08/22/2026
Catching up with the Oldest Living Fremont Ross Sports Hall of Famer
At eighty-seven years old, if you walk into the Findlay Chick-fil-A, you might spot a sharp-eyed man wearing a name tag that reads "B.B." His mind is still as sharp as a tack, packed with vivid memories of the 1950s when he was "Beebe"—the humble quarterback who led the Fremont Ross Little Giants through a historic 20-game winning streak.
Back then, he was Burdette Schneider, sharing the field with his childhood rival-turned-brother, Jimmy Tiller. The older neighborhood boys decided that since his grandpa and dad carried nicknames of “Bullets,” they couldn’t call him that. "Little Bullets" was too long, telling him, “At noon tomorrow, we are going to name you... So we’ll tell you what: we will call you ‘Beebe’”—a name that stuck for life. Alongside Tiller and Bill Smiley, Schneider anchored a dominant backfield, though he never took credit for their glory. “It’s a team concept. It is not an individual sport,” Schneider reflects. “I give credit to all the other athletes on the team that made me look good.”
He loved to pull off quarterback sneaks without calling the play in the huddle, slipping through defense lines while his teammates cleared the path. “Nobody could figure out, 'cause I never called the play in the huddle,” he recalls with a chuckle. When Haldie Black yelled at him for falling in the end zone after an interception against Lorain, Beebe just knew better: “Haldie yelled at me because I fell in the end zone... He didn’t realize that we got the ball on the 20-yard line.”Through all the high-stakes games and TV appearances over Saturday chili in Toledo, his philosophy was unshakeable: “You don’t worry about last week or next week; you worry about who you were playing that week.” Or the other time against Elyria in his senior season, when Schneider helped his team to a 37-6 win over the Pioneers. At the half of that game, coach Mal Mackey suffered a heart attack and was taken to Memorial Hospital. Schneider remembered the event vividly. “Just the captains, including me were aware of the situation,” Schneider said. “The coaches didn’t want to tell the team until after the game.”
His heart always matched his sharp mind. When the undefeated and Buckeye Conference Championship 1956 season closed, Beebe took the game ball directly to the hospital room of Delbert Hoy, a backup player sidelined by severe asthma, just to make sure his teammate felt included. It was the same quiet kindness he’d shown years earlier when he brought a real bat and ball down to Bidwell Avenue to organize games with a young Clarence Glover.
Life eventually took him to Ohio State, where he started at quarterback on the freshman team alongside Tom Matte and Jim Herbstreit. “I know Curt,” Schneider says proudly of the Herbstreit legacy. He still recalls the thrill of beating the JV team in a wild comeback: “When I went to hand off to Matte, I fumbled the football. It bounced down on the ground and right back up into my hands. I took it into the end zone, and we beat the JV team 18-14.”
Though minor league baseball in Duluth, the National Guard, and decades of life followed, Beebe’s core never shifted. Jimmy Tiller has long since passed, but at 87, Beebe still carries the wisdom of a true hometown hero: “Always remember it is a team concept. No individual accolades.”
