KENNEBUNK, Maine (AP) — It just wouldn’t feel that way Super Bowl for them if they weren’t all there. And this might be the last time they do it all.
That’s what three old friends started working on just before this year Super Bowl. The trio of octogenarians are the only remaining fans in the exclusive film “I’ve never missed a Super Bowl.” club.
Don Crisman of Maine, Gregory Eaton of Michigan and Tom Henschel of Florida were back this year for another big match. But two of them are grappling with the fact that advancing years and declining mobility mean this is likely the last time.
This year’s game pits the Seattle Seahawks against the New England Patriots on Sunday at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California. Crisman, a Patriots fan since the franchise began, was excited to see his team in the game for the twelfth time.
“This will definitely be the last,” said Crisman, who made the trip with his daughter Susan Metevier. “We made it to 60.”
Getting older, scaling back
Crisman, who first met Henschel at the 1983 Super Bowl, turns 90 this year. Meanwhile, Henschel, 84, has been slowed by a stroke. Both said this is the last time they will make the series duration trip to the game, although members of the group have said so for. For his part, the 86-year-old Eaton plans to continue as long as he is still physically able.
Eaton, who runs a ground transportation company in Detroit, is the only member of the group who has not yet retired. And he’d still like to see his beloved Detroit Lions finally reach a Super Bowl.
Still, all three said they have scaled back the time they spend on the trip each year. Crisman spent a week in the host city, enjoying its splendor. Nowadays it’s all about the game, not the hype.
“We don’t go for a week anymore, we go for three or four days,” Crisman said.
Eaton also admits that the price and hype of the big game have become high.
“I think they’re all big, they’re all fun. It’s just become so commercialized. It’s a $10,000 trip now,” he said.
It’s worth it to see Don and Tom, Eaton said.
“They are my brothers,” he said during a press conference with the others on Friday. “We check each other out.”
Friendly rivalry over the years
Henschel said this year’s Super Bowl would be the most challenging for him because of his stroke, but he too was excited to see Eaton and Crisman again.
Eaton met Crisman and Henschel in the mid-2010s, after years of attending the Super Bowl separately. And Henschel and Crisman have a long-standing rivalry: Their respective favorite teams – the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots – are AFC rivals.
The fans have attended every game since the first AFL-NFL World Championship Game, as the first two Super Bowls were known at the time, in 1967. They have sometimes were together in the past, but logistics made that impossible for a few years.
But this year it was about being able to go to the game at all, Henschel said.
“I don’t talk or walk well,” he said.
Still, he can’t wait for kick-off.
“It’s in my blood. I love football more than all sports,” Henschel said Friday. “It’s the best dang game.”
An increasingly smaller club
The club of people who have never missed a Super Bowl once included other fans, executives, media members and even groundskeepers, but as time has gone on, the group has shrunk. Photographer Johannes Bieverwho has shot every Super Bowl, also plans to end his streak at 60.
The three fans tell stories about past games that often focus less on the action on the field than on the other world where old Super Bowls took place. Henschel scored a $12 ticket to the 1969 Super Bowl on the day of the game. Crisman took a 24-hour train ride to Miami for the 1968 Super Bowl. Eaton, who is black, remembers the many years before Doug Williams became the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl in 1988.
Metevier, Crisman’s daughter, was born the year of the first Super Bowl and grew up with her father’s streak as a fixture in her life. She is looking forward to playing one last match with him.
“It’s a little bit bittersweet. It’s about the memories,” Metevier said. “It’s not just about football, it’s more.”
Crisman’s son, Don Crisman Jr., said he is making the trip with his father while he can.
“You know, he’s a little long in the tooth, but like I say, if it was me and I was mobile and I could go, I would definitely go,” he said.
