I'm in agreement. I'd go with media relations. It gives you access to a lot of information, and it also means that if you stay out of the way, you aren't going to be swept up in changes if they happen in regime changes.
Yep. You're a part of the overall operation, doing important work, but not doing anything controversial or all that stressful. You're Ringo.
I like being a Ringo. Always have. Playing a valuable role but not getting yowled at all the tme with stupid questions; you just do your job, and when you do it well the people who know what's going on know you did it, but nobody else even knows your name.
Perfect.
Plus, yes - you know everything.
Everything. You get all the info before almost anyone else, and who doesn't think that's fun?
I'm assuming you worked there in the early days, when it was at the Veterans Arena? It was just starting. I am one of the founding contributors, who helped get it built. Of course I have my credentials that gives me lifetime frem976, when Gerald Ford was there for the dedication. I go back, every time I'm in Green Bay. To me, it's kind of like going to see a child that's grown into a man, and you're one of the people who is the father.
Yeah, Brown County Arena. I think it must have been 1971 and 72. I think I was 13 that first summer, and "American Pie" played every 8 minutes on the radio the 2nd summer, all 7 1/2 minutes of it. So that would be about right.
It was a summer jobs program for kids; my dad knew somebody who knew somebody I guess. Technically we were employed by the arena, but because we were just young chillun, we couldn't work nights when the wrestliing, the concerts, and the hockey games were happening. So in the morning we'd clean out the popcorn and empty cups from the arena, watch the beautiful slightly older teenage female figure skaters practicing their routines, and then spend the rest of our time doing what needed doing at the Hall of Fame, which
was open in the daytime.
It was a fantastic couple of summers. We met so many players, both active and retired, and team officials as well because there were always these public relations tours going through the HoF. Any time a Packer legend was in town for a team function, it seemed like they made a trip to the Hall. And the players were so good to us. I met Don Hutson and Boyd Dowler as part of a group the same afternoon (I wish I'd been smart enough at that age to ask them a couple of questions), Clark Hinkle, and even Johnny Blood. They were all just so great to us; they just made us feel so special. I distinctly remember Bart Starr treating us like little bitty teammates whenever he crossed paths with us; I remember thinking he must really like kids.
And during the pre-season and season, we also got the chance to come across the street to help out at the stadium with cleaning, getting the bleachers ready, and later in the season shoveling snow. Which always meant staying and watching the game.
For a teenage boy from rural Wisconsin just a few years after the Lombardi Era, it was like dying and going to heaven. One of those things where when you're a kid you just don't have the life experience to realize how incredibly out of the ordinary it is.
Thank you for what you did to make the HoF happen, and take it to the next step. I can't help wondering if we ever met, those 50 years ago...
I'd venture to say that your having worked there had a big influence on your work as a reporter over the years. When you're close to something, and brush elbows with people who are well known more often, you tend to look at things through clear glasses, not those that are rose colored.
Interesting line of thought, but I'm not so sure.... I've jumped around a lot and had a number of careers. My first "job" job coming out of college was with a consulting engnineering firm, and I figured that was going to be my whole career because that's just what people did in that day. And besides, I loved it. But in 85, my leg was crushed in a construction accident, and it was years before I could walk normally again. It seemed as though my only future in engineering was in an office every day, and that had no appeal because I liked to be out where everything was happening, working with people and solving problems in real time.
As I got my leg back over time, I bounced around a bit and wound up working for a large urban police department, in a civilian role but with a unformed partner. Basically an interface/laison betrween the department and the residents/business owners in inner city neighborhoods, coordinating programs to reduce street crime in bad neighborhoods in order to create environments favorable to economic development in the inner city. This was back in the early 90s, when crack was driving everyone out of the cities who could afford to leave, and taking their tax base with them. That was a great gig, and i loved every minute of it.
That led to a broader career in local govenment, public service, and unfortunately politics. Which I very quickly became very sick and tired of, and cynical.
So I gave it up to be a free lance writer, which I also loved, but it turned into pretty much straight up reporting and journalism because editors wouldn't stop flooding my inbox. It wasn't what I'd had in mind, but it was hard to turn down the steady work, and I learned to love that one too. Still do a lot of writing.
But by around 2000, I missed having more specific and demanding tasks, and being part of a team working together on common goals. Took a job with the state working with elderly and disabled people to show them how to identify and utilize available resources for housing, transportation, and other tools in their communities so they could live better lives, which (again) I really loved. Great job, loved it.
I resigned that position when i moved to Kentucky to get married, and the plan was that I would offiicially retire and just live the rest of my life in gym shorts and a T-shirt helping my wife run her home businesses on the internet while blasting Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. But after about 6 months, she was about ready to start researching "how long does it take to dissolve a body with Drano?", and made it clear I'd retired too young and needed to get back into an office position.
So about 10 years ago, I took a position as operations manager for a large community service program with the American Red Cross, working with seniors and disabled. Great job; ran a department with a nominal staffing level of 100-110 people, and loved every minute of it. The largest program in the American Red Cross by far, just a wonderful challenge every day. I retired sooner than I'd planned at the start of the pandemic, because my wife's seriously disabled and I couldn't risk bringing Covid home.
So now I'm back to gym shorts, Packer T-shirts, and "Kashmir" on the headphones. Help my wife when she needs it, and I've turned a spare bedroom into a workshop/studio where I make furniture and art with wood and stone. And of course, I still write.
I leave it up to y'all to decide how well.
The upshot is, I'm not sure how much impact working at the HoF had to do with all that, but my feeling is that every single thing I've ever done in my life has had an impact on everything else I did afterward. I've loved every single job I've ever done, and the one common theme seems to be that I really love people, and seem to have an ability to understand things quickly and then explain them to other people in ways that help them understand them too. And that's just what I love about every job I've ever had.
Thanks for being part of the HOF. All of us who have been involved have helped create something very special. This includes those that worked there. There is none better around the league, except in Canton, and in many ways, it's as good as ours is, because ours gives the history of the Packers, which we hold so dearly.
I'm proud of the small role I played in the Hall of Fame, just as I am to be a stockholder, just as I am of basically every single thing about this team. While the entire professional sports world has metastasized into a shallow, personality-driven celebrity extravaganza and revenue stream for obscenely wealthy billionaires, we're still the Green Bay Packers - a community owned team where the players ride little kids' bikes with huge grins on their faces while the kids run alongside, and leap into the stands when they score so that they can hug the fans and share the moment with them.
