April 3, 2025 • 7 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in the 1980s, the Packers stadium had a kids-only section for kids between the 5th and 8th grades. During Jon Elfner’s 8th grade year, he not only saw every game...but also fell in love.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Americans have a love affair with their sports teams, their
home sports teams, and not many cities love their home
sports football team, like the people in Green Bay who
actually own their football team and the legendary field that
(00:32):
Vince Lombardi made famous the iconic coach. I'm talking about
lambeau Field. This next story comes to us from John Elfner,
a frequent contributor, here to tell his story a lambeau
Field story is John Elfner.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I grew up in green Bay, Wisconsin, and there are
sports towns, but Green Bay is not a sports town.
Green Bay is a Packers town. Seventies and eighties. When
I was growing up, every Sunday that the Packers were
playing at home, it was the biggest event of the
year every time, which is a little surprising because the
Packers weren't that good. There were the perennial eight to
(01:15):
eight seventies and eighties Packers. Green Bay's not big and
if you'd just be going around town, you'd bump into Packers.
I remember playing a game of pickup football at the
gym with John Anderson and Rich Wingo are star linebackers.
Ken Bowman, who was the center for the Packers and
all those Super Bowls in the sixties. He was my
freshman football coach. So that's what I mean when I
say this was a Packers town. The Packers organization had
(01:41):
a very interesting arrangement. The whole section of the stadium
was a kid section. No parents in sight. It was
just hundreds of kids between fifth and eighth grade. When
you graduated from eighth grade, you had to give up
your ticket, and the tickets were only three dollars and
seventy five cents. Going into the season in nineteen eighty three,
this is going to be my last to have tickets
in the student section. I was going to be too
(02:02):
old after this. So the day comes they released the
schedule for all the home games for the Packers for
the eighty three season, and that third game there it
was it was a Monday night game. It wasn't just
a Monday night game. There's a Monday night game at
lambeau Field against Joe Thaisman's Washington Redskins. And we never
got Monday night games. Nobody was interested in seeing us
(02:24):
play nationally and now we're playing the Washington Redskins, who
won the Super Bowl the year before. This is how
it would work. All the kids would get dropped off
at lambeau Field, a little like getting dropped off at school.
Our parents would let us out of the station wagon
and we all go marching in with tens of thousands
of strangers around us. And that might sound odd, but
(02:47):
you have to remember this is Green Bay and the
Packers were the center of the community. Nobody worried about it.
On my way in, I'd always grab a hot dog
in Minnesota, and I head to my seat. As I'm
going into my new seat in section one oh three,
I stopped dead my tracks. But it wasn't my seat
that got me. It was what was next to my seat.
(03:08):
It was a beautiful girl, and she was just my age.
She had a great smile, blonde hair, angular eighties haircut,
and she was wearing a baggy Packer sweatshirt. This is
every eighth grade boy's dream, at least every eighth grade
boy in Green Bay that year. And when she said Hi,
my name's Jenny, I said some like John, and then
(03:30):
really quickly I sat down and started eating my hot tuck.
Now I don't remember much about that first game where
I met Jenny. I'm not even sure if we won
or lost, but I do remember Jenny. She went to
a different school. I'd never met her before, and I
never see her between games. The only time I was
going to get to see Jenny was at home football games.
(03:50):
So that Monday night comes, we're kind of expecting we're
going to get crushed by the Washington Redskins, after all,
they'd won the Super Bowl the year before. But it
didn't really matter. We had this beautiful night, October seventeenth.
It should have been cold and blustery, but it's about
sixty degrees and clear. I was excited for the game,
but I was a little bit more excited that I
was going to get to see Jenny again, and I
(04:13):
was going to get to see her at night. So
I walk in, it's under the lights. The field is
this luscious green. So I walked to my seat, hot
dog in hand, and this time I'm ready. There's Jenny
and she says, hi, John, and I said Hi, Jenny,
take my seat next to her, and we started talking
(04:35):
and laughing. It fell a little like playing hooky. And
I'm thirteen years old, This game doesn't even start till
eight o'clock. We're going to be out till midnight. The
Redskins get the ball first, and on one of the
early plays there's a screen pass and our linebacker Mike Douglas,
he hits the receiver. The receiver fumbles, and Douglas picks
up the football and he runs into the end zone
right in front of me and Jenny. The scoring didn't
(04:57):
stop there. Every time each team got the ball for
the rest of the game, they scored. It was like
a boxing match. Packers would score, Redskins would answer. There'd
be a field goal, another touchdown, just back and back
and forth. And every time the Packers would score, Jenny
I would go high five. With under a minute to go,
the Packers are winning forty eight to forty seven, but
(05:17):
the Redskins get the ball in their own twenty six
yard line. If they get a field goal, the Redskins
will win. Five yards here, three yards there. They're running
out of bounds as stopping the clock at This is
horrible for the Packers, but part of me didn't mind
it because every time something bad would happen, Jenny would
grab my hand. The Redskins get the ball to the
Packers twenty one yard line. It's going to be a
(05:37):
thirty nine yard field goal. Jenny and I both knew
about Mark Mosley, the kicker for the Redskins.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Come up.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
He won the MVP in the Super Bowl the year before.
