freeagent
Six-man pro
My momma put us on the waiting list in 1965, and it took until 1990 for us to get to the front of the line. At the current rate, the last guy on the list will get season tickets in the Year 2675, 665 years from now.
I used to deliver the Green Bay Press Gazette back in the late 60's; I remember the daily paper was a dime and went up to 15c; Sunday was 35c and was raised to 50c. Something the article reminded me was the old NFL blackout policy. Even if the game was sold out, the local network affiliate could not broadcast the home game during the regular season (it would usually be lifted for the playoffs); that put folks watching stations in Green Bay or Wausau (about 60 miles away) out of luck; we lived a little to the south so if we knew someone with a top-notch antenna (again, long before cable or satellitte) and a clear day, you might be able to pull in the Milwaukee signal. Otherwise, you listened to Ted Moore on the radio.
One of the comments after the article asked how long the Vikings list is ... that is, the list of cities who want the Vikings once their stadium lease deal ends.
http://packersnews.greenbaypressgazette ... ar-Hibbard
July 9, 2010
Green Bay Packers season ticket wait ends for Tina Dollar-Hibbard
BY JON STYF
[email protected]
Back when the trees weren’t so tall and wide on Shadow Lane, Tina Dollar-Hibbard and her three sisters would sit in the front yard and collect a quarter from a few family friends who parked in their driveway before each Packers home game.
The team was everything to the family, as they sat in the living room across the street from Lambeau Field watching road games on their television in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, sharing a bowl of popcorn with their father, Lowell.
“It didn’t matter that he had four girls,” Dollar-Hibbard said. “The Packers were everything to him. I grew up watching football with him and we would sit around talking about the nickel and dime defense and Bart Starr.”
Dollar-Hibbard never attended home games in those days — the family’s four season tickets were for the adults.
Forty years after Lowell put Tina’s name on the Packers’ season ticket waiting list and 16 years after his death, the De Pere resident can join that club.
She is one of 126 members of the team’s season ticket waiting list — which had 83,881 names as of Thursday — who will have new season tickets. And it’s all that her family has heard about this week.
Lowell, whose friends called him Johnny, put all four of his daughters’ names on the list when they were young. Tina was added in 1970, when she was 5. When the Packers added 12,000 seats following a $295 million stadium renovation in 2003, Tina’s three sisters received tickets.
Tina had to wait until now.
The wait remains lengthy because most of the team’s season ticket holders come back year after year, even passing them on after death to family members. This season, 99.6 percent of season ticket holders renewed.
Last year, 99.4 percent renewed and 192 new names received the letter that fans on the waiting list anticipate for years. Every other year since the 2003 expansion, that number has ranged between 50 and 70.
Even people on the waiting list can pass their place on to family members following the same rules, though few do.
The team sends postcards to people on the waiting list with their number in line every year in late August or early September. If a person has moved and doesn’t notify the team, the postcard returns to the team. Those fans have a year to update the address before losing their spot in line.
“That moves the list along a lot faster than cancellations,” Packers Director of Ticket Operations Mark Wagner said.
Wagner is constantly asked how long it will take to get tickets, especially since the waiting list ballooned in the early 90s along with the team’s success.
“That is an impossible question to answer,” Wagner said. “It has been anywhere from 35 to 40 years. But we don’t know what the future holds.”
For the Dollar family, even though they all have new last names now, the future holds plenty of Packers games. The four sisters — Donna Barrette, Sue Czachor, Peggy Hyloa and Dollar-Hibbard — have two tickets apiece. Dollar-Hibbard’s mother, Ann Moore has four.
Moore now lives in Naples, Fla., but still has a Packers room in her house, filled with memorabilia, including a plaque she received on the field from Vince Lombardi after organizing a pride and patriotism day when every fan in the stadium held up a U.S. flag on Dec. 7, 1968.
Today, the family’s old house on Shadow Lane is among those rented out for fall football weekends by its current owner, according to Dollar-Hibbard. The road, neighborhood and house have changed plenty since the family moved out in the mid-70s.
But strolling past on game day still brings back plenty of memories of her youth. Dollar-Hibbard has attended plenty of games since the family moved, but this year she’ll have one more difficult question to answer.
