He's been to 488 Packers home games, only missing 2 since 1977, and oh, the stories he can tell
GREEN BAY, Wis. — When Gary Platt took his 12-year-old daughter to her first Green Bay Packers game in the 2000s, he explained to her there are three rules when you’re in the stands at Lambeau Field.
“We stand up and sing the national anthem tall and proud. We don’t boo the Packers. We never leave early.”
On the drive home to Wisconsin Rapids after the game, she asked her father how she did.
“You did good,” he told her, “but Dad almost broke two of his rules.”
The scoreboard that day read 35-0, and not in favor of the Packers.
Platt has seen the good, the bad, the ugly, the exhilarating — and most everything in between — as a Packers fan whose own dad took him to his first Packers game on Nov. 19, 1961, when he was 12.
At 73, and by his best count, he’s been to 488 Packers home games and counting in his lifetime, including the years the team played at County Stadium in Milwaukee.
He’s missed only two games since 1977, when Bart Starr was head coach, Lynn Dickey was quarterback and Jimmy Carter was president. Both absences were for family emergencies.
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He’s gone through five pickups and three grills during his tailgating time. He’s old enough to remember the days when if a bratwurst fell off the grill in the Lambeau Field parking lot it landed on gravel.
It’s a streak that demands respect, but you won’t catch “Gary from Rapids,” as he’s long been known among the Lot 1 tailgating faithful, making a fuss about it.
“I’ve never been a person for publicity,” he said. “I’m just proud of the fact that I’m a good Packers fan.”
He’s something of a reluctant celebrity in and around Lambeau. He knows a lot of fellow fans, mostly by face and sometimes by name. Talking with him next to his Ford Ranger before a game in October, it was quickly evident Platt has his own cheering section.
“This guy is the greatest,” one person hollered out as they walked past. “I’ve known Gary forever,” says another.
If Platt is a familiar fixture, his grill might be downright famous. He’s a purist who still insists on charcoal for making the brats from Edelman Meats in Antigo sizzle. It’s a game-day ritual among nearby tailgaters to see if Platt can get the grill to light with one match — a sure sign the Packers are going to win.
“So we put plenty of lighter fluid on it and pop it up,” he said. “Some of the guys around me are always giving me crap about it, but once in a while their propane will run out or something like that and then they want to use the charcoal. It’s kind of a running joke.”
That’s what those few hours for every Packers home game are all about for Platt.
“You’re just there to have a good time and enjoy yourself and hope the Packers win, and you can forget about all the other ...”
He searches for the right word to finish the sentence and comes up with “turmoil” for current times.
“I’m lucky I’m old. I can block all that out,” he says.
It’s far more fun to talk about how it is his path to diehard Packers fandom started and all the stories along the way. His late parents, Art and Doris Platt, are so much a part of it.
They got their season tickets in 1962 after the first Lambeau Field expansion. Platt, who was born and raised in Fond du Lac, was at the Ice Bowl in 1967 with his dad and has warm memories of tailgates through the decades with his parents.
He can still see his mom sitting in the car on a particularly cold and crummy game day and rolling down the window to call out to whoever was in earshot,“ I need more mustard on my brat.”
She worked for AT&T and always got her hair done on Saturdays. Platt once asked her why she did that when she knew it was just going to get messed up out in the elements the next day at Lambeau. “Because I look good when I get here,” she told him.
Back in the years when tailgate parking was first come, first served in that gravel lot, Platt would put down a cooler to save a spot for his dad. It gave him great joy to look over and see his dad standing with his buddies, with a screwdriver or a beer in hand, having such a good time.
Platt takes one of his dad’s handkerchiefs with him to every Packers game.
“I feel like he’s going to the games with me yet.”
He was at Ice Bowl, Snow Bowl and first Lambeau game with a flyover
When his parents moved to Arizona, Platt took over their Green Package tickets near the 5 yard line on the Packers’ side of the field. A friend who has Gold Package season tickets sells to him to ensure he can be at all the home games. He doesn’t bother with pesky details like section numbers. Like a homing pigeon, he instinctively knows where to go.
“I know all the people around me,” he said. “I just go up there, because they’re all sitting right where they’re supposed to be.”
Neither nasty weather or miserable seasons have kept him away.
He was one of just 19,856 who made it to Lambeau on Dec. 1, 1985, for the game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers that became known as the Snow Bowl when a snowstorm dumped 16 inches. A friend with a four-wheel drive truck got him there and back, but it took a buddy nine hours to get home to Wisconsin Dells.
During the team’s lean years of the ’70s and ’80s, before the golden age of Brett Favre and then Aaron Rodgers, Platt remembers a teenage kid holding a sign outside the stadium that read: “Never been to a game.” He had an extra ticket and offered to give it to him. The boy looked at it and noticed it was an end zone seat.
“He said, ‘I can do better than that,’ and he hands it back to me,” Platt said. “That’s how bad things were in those days.”
Unlike younger fans who have been spoiled by the team’s performance in the last 30 years, Platt has sat through his share of stinky seasons. When the going isn’t so good, he remembers something his mom once told him when he was a young fan pouting over yet another loss.
“She said, 'We always lose. We’re here to party, and if we win it’s a bonus,'" Platt said. And that’s been my attitude ever since.”
His most memorable game was on Christmas Eve 1995 against the Pittsburgh Steelers. With 16 seconds left in the game, a perfectly thrown fourth-down pass to a wide open Yancey Thigpen in the north end zone was dropped, giving the Packers their first outright NFC Central Division title since 1972.