There was no way this guy was going to miss
a field goal. He's going to ruin my perfect night
with Jenny. The ball is snapped. Jenny grabs my hand,
mostly kicks the ball. It sails through the air. Time stop.
Jenny grabs my hand even tighter, and we watch the
ball sail towards the goalpost and go wide right. It's
(06:09):
no good. The crowd went nuts, and I look at
Jenny and she jumps towards me and gives me the
best hug I'd ever received, a hugger as tight as
I can. And in that moment, I realized I love
the Packers.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
And you just heard a story from John Elfin in
one of our regular contributors. He teaches history in Illinois,
and you can tell he is a diehard Packers fan.
We all have stories like this from some sporting event,
a concert that brings.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Us all together.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
What does it tell you about the city of Green
Bay that they let fifth to eighth graders go out
unsupervised and have an entire section to themselves. Boy, I
would have been so depressed aging out of that. John
teaches history, and this is a little bit of his
own history, and to day he'll never forget. Hopefully we
all have childhood memories like this, at least a few.
(07:04):
By the way, our own Greg Hangler was at that
game two as a fifth grader. John never saw Jenny again,
but he still loves the Packers. And by the way, Jenny,
if you're out there and you hear this story, we'd
love to hear from you. John Elfner's story of falling
in love at lambeau Field Here on our American Stories.
(07:30):
Lihabibe here the host of our American Stories. Every day
on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this
great country, stories from our big cities and small towns.
But we truly can't do the show without you. Our
stories are free to listen to, but they're not free
to make. If you love what you hear, go to
Ouramerican Stories dot com and click the donate button. Give
(07:53):
a little, give a lot. Go to Ouramerican Stories dot
com and give
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Americans have a love affair with their sports teams, their
home sports teams, and not many cities love their home
sports football team, like the people in Green Bay who
actually own their football team and the legendary field that
(00:32):
Vince Lombardi made famous the iconic coach. I'm talking about
lambeau Field. This next story comes to us from John Elfner,
a frequent contributor, here to tell his story a lambeau
Field story is John Elfner.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I grew up in green Bay, Wisconsin, and there are
sports towns, but Green Bay is not a sports town.
Green Bay is a Packers town. Seventies and eighties. When
I was growing up, every Sunday that the Packers were
playing at home, it was the biggest event of the
year every time, which is a little surprising because the
Packers weren't that good. There were the perennial eight to
(01:15):
eight seventies and eighties Packers. Green Bay's not big and
if you'd just be going around town, you'd bump into Packers.
I remember playing a game of pickup football at the
gym with John Anderson and Rich Wingo are star linebackers.
Ken Bowman, who was the center for the Packers and
all those Super Bowls in the sixties. He was my
freshman football coach. So that's what I mean when I
say this was a Packers town. The Packers organization had
(01:41):
a very interesting arrangement. The whole section of the stadium
was a kid section. No parents in sight. It was
just hundreds of kids between fifth and eighth grade. When
you graduated from eighth grade, you had to give up
your ticket, and the tickets were only three dollars and
seventy five cents. Going into the season in nineteen eighty three,
this is going to be my last to have tickets
in the student section. I was going to be too
(02:02):
old after this. So the day comes they released the
schedule for all the home games for the Packers for
the eighty three season, and that third game there it
was it was a Monday night game. It wasn't just
a Monday night game. There's a Monday night game at
lambeau Field against Joe Thaisman's Washington Redskins. And we never
got Monday night games. Nobody was interested in seeing us
(02:24):
play nationally and now we're playing the Washington Redskins, who
won the Super Bowl the year before. This is how
it would work. All the kids would get dropped off
at lambeau Field, a little like getting dropped off at school.
Our parents would let us out of the station wagon
and we all go marching in with tens of thousands
of strangers around us. And that might sound odd, but
(02:47):
you have to remember this is Green Bay and the
Packers were the center of the community. Nobody worried about it.
