Rick from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Cliff, my father came back to Wisconsin a few months before the end of World War II, on survivor's leave, as his ship had been badly damaged as they steamed toward the planned occupation of Japan. As a result, I became one of the first members of the baby boomers generation. My father went back to the University of Wisconsin to finish his education and shared a house with a man who became the head of ticketing for the Packers in Green Bay. Going to my first game, in 1949 or 1950, I remember being let through the gate by my father's roommate and ended up sitting alongside the Packers' bench during the game. I also have a memory of the very crude conditions the stadium offered. I would love to know if my recollections could be true, if that was possible.
Also being the son of a World War II veteran who died when I was 13 days old, I can't tell you how badly I wanted to answer your question.
My dad, Clifford H. Christl, was placed in an orphanage at birth, adopted by Peter and Martha Christl of Appleton, Wis., and served in World War II. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge and then advanced from there to help liberate the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.
My dad was in the 11th Armored Division, nicknamed the "Thunderbolts," which was highlighted several times on 60 Minutes last Sunday (Feb. 15) in a segment about "the three miracle babies" of Mauthausen and among – if not the – youngest survivors of the Holocaust.
There was a high probability all three babies and their mothers would have died in the gas chambers of Mauthausen if not for the 11th Armored, which liberated the camp on May 5, 1945.
I offer that as background because I'm well familiar with the frustration of not being able to get answers for questions about long-ago family history.
Back to your question. This past Monday afternoon, I sat down at my computer and started typing this answer to you: "Rick, I'd like to help you more than I'm going to be able to, but Mary Jane Herber, local historian for the Brown County Library, and I spent hours separately searching for a connection that fit your story and we couldn't find one."
Then I stopped and decided, I'm going to give this one more shot. And bingo! I think I found your answer.
In the Dec. 18, 1948, Green Bay Press-Gazette, I found a story about college students from Green Bay arriving home for the holidays. One of those mentioned was Thomas Falck, a junior at the University of Wisconsin.
Having previously found your date of birth, this fits into your timeline and, I believe, your dad's. In June 1947, for example, I found a newspaper story where he had passed a pharmacy exam at the university's chemistry building.
Plus, Mary Jane and I had searched for any hint of your dad ever living in Green Bay, even briefly, and found nothing. We were looking for an address that might have offered a clue involving a landlord or neighbors or anything. So we had exhausted that possible avenue.
Anyway, Tom Falck – if he was your dad's roommate at UW – never became ticket manager of the Packers. But his father, Earl, did. And Earl lived at 536 S. Jackson St., according to the 1946 Wright's Green Bay City Directory, the same address that was listed for him in that 1948 newspaper clipping. I note that because it all but eliminates the possibility of that story referencing another Thomas Falck because there were some back then.
In 1957, at age 60, Earl Falck was named ticket director of the Packers. He had been associated with the Packers' ticket office for 30 years, having assisted three previous directors: E.A. "Spike" Spachmann (1920-42), Ralph C. Smith (1942-46) and Carl Mraz (1946-57). Falck held the position until he retired in 1962.
Spachmann, Smith and Mraz all had full-time jobs and were part-time ticket directors. Mraz, for example, was a clerk and then trust officer for Kellogg-Citizens National Bank. Smith managed the Northern Building, which was where Curly Lambeau had his office in the 1940s and next door to the Legion Building, where the Packers' ticket office was then located.
My educated guess would be that Falck was hired at an advanced age in February 1957 because he had years of experience in the ticket office, and the Packers needed someone full-time because they were moving into new City Stadium (now Lambeau Field) that season. Its planned capacity was about 7,000 more seats than the old stadium.
Bottom line, Tom Falck's dad was working in the ticket office in the late 1940s and early '50s, when your dad took you to the game. As for which game it was, I can't answer that. How young could you have been to remember being there?
I believe the first game I attended was Nov. 23, 1952, against the Dallas Texans. I was 5. I think I have a memory of being at the game or that someone told me I was there, but I'm not 100% certain. The first game I remember being at was Nov. 18, 1956, the final Packers game at old City Stadium.
Here were the Packers' City Stadium games in 1949: Sept. 25 vs. the Chicago Bears; Oct. 2 vs. the Los Angeles Rams and Nov. 13 vs. the New York Giants. In 1950, the games in Green Bay were Sept. 17 vs. Detroit, Oct. 1 vs. the Bears, Oct. 8 vs. the New York Yanks and Nov. 26 vs. San Francisco.