Platt is convinced divine intervention was at play that day. There’s no way Thigpen didn’t miss that catch if it had not been for Packers defensive end Reggie White, an ordained minister, and his connection to God, he said.
His other favorite game stands out not for what happened on the field but in the sky. It was the first military fly-over at Lambeau. There were no skyboxes or club seats at the stadium then, and Platt was sitting way up top in Row 60.
“It was like they came right over your head,” he said.
His tailgating sweet spot is Kwik Trip Glazers Donuts on the grill
One of the original and most popular Lot 1 big tailgate party hosts, Platt has downsized in recent years from the large spreads and full bar he shared with Packers fans from as far away as Germany and Hawaii. Many a time he ran food over to the parking attendants who couldn’t leave their post.
“If you go to every game you really get spoiled. You just take it for granted,” he said. “But then you see people and it’s on their bucket list, and I could give them a sandwich or a drink. That was pretty special. It was fun to get to treat them.”
He keeps it simpler these days so he can relax and enjoy friends. Brats are a staple, but he also likes to work his grilling magic on Kwik Trip’s signature Glazers Donuts. He freezes them and then browns them up to make them crispy. When a fellow tailgater spotted them one year and sent a photo to a friend who worked at the convenience store chain’s corporate level, Platt thought maybe he’d score Glazers for life.
“Guess what I got? A thank you.”
His game-going friend and co-tailgater for the last 12 years has been his neighbor Kathy Sacotte. Her husband doesn’t care to come to the games, so Platt picks her up, sometimes as early as 5 a.m. during his tailgating heyday, and they make the nearly two-hour drive from Wisconsin Rapids to Lambeau.
Tailgating expertise aside, he’s really most proud of the fact that he goes to every game. Plenty of fans just keep the party going out in the lot after kickoff and watch the game on TV. Nothing wrong with that, Platt said. It’s just not him.
“The game is the main thing for me. To tailgate is fun, but if I had a choice between the two, I would definitely go to the games,” he said. “I feel when I go to the home games, by me cheering, it sounds stupid, actually helps the team.”
He met Bart Starr, wrote a letter to Bob Harlan, but he's no cheesehead
Platt is as dedicated as they come, but just don’t make the mistake of calling him a cheesehead.
“I’m sorry, I’m anti-cheesehead,” he said. “When I was a Packers fan, there were no cheeseheads. Now everybody’s a cheesehead. Well, we’re not cheesheads. We’re Packers fans.”
Safe to say you’ll never catch Platt with an uppercase Cheesehead (the trademarked wedge topper that’s a magnet for TV cameras) on his head. Not his style. He’s a traditionalist.
Packers fans are unique in the NFL in their devotion to the team, but he’s also noticed some changes in recent years. Fans seem more impatient. Even if the Packers win, they sometimes complain it wasn’t “a good win.” There have been boos at Lambeau.
As a seasoned Packers fan, it can be a challenge to roll with the latest updates to the Lambeau experience as times and technology change. He misses paper tickets and says he’s lucky he can figure out how to get in the game with his phone. He misses the days of getting to know the hot dog and beer vendors in the stands, some in the same sections for decades.
Lambeau went cashless in 2020, but Platt jokes he has friends that were doing it way before then. “They never brought any cash to the game.”
The giant video boards at Lambeau now show all the day’s leaders in rushing and passing yards for the fantasy football crowd, but Platt remembers when there was just a single scoreboard. It was behind where he sat, so periodically the guy in front of him from Manitowoc would stand up and announce the scores of the other games to the entire section. Everybody just called him “Hey, Manitowoc.”
Friends have told Platt he should write a book. Maybe call it “Tales of Tailgating.” But then somebody reminded him it would have to be titled “My Favorite Stories,” because he’s been known to start each one he tells with “My favorite story ...”
He has some good ones, like the time he went to watch Packers practice and Starr, who was coach at the time, spotted the “Stick with Starr” bumper sticker on his car. It was during a time when Packer fan sentiment was turning on Starr as a coach, as evidenced by all the “Bye Bye Bart” stickers.
Starr stopped and acknowledged Platt’s show of support. Neither had a pen on them, but Starr asked for Platt’s business card and later sent him a signed photo.
“Here he was the coach, and I thought that was pretty slick,” said Platt, who considers Starr his all-time favorite Packer. “Just always such a gentleman.”
When the Packers changed their tailgating parking procedures in the ’90s to reserved and there was a waiting list for parking permits, Platt sent a heartfelt letter to then president Bob Harlan explaining his family’s long history with their spot and what the tradition of it meant to him. A few days later he got a call from someone with the Packers. They told him they had received a fax from Bob.
“Bob who?” Platt asked.
“There’s only one Bob around here,” the man replied.
Not long after, an invoice showed up in the mail. Platt got his parking permit.
“I thought that was pretty awesome that Bob Harlan would take time to do that,” he said. “Can you imagine (Dallas Cowboys owner and president) Jerry Jones doing that? Heck of a guy.”
With 488 games and counting, Platt can’t help but think about the big milestone ahead. Without a home playoff game this season, he estimates his 500th game would come at the end of next season. He hopes to be there.
His health is up and down, and his balance is sometimes off, which can make climbing the steep steps of Lambeau Field with no railing difficult. Sacotte is there to help him.
If he’s fortunate enough to hit 500, he’s planning on throwing one last big ol’ tailgate party.
“Five hundred seems like kind of a cool number. That’s my goal,” he said. “I don’t want to stop at 500, but I’d like to make it that far.”
Kendra Meinert is an entertainment and feature writer at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at 920-431-8347 or kmeinert@greenbay.gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @KendraMeinert.