Bart Starr, 1934-2019

I don't know that anyone in our house ever told me that watching television on the Sabbath was verboten, but it was simply understood if for no other reason than so few activities were--how should I say it?--allowed. Sleep was fine, but baseball and bikes?--no. 

I had just graduated from high school when I met the first real Hollander I'd ever known. I was working at a state park when a man came in on bike to register to camp, a man with a thick accent who told me he was from the Netherlands. 

"There's lots of Dutch around here," I told him, probably even pointed at my name with its distinctive double a's. 

"Your 'de kind 'vat can't ride bikes on Sunday," he told me. "Ve got rid of all of dem."

I remember thinking that he was right about us.

Then came the Green Bay Packers. If there was a team up there in Green Bay before Lombardi, that New Yorker, came to town, I don't remember. Of course, I was also coming of age in 1960, and beginning to understand what that Hollander had said--specifically, that I didn't know anything about the Green Bay Packers because, unlike most of the world, the Schaaps didn't watch TV on Sunday. 

When Lombardi came, the Packers started getting good. My friends watched them, knew their names--Hornung, McGee, Dowler. So when my parents went off to bed for their Sabbath afternoon naps, I tiptoed in front of the TV, kept the volume low, and watched--until I heard Dad's footsteps on the stairs. Sunday TV was not civil disobedience; it was sin.

Meanwhile, the Packers got really good--I mean, really, really good, so good that if you lived in Wisconsin, missing them was like refusing cheese curd. I honestly can't remember it, but there finally came a time when Dad wanted to watch the Pack as badly as I did. So, there we sat on Sunday afternoon, listening for Mom's footsteps, ready once again to hit the switch.

When she got old, Mom was all-Packers, all the time, able to talk about draft picks and off-season trades. When she made it to the Home, I don't know if she would have made it without the Packers, the Brewers, and the Bucks.

So there came a time when all three of us would sit there on Sunday afternoons and watch the Pack take on the Bears or Y. A. Tittle and New York Giants. There came a time when that particular sin simply disappeared from the notch it once held on Moses's stone tablets. 

And the quarterback, the guy running the show behind Forrest Gregg and Fuzzy Thurston, was Bart Starr, the man who engineered all those wins, Lombardi's reluctant choice to run the offense. 

Back then, through all those championships, I'm not sure my parents knew that Bart Starr was a dedicated Christian. The reason ye olde injunction against Sabbath TV lost its edge had nothing to do with the fact that Starr was born and reared in a fine Christian home. It had everything to do with the Packers' gloried successes.

On the other hand, Starr was gracious and humble, not a big-mouth like Namath. The man embodied peace and diligence. He was smart and strong and dedicated. He was, very simply, a good, good man. My parents knew that he was a fine, fine man, even if he did play ball on Sunday.

Bart Starr died last week, the man whose play-calling brought the Green Bay Packers into the our Sunday living room. If Mom and Dad were still alive, they'd be grieving; but a little perturbed that I've aired dirty laundry.

I live in Iowa now and have for many years. I'd have to drive all the way across the state to get to Dubuque and cross the swollen Mississippi to get back into America's Dairyland--300+ miles. But yesterday, Memorial Day, I'm guessing most of the state was quiet, not only because of the high cost of freedom, but also because Bart Starr was gone.

Throughout his career, he called his own plays, garnered legendary victories, and brought the Packers into every household, even our home every Sunday afternoon.