would be a great idea if she and my father bought themselves a home in Arizona. They shipped all the horses—even the driving horses and mules—out there. Margaret thought the dry Arizona air would be better for Dad’s health. The night before they left, I overheard her talking to Joseph, the butler. She said to him, “Now you watch these kids, and you make sure they don’t do anything to or take anything from this house! Make sure nothing is destroyed. If they let anything happen to this house and this farm, you call us right away! We’ll take care of the situation!”
Joseph, to my shock, replied, “Yes, ma’am. Yes, Mrs. Busch, yes. I will make sure I will watch them very, very closely.”
I was disgusted with Joseph for believing that we would disrespect Grant’s Farm in any way. We loved our home. There was no way we would ever abuse it. What was also shocking about Joseph’s response was that he was always so faithful to us (when he wasn’t beating us up) and to my mother, but now how quickly his loyalties had turned. And he wasn’t the only one. There were other employees and friends who sucked up to Margaret now that she was married to Dad. That’s what was so damned sickening with these people and Margaret. How could they think we were out to get our own father? We were the ones who had his back for years. We were the ones who took care of the farm. We would have protected it and him with everything we had.
I can see now that she and all the others were insecure. They were also taking advantage of my father themselves. It was a classic case of projection. Every accusation Margaret was making was really a confession of her own behavior and motives. It was a huge lesson in life for me. As a child, of course I saw how power shifted when my father lost the company. But this was the first time as an adult that I observed the loyalty shift. And since then, loyalty has been something I value in life, because I saw how quickly people who said they were your “friends” and even “family” turned their back as soon as someone else had more power or authority. It stuck with me then and sticks with me today. There were exceptions: Frank, Rollins, and Warren. Their loyalty never wavered, and they were as disgusted as I was with the way things had become.
It was clear to me, to all of my siblings, that my father, in his late age and fragile state, was being completely brainwashed and taken advantage of by Margaret. He listened to everything she said, without question. I remember one time when she made him literally turn his back on his favorite niece, Sally Wheeler, his brother’s daughter. They had been close friends and were in the horse business together. He truly loved Sally, and Sally revered my father as her own after her father passed. Margaret couldn’t handle my father having affection for anyone but her. Dad clearly wanted to talk to Sally, but Margaret wouldn’t allow it. I wrote a letter to Sally and explained to her that it was not Dad but Margaret who had caused the division and that we loved her and missed seeing her.
Margaret treated us six kids from my mother, Trudy, the same way. She felt differently about the other children, especially August III, whom she favored. She frequently brought August III to the house and did her darndest to kowtow to the guy who now had the power. She would fall all over herself, gushing over August whenever he would fly his helicopter in and land it right outside our house.
To say I was confused, bitter, and angry would be an understatement. Here was my father and his new wife greeting, hugging, and humoring the man whom he’d taught us all to hate. What happened to “Sock ’em in the puss, Billy”? We weren’t supposed to talk to August III, or any of our other siblings who took his side, ever again. Our family was torn apart when August III decided to take over the company, and now my father and his new wife were suddenly enamored with him.
I’d ask, “What the hell is going on?” And as usual, there was never an explanation. No one ever talked to us. To me, it was like watching an absurd comedy. Suddenly, my dad, who was at death’s door before I left for college, had a new lease on life. Margaret started inviting all sorts of unsavory characters and hangers-on to the house whose only mission was to milk Dad for everything he had. I had to laugh—Margaret had convinced him he had to watch out for us, his own children, who loved and defended him, while she invited veritable pariahs into his life. She completely blocked his loved ones’ access but allowed grifters in without batting an eyelash.
In the spring of 1981, Dad and Margaret traveled to Florida for spring training and, I suppose, a honeymoon. We had something we wanted to tell him about Grant’s Farm and were unable to get ahold of him. We tried and tried to call him, but Margaret refused to let our dad talk to us. Finally, I took the phone, dialed it, and pretended to be the baseball player, Garry Templeton.
I said, “Yes, ma’am, this is Garry Templeton. I need to speak to Mr. Busch.”
Immediately, the phone was handed over to Dad.
“Dad, it’s me, Billy!” I said quickly. He seemed surprised and happy to hear from me. I laugh about it now, but I remember being so disappointed. The only way I was able to get through to my father was by pretending to be a baseball player.
I felt so unmoored and unhappy during this time. I hated school, and I wasn’t doing well. I was flunking everything because I wouldn’t go to class. I hung out in the rec room on campus and played games or slept on a couch all morning. In the afternoon, I would head back home to work. The only part of my life where I felt at ease was when I was working on Grant’s Farm with the crew and the animals. It kept me grounded enough not to go crazy, and I do think that could’ve been a possibility. When my work at the farm was done, I’d head out and party. I rarely came home to sleep. Instead, I’d crash wherever I could.
