Ice Bowl Memories…Yes, I Really Was in Green Bay 50 Years Ago!
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ICE BOWL MEMORIES…YES, I REALLY WAS IN GREEN BAY 50 YEARS AGO! I had coffee a couple of years ago with former Green Bay Packers running back Chuck Mercein, who played a key role in the Packers dramatic Ice Bowl victory over the Cowboys in 1967. The Golden Anniversary of that game occurs this Sunday, December 31. I told him I too was at the game. Chuck gave me one of those “Yeah, YOU and 350,000 OTHER fans were squeezed into Lambeau that day.” I didn’t have to… but I wanted to convince him that I really was there…matter of fact, I was in Green Bay for nearly a week. ------------------------------------------------ I told Chuck that I was still in college but already working ‘part-time’ (some would say that never changed over the next 50 years) at the NFL League office in New York. Jim Kensil, who was Commissioner Pete Rozelle’s top executive, had assigned me and a couple of other interns that last week of December to either Green Bay or Oakland where the Raiders were hosting the AFL Championship that same Sunday. --------------------------------------- Mercein finished his coffee that day but still was not convinced until I told him about a guy I had noticed in the media crowd outside the winning Packers locker-room. “Famous New York columnists like Jimmy Cannon, Milton Gross, Hy Goldberg were on line waiting to get inside the warm locker room area ,” I said. “ I also noticed someone who was holding up the wall but who may already have had a few shots of liquid warmth like many in the sub-zero stadium had. I asked one of the security guards who he was: ‘That’s the great Johnny Blood, sir.” --------------------------------- Mercein suddenly looked up. “I’m starting to believe you were really there,” he said. “I remember I was one of the last ones in the showers that day trying to scrape off the frost bite and a guy came marching into the showers, fully clothed and demanded to know in a loud voice “Which one of you is Bart Starr. I want to congratulate that son of gun.’ While I was trying to figure out how this crazed fan got into our shower area, a naked Jerry Kramer said “Johnny Blood. Get out of the showers before you drown.” --------------------------------------------- Yes, I REALLY was in Green Bay for that Ice Bowl on December 31, 1967. It is one of my few claims to fame. I attended 50 straight Super Bowls…was in San Francisco for The Catch…in Miami when Joe Willie upset the Colts…in Chicago for the Fog Bowl. However, none of those games can top the Ice Bowl in terms of football lore, Packers history or lasting personal memories about the cold which somehow both teams played thru right to the closing minute when Starr behind Kramer’s block pushed over the goal line for the winning score on the frozen tundra. --------------------------------------- We arrived in Green Bay the day after Christmas to handle the logistics for the game. The weather ranged from zero to a balmy 15 degrees in subsequent days. I remember my first glimpse of the Packers home stadium and thinking “THAT’s Lambeau Field?”. It was the same reaction I had years later when I visited San Antonio for the first time. “THAT’s the Alamo…or is that a very small replica of it?”. ---------------------------------------------------------- Lambeau in those days only seated 50,000. It looked like a good high school stadium from the outside, not unlike some of the high school stadiums I saw, for example, in Texas the year before when I worked the Packers-Cowboys 1966 NFL Championship Game at the Cotton Bowl. ------------------------------------------------------ We stayed at the old Northland Hotel in Green Bay which was press headquarters for the game. We worked hard during the days but had some harmless fun at night. -------------------------------------------------------------- We laughed the first night out we went out to dinner. Don Weiss, who had joined our office as our Director of Information, hung his coat on the hook at the restaurant as we all did. When we finished our meal, we went for our coats but Don had one problem. One of the locals had “mistakenly” taken his overcoat including the new Christmas gift cashmere earmuffs that were in a pocket. Evidently the ‘thief’ was less impressed with Don’s cashmere scarf which was left on a shelf…yes, another Christmas gift from his daughters just a day earlier. ------------------------------------ The next night we took a few of the out of town writers to dinner. Midway through the meal, Kensil told me to go into