Memories, Connections and a Family of Lumberjacks

If you ask Vince Beemiller how he and his wife Lisa met, he’ll start with a joke and end with Northern Arizona. “I say if we’d gone to college together, we probably wouldn’t be married,” he laughs. The truth is sweeter and more Flagstaff than fate: a web of lifelong friends—the  Baniszewski family introduced them at a graduation party, and the connections kept looping back to NAU. “We’re pretty entrenched with that family,” Vince says. “And that’s the NAU connection right there.”

For the Beemillers, Northern Arizona wasn’t a solo chapter—it became a novel. Vince was a four-year starter at right tackle and an all-American in the late 1980s, but his Lumberjack story began with a twist. A day before signing day, his Cal-Berkeley scholarship fell through. NAU assistant Richard Gray called to check in. “I told him, ‘Lucky for you, Cal just backed out. I guess I’m a Lumberjack,” Vince says. “He was at my house first thing in the morning. The rest is history ... and there’s a lot of it with our family.”

After graduation, Vince and Lisa built a life that kept pointing north to Flagstaff. Before their boys were old enough to put on pads, the family was back in the Walkup Skydome, back in that wide-open tailgate scene with a couple of old teammates. “It was basically us and the Morans out on the grass,” Vince says. “Open the tailgates, let the kids play catch in the parking lot.” There’s a photo somewhere of his oldest, who later played at Newberry College in South Carolina, standing in a football sweatshirt next to Dan Moran’s daughter in a tiny cheer outfit. Years later, those “cousins” found themselves at college in South Carolina at the same time. The connections to NAU run deep for the Beemillers.

Lisa, raised in Tempe amid Sun Devil country, didn’t need convincing. Her loyalty has always followed people, not logos. “When my kids played against ASU or U of A, no question whatsoever,” she says. “Whatever team my kid is on is my favorite team.” She’d grown up inside a coach’s household as her dad played at Colorado and coached high school ball; her brother was a quarterback at South Carolina and spent two decades in the Arena Football League. She understood the game's rhythms and the community surrounding it. “It’s who we are,” she says.

Two of the Beemiller sons chose NAU—one for offense, one for defense—which made football games uniquely stressful. “Special teams were the worst,” Lisa jokes. “You figure you’ll sneak a quick bathroom break, and those are the two plays you miss—one’s a first catch, the other is an injury. You just can’t leave the stands.”

Vince doesn’t hesitate when asked how football shaped his life after college. “Education matters, but what I learned in the huddle, competing, overcoming adversity, working toward a goal with people you might not always like—that’s where my success comes from,” he says. It’s the same ethos that he and Lisa have tried to pass on to their sons: resilience, accountability, and the brotherhood that football, at its best, creates.

That brotherhood is the heart of why the Beemillers give back. They started small by purchasing season tickets, Skyjacks support, and they kept showing up. Vince had a simple promise he repeated to Lisa through the years: If we ever have the means, we’re going to give back to NAU. When the time came, they did—most visibly through the Student-Athlete High Performance Center project. “If you’re going to have a seat at the table, you invest,” Vince says. “That’s what we want for NAU, a seat at the table and we are happy to be part of it.”

For years, the Beemillers sensed NAU was always “almost there”—good plans that stopped short of the finish line. That changed when Athletic Director Mike Marlow arrived, and later, when Chris Ball took over the football program. “We saw an energy switch,” Lisa says. “They had a vision—and they executed.” First came tangible fixes—LED lights in the Dome (no more notorious buzz and long warm-ups), new scoreboards, upgrades that created a better experience. Then came cultural repair: inviting alumni back in, honoring the past, rebuilding trust.

“The first homecoming after that, you saw 35 alumni walking arm-in-arm with players—from first-year guys to 85-year-old men,” Lisa remembers. “Watching our kids be part of that and seeing it come full circle was incredibly cool.”

Relationships mattered. Vince forged close ties with Marlow and with Uri Farkas—first as the then-No. 2 and now as the AD. He also points to the unifying force of Mike Nesbitt—“Mr. NAU”—whose absence years ago coincided with alumni disengagement and whose presence has helped stitch the NAU family back together. “Nes holds us all together,” Vince says. “He knows everybody.”

Ask the Beemillers for advice to current athletes and alumni and they’ll start with relationship-based thoughts about the modern game. “With NIL and the portal, I worry we’ll lose the lifelong bonds teams used to build by staying together,” Vince says. “A lot of our closest friends are from those NAU teams—our kids are friends. Those relationships carried us through marriages, births, divorces, coaching changes, you name it.”

So the pitch is simple: show up. Come back to a game. Reconnect with your teammates. Join the WayBackJacks or become a Timber Jacks Club member. Mentor a current player. Give what you can. “In our day, the school gave us a lot through education and friendships,” Vince says. “Pay it forward. That football brotherhood at NAU doesn’t take a backseat to anybody, and it will help you more than you realize.”

Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics Uri Farkas praised Lisa and Vince’s lasting influence on Northern Arizona University, noting that “The Beemillers embody what it means to be true Lumberjacks.” He emphasized their selfless commitment and consistency over the years, explaining that the pair has “positively impacted thousands of NAU student-athletes and are always among the first to step up and lend a hand.” Farkas added that their contributions extend far beyond any single initiative or moment, saying, “I don’t think we will ever be able to fully thank them for the depth of their impact.”

There’s a family motto inside the Beemiller house that traces back to Vince’s own coaches—legends like Andy Reid and Bill Callahan, and a local icon, Larry Kentera. The line they used—“Eleven brothers can’t be beat”—became a parenting promise. “I raised the boys with, ‘Three brothers can’t be beat,’” Vince says. At his oldest son’s wedding two years ago, the younger two served as co–best men and worked that mantra into their toasts without any prompting. “That hit home,” Vince says softly.

The competition never really stops in the Beemiller family—tackles tallied, restaurants visited, anything and everything—but the closeness is the point. “If something happens, they’re already on the phone with each other before we know about it,” Lisa says. “We’re a family-first household. I hope that’s evident to everyone.”

When Vince watches from the stands now, he’s a dad, an alum and a stakeholder. Two sons—Harrison and Heath—have worn the NAU colors, and the third had his own path. “They followed in my footsteps, but they all created their own journey,” he says. “That’s what I’m most proud of.”

Supporting NAU, even when their children are no longer wearing the colors, is still a priority.

“NAU always felt like it was doing what it had to,” Lisa says. “But now it feels like it’s pushing ahead. We wanted to be part of that.”

And so the Beemillers keep showing up at tailgates and homecomings, at ribbon cuttings and reunions, because that’s how a program becomes a community. It's why they want others to join them in the Lumberjack growth. It’s also how “almost there” turns into “we did it.” It’s how three brothers, one family, and a whole lot of Lumberjack memories keep proving the same old line true.

Three brothers can’t be beat. Neither can a family like the Beemillers.