I was still working out and was strong as a bull, thanks to my days on the farm. I just didn’t know how strong I was until one fateful January night. I was hanging out at one of my favorite bars in a kind of redneck part of town. My friend, the bouncer of the bar, and I were there late, closing the place down. There were some guys we didn’t know there too. The next thing I knew, some big guy wanted to arm-wrestle me. I’ve never been one to turn down a competition. We started to arm-wrestle, and I won. Since he was a big guy, he was genuinely shocked and accused me of cheating.
“Let’s do it again!” he said.
We went again. I beat him handily. His buddies then started to yell at him, and they wanted to fight me.
The only reason I went outside with all of them was because the bouncer, my friend, was a tough guy, and I knew he’d have my back if the guy’s buddies jumped me. He was so big and tough, in fact, that I knew he could take the whole lot of them if I needed him to. And I felt confident that if the guy threw a punch, I had a good chance of beating him.
It must have been below zero that night. The buddies all formed a circle around us, blocking me and their friend in. The guy threw the first punch, and we started to fight. It was clear it wasn’t going to be easy. We were both slipping all over a sheet of ice. We finally got on the ground, and I pinned his arms behind him. He was going nuts trying to get loose, and all of a sudden, I heard his buddies chanting: “Bite him! Bite him!” And sure enough, the bastard tried to bite me on the neck. I got him pinned, and he tried again.
“That’s enough,” I told him, “you’re done!”
But he had this fire in his eyes. His mouth opened and he tried to bite me again.
I started yelling, “You son of a bitch! What the hell!”
And that’s when I bent down and bit him back. I bit right into his ear. He yanked his head away from me, and when I came up, I had his ear in my mouth. It was the most unbelievable thing. He was still so crazy and trying to fight that he didn’t realize his ear had come off!
And when I say his ear came off, I mean his ear came off—as if it had been surgically removed. The whole ear was ripped off the side of his head. I mean, I’ve seen some weird shit in my day, but that was the weirdest.
His friends started shouting, “Your ear is gone! Your ear is gone!”
That’s when he stopped. Everybody was in shock. Somebody had enough sense to take his ear and put it in a cup filled with snow and tell the guy that he needed to go to the hospital. The guy left, and there was nothing for me to do but go back to the bar. Obviously.
It was past closing time, and the only people left were the owner and my bouncer friend. We were sitting there, incredulous about what just happened. We kept saying, “I can’t believe that just happened.”
The next morning, of course, I got a call that my dad and his lawyer, Mr. Susman, wanted to speak to me.
I showed up and my dad called me into his room.
“Jesus Christ, what the hell did you do last night?”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Did you bite somebody’s ear off?”
“Yeah, Dad, I did.”
“Jesus Christ.”
My dad was just disgusted. I was disgusted too—I certainly wasn’t proud. I was still seriously confused and shocked by what had happened. It was all over the news—on the television, in the newspaper, on the radio. They were painting me as a pretty horrible person. All the PR people at Anheuser-Busch were involved by now and were looking for ways to contain the mess. They were very worried about how it was going to affect the company. And I bet August III felt self-righteous and vindicated (and a bit superior) now. He didn’t say it outright, but we all felt that he wanted to say, “See! I told you so! This is why we don’t bring my half siblings into the company!” It wasn’t good luck for the company, for the family, or for me, who was trashed in the press at every turn.
“We’re going to have to pay ’em off,” Susman piped in. “You’ve maimed somebody.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “That guy was the one who started the fight! He took the first swing! He challenged me first! We started the fight, and then he tried to bite me! So I bit him back. Why would we have to pay him? He had it coming to him!”
“Your name is B-U-S-C-H. It doesn’t matter whether or not you started it. If you’ve got the money, you’ve got to pay.”
It was my first real-life adult experience outside the bubble, and it wasn’t pretty. It was awful. My father was disappointed and angry. I was disappointed and angry. I also felt the injustice of it all. I didn’t ask to fight this guy. He was the one looking for a fight. But I learned a valuable lesson that night. If you play, you have to pay. It’s how the world works, even more so with a name like Busch.
The good news was I didn’t have to go to jail for it. For that I am grateful. As far as I know, that guy got his money.
Ironically, despite what happened, the owner of the bar asked me if I wanted to be his partner. I had gotten to know him when I was a regular customer, and he pointed out that I was already there all the time. So I ended up getting into the bar business, buying a 50 percent share of the place and dropping out of school to work there full-time.
This was where my true education began. For the first time in my life, I was learning what it meant to be in business. I was learning how the world worked, but also how people worked. And it wasn’t all pretty. Well, some of it was. And by some, I mean a girl named Christi.