“I need to decide who I am going to take with me,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of offers.”
I used to deliver the Green Bay Press Gazette back in the late 60's; I remember the daily paper was a dime and went up to 15c; Sunday was 35c and was raised to 50c. Something the article reminded me was the old NFL blackout policy. Even if the game was sold out, the local network affiliate could not broadcast the home game during the regular season (it would usually be lifted for the playoffs); that put folks watching stations in Green Bay or Wausau (about 60 miles away) out of luck; we lived a little to the south so if we knew someone with a top-notch antenna (again, long before cable or satellitte) and a clear day, you might be able to pull in the Milwaukee signal. Otherwise, you listened to Ted Moore on the radio.
One of the comments after the article asked how long the Vikings list is ... that is, the list of cities who want the Vikings once their stadium lease deal ends.
http://packersnews.greenbaypressgazette ... ar-Hibbard
July 9, 2010
Green Bay Packers season ticket wait ends for Tina Dollar-Hibbard
BY JON STYF
[email protected]
Back when the trees weren’t so tall and wide on Shadow Lane, Tina Dollar-Hibbard and her three sisters would sit in the front yard and collect a quarter from a few family friends who parked in their driveway before each Packers home game.
The team was everything to the family, as they sat in the living room across the street from Lambeau Field watching road games on their television in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, sharing a bowl of popcorn with their father, Lowell.
“It didn’t matter that he had four girls,” Dollar-Hibbard said. “The Packers were everything to him. I grew up watching football with him and we would sit around talking about the nickel and dime defense and Bart Starr.”
Dollar-Hibbard never attended home games in those days — the family’s four season tickets were for the adults.
Forty years after Lowell put Tina’s name on the Packers’ season ticket waiting list and 16 years after his death, the De Pere resident can join that club.
She is one of 126 members of the team’s season ticket waiting list — which had 83,881 names as of Thursday — who will have new season tickets. And it’s all that her family has heard about this week.
Lowell, whose friends called him Johnny, put all four of his daughters’ names on the list when they were young. Tina was added in 1970, when she was 5. When the Packers added 12,000 seats following a $295 million stadium renovation in 2003, Tina’s three sisters received tickets.
Tina had to wait until now.
The wait remains lengthy because most of the team’s season ticket holders come back year after year, even passing them on after death to family members. This season, 99.6 percent of season ticket holders renewed.
Last year, 99.4 percent renewed and 192 new names received the letter that fans on the waiting list anticipate for years. Every other year since the 2003 expansion, that number has ranged between 50 and 70.
Even people on the waiting list can pass their place on to family members following the same rules, though few do.
The team sends postcards to people on the waiting list with their number in line every year in late August or early September. If a person has moved and doesn’t notify the team, the postcard returns to the team. Those fans have a year to update the address before losing their spot in line.
“That moves the list along a lot faster than cancellations,” Packers Director of Ticket Operations Mark Wagner said.
Wagner is constantly asked how long it will take to get tickets, especially since the waiting list ballooned in the early 90s along with the team’s success.
“That is an impossible question to answer,” Wagner said. “It has been anywhere from 35 to 40 years. But we don’t know what the future holds.”
For the Dollar family, even though they all have new last names now, the future holds plenty of Packers games. The four sisters — Donna Barrette, Sue Czachor, Peggy Hyloa and Dollar-Hibbard — have two tickets apiece. Dollar-Hibbard’s mother, Ann Moore has four.
Moore now lives in Naples, Fla., but still has a Packers room in her house, filled with memorabilia, including a plaque she received on the field from Vince Lombardi after organizing a pride and patriotism day when every fan in the stadium held up a U.S. flag on Dec. 7, 1968.
Today, the family’s old house on Shadow Lane is among those rented out for fall football weekends by its current owner, according to Dollar-Hibbard. The road, neighborhood and house have changed plenty since the family moved out in the mid-70s.
But strolling past on game day still brings back plenty of memories of her youth. Dollar-Hibbard has attended plenty of games since the family moved, but this year she’ll have one more difficult question to answer.
“I need to decide who I am going to take with me,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of offers.”