On my way in, I'd always grab a hot dog
in Minnesota, and I head to my seat. As I'm
going into my new seat in section one oh three,
I stopped dead my tracks. But it wasn't my seat
that got me. It was what was next to my seat.
(03:08):
It was a beautiful girl, and she was just my age.
She had a great smile, blonde hair, angular eighties haircut,
and she was wearing a baggy Packer sweatshirt. This is
every eighth grade boy's dream, at least every eighth grade
boy in Green Bay that year. And when she said Hi,
my name's Jenny, I said some like John, and then
(03:30):
really quickly I sat down and started eating my hot tuck.
Now I don't remember much about that first game where
I met Jenny. I'm not even sure if we won
or lost, but I do remember Jenny. She went to
a different school. I'd never met her before, and I
never see her between games. The only time I was
going to get to see Jenny was at home football games.
(03:50):
So that Monday night comes, we're kind of expecting we're
going to get crushed by the Washington Redskins, after all,
they'd won the Super Bowl the year before. But it
didn't really matter. We had this beautiful night, October seventeenth.
It should have been cold and blustery, but it's about
sixty degrees and clear. I was excited for the game,
but I was a little bit more excited that I
was going to get to see Jenny again, and I
(04:13):
was going to get to see her at night. So
I walk in, it's under the lights. The field is
this luscious green. So I walked to my seat, hot
dog in hand, and this time I'm ready. There's Jenny
and she says, hi, John, and I said Hi, Jenny,
take my seat next to her, and we started talking
(04:35):
and laughing. It fell a little like playing hooky. And
I'm thirteen years old, This game doesn't even start till
eight o'clock. We're going to be out till midnight. The
Redskins get the ball first, and on one of the
early plays there's a screen pass and our linebacker Mike Douglas,
he hits the receiver. The receiver fumbles, and Douglas picks
up the football and he runs into the end zone
right in front of me and Jenny. The scoring didn't
(04:57):
stop there. Every time each team got the ball for
the rest of the game, they scored. It was like
a boxing match. Packers would score, Redskins would answer. There'd
be a field goal, another touchdown, just back and back
and forth. And every time the Packers would score, Jenny
I would go high five. With under a minute to go,
the Packers are winning forty eight to forty seven, but
(05:17):
the Redskins get the ball in their own twenty six
yard line. If they get a field goal, the Redskins
will win. Five yards here, three yards there. They're running
out of bounds as stopping the clock at This is
horrible for the Packers, but part of me didn't mind
it because every time something bad would happen, Jenny would
grab my hand. The Redskins get the ball to the
Packers twenty one yard line. It's going to be a
(05:37):
thirty nine yard field goal. Jenny and I both knew
about Mark Mosley, the kicker for the Redskins.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Come up.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
He won the MVP in the Super Bowl the year before.
There was no way this guy was going to miss
a field goal. He's going to ruin my perfect night
with Jenny. The ball is snapped. Jenny grabs my hand,
mostly kicks the ball. It sails through the air. Time stop.
Jenny grabs my hand even tighter, and we watch the
ball sail towards the goalpost and go wide right. It's
(06:09):
no good. The crowd went nuts, and I look at
Jenny and she jumps towards me and gives me the
best hug I'd ever received, a hugger as tight as
I can. And in that moment, I realized I love
the Packers.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
And you just heard a story from John Elfin in
one of our regular contributors. He teaches history in Illinois,
and you can tell he is a diehard Packers fan.
We all have stories like this from some sporting event,
a concert that brings.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Us all together.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
What does it tell you about the city of Green
Bay that they let fifth to eighth graders go out
unsupervised and have an entire section to themselves. Boy, I
would have been so depressed aging out of that. John
teaches history, and this is a little bit of his
own history, and to day he'll never forget. Hopefully we
all have childhood memories like this, at least a few.
(07:04):
By the way, our own Greg Hangler was at that
game two as a fifth grader. John never saw Jenny again,
but he still loves the Packers. And by the way, Jenny,
if you're out there and you hear this story, we'd
love to hear from you. John Elfner's story of falling
in love at lambeau Field Here on our American Stories.
(07:30):
Lihabibe here the host of our American Stories. Every day
on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this
great country, stories from our big cities and small towns.
But we truly can't do the show without you. Our
stories are free to listen to, but they're not free
to make. If you love what you hear, go to
Ouramerican Stories dot com and click the donate button. Give
(07:53):
a little, give a lot. Go to Ouramerican Stories dot
com and give
Host
Lee Habeeb
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