the unmanned coat room and quietly move Don’s new replacement coat that he bought earlier that day. After the meal, the entire group, which was in on the joke, waited outside the cloak room while Don went in. “Jesus H. Christ,” he exclaimed as we heard nothing else but hangars rattling inside the room. “They… they did it again. They took my coat.” When he came out, he saw us all laughing. He put me against the wall and pushed his face into mine: “ What did u do with my coat, Browne?” It still cracks me up thinking about it. ---------------------------------------- We and the writers went to a local bar after dinner that night. It was a “disco” bar with young women in ‘skimpy’, 1960s-Wisconsin outfits dancing on stages. Peter Hadhazy, who also was an NFL intern then but later Browns General Manager, thought he spotted the Packers’ sensational rookie kick-returner Travis Williams at the other end of the room. He excitedly went up to the guy and asked if he were Travis Williams. “No, I’m not,” Travis lied, “but I wonder what that super star is doing tonight.” ---------------------------------- I gave a ride during the week to Jerry Izenberg, the famed columnist for the Newark Star Ledger. He wasn’t in the car five minutes before he complained (which I later learned was not that unusual) that I was driving too fast on the icy roads. “How long have you had your license, young man,” he asked. “I got it last December 7th,” I replied. “That’s appropriate ….Pearl Harbor Day. If you drive any faster, we’re going to die too.” ------------------------------------- There was a league party thrown at the Oneida Country Club two nights before the game. It was the first time I got to shake Vince Lombardi’s hand. When I was introduced to the coach as a league employee from New York, he asked “Where were you born, son?” “Queens,” I proudly said. “That aint’t Brooklyn, young man, and don’t you forget it,” he said with a slight grin and a Brooklyn native’s accent. I obviously haven’t. --------------------------------------------------- Game Day may have been one of the most memorable in NFL history but it also was one of my worse. It could have very easily ended my NFL career before I worked one day as a fulltime employee. Game day started off with the same phone call we all say we received from the Northland operator: “Good morning, sir. It’s 6am and the temperature is minus 13 degrees. Have a nice day and… Go Packers!” ---------------------------------------------------------- We made a run an hour later to a local sporting goods store which opened at the Packers’ special request due to the cold. I was told by Kensil to buy as many scarves, gloves and ski masks for the media as his $100 bill would buy. It was a lot more merchandise then than it would be today in Green Bay…or certainly in New York. ---------------------------------- There was a buffet breakfast at the Northland which our office arranged for the media and our small staff. As soon as I walked in, Mark Duncan, who was the Al Riveron of his day as Supervisor of Game Officials, gave me his briefcase and told me to watch it as he got on the buffet line. Two minutes later, Kensil told me to go downstairs to see if the media buses were in place. I admit (now) that I placed Duncan’s briefcase in a corner as I put on my coat to check on the buses. ---------------------------------------- Hadhazy and I planned to take our own car to the game because we were expected to get there early and stay late. When we got to Lambeau, we went to the small press box which was enclosed but not heated. We were told to start scraping ice off the front windows so the writers would be able to see kickoff in a couple of hours. We had mild success and I was feeling pretty good primarily because someone brought in a heater similar to what was being used on the icy field. ----------------------------------- THEN Mr. Duncan showed up at the game. “You have my briefcase?” he matter of factly asked. I looked at him and turned redder than I normally do in subzero temps. “Mr. D, I thought YOU picked it up,” I said without a great deal of conviction. “I asked you to watch my briefcase,” he said in a stern voice. “If you don’t have it, you better get your ass back to the hotel and find it.” “Yes, sir,” I replied. I got the keys from Hadhazy and went back outside to find our car. ----------------------------------------------------- If you look closely at the old NFL Films shots of the pregame activities that day, you will see a tall, red- haired (scared) young man with no ear-muffs leaving the stadium as everyone else was shuffling in.