The Packers also played exhibition games those years against Philadelphia on Aug. 20, 1949; and the Chicago Cardinals on Aug. 16, 1950. The latter was a memorable game because it marked Curly Lambeau's return to Green Bay after taking the Cardinals' coaching job a little more than six months earlier.
Earl Falck died in 1976. I believe Thomas died in 2010.
One last example of what a small world this can be. I found a mention in a 1971 Milwaukee Journal that your parents were living at 1919 N. Summit Ave. in Milwaukee. When I was working in Milwaukee for the Journal that was the address of the condo where my wife and I lived.
Adam from Eagle River, WI
I've been teaming up with Camp Luther in Northern Wisconsin and they have been very gracious hosts for several law enforcement retreats and trainings over the years. Their 80th anniversary is coming up this year and there are stories floating around about the early Green Bay Packers having practiced on Camp Luther's athletic field. It is my understanding that Cy Williams donated the land, which is now Camp Luther, and he had a connection with the Packers. Camp Luther is located in Three Lakes, off of Cy Williams Road. If you have any information related to this, or know who might, I would be interested.
I'm not aware of the Packers ever practicing as a team at Camp Luther or in the vicinity of Three Lakes. But I find your question intriguing because I was previously unaware that Cy Williams played baseball at the University of Notre Dame, and, therefore, very likely knew Lambeau and Bobby Lynch, the Curly Lambeau of Green Bay baseball.
First, if the Packers had practiced at Camp Luther, I almost certainly would have come across it in my day-by-day searches of the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Starting in 1919, the newspaper's coverage of the Packers basically served as a daily diary of the team's history.
What I've found is that the only time between 1919 and 1951 that the Packers conducted preseason practices outside a 15-mile radius of Green Bay was 1935, when they held a week-long camp in Rhinelander, Wis., which is about 20 miles southwest of Three Lakes.
But the Press-Gazette's coverage left out few if any details.
Twenty-four players boarded a bus and left Green Bay shortly before 9:30 a.m. on Aug. 24, 1935, stopped for lunch at the Muskie Inn in the small town of Elcho, held a practice in front of the high school upon arrival in Rhinelander, and stayed at Pinewood Lodge on Lake Thompson, four miles outside the city.
At the end of the camp, the Packers played three preseason games between Aug. 31 and Sept. 4 in Merrill, Chippewa Falls and Stevens Point.
If the Packers had practiced as a team at Camp Luther even for just a day, that would have been the most likely time. And I found nothing to support that.
In 1949, Lambeau and his third wife were photographed at the Northernaire Resort in Three Lakes and at least two photos, dated July 20 and 22, were published in state newspapers. But it also was reported that the Lambeaus were there on a brief vacation.
Curly and his wife Grace had spent most of the winter in California, where she had a home in Malibu, and didn't return to Green Bay until July 16. On July 18, the Press-Gazette reported Lambeau had a meeting scheduled in Green Bay that day with a high school football coach. Then on July 26, the paper reported Lambeau had met with Jug Girard, his 1948 No. 1 draft pick, in the team's downtown office in Green Bay.
At most, the Lambeaus stayed there for a week and before training camp started. It was held at Rockwood Lodge, near Dyckesville on the way to Door County, and didn't start until Aug.1.
A good guess would be that someone who saw the pictures of the Lambeaus at the Northernaire assumed the players were there, as well, and the story grew over time.
As for Williams, I'd all but guarantee that he had connections to the Packers, being a Notre Dame alum.
Williams played baseball for the Irish from 1910-12 and was a 1913 graduate of the university. Thereafter, he played 19 years in the major leagues, including six with the Chicago Cubs, and once held the National League's career home run record. In fact, he led the NL in homers four times.
Although Williams was a native of Wadena, Ind., he purchased a farm in Three Lakes, which is located about 140 miles north of Green Bay, around 1917 and lived there until his death in 1974. He's buried in Three Lakes Cemetery.
Thus, Williams moved to Three Lakes a year before Lambeau played football at Notre Dame and two years before the Packers were organized. But even pre-Lambeau, there was a pipeline that ran between Green Bay and South Bend, and it continued to grow, especially among football and baseball players.
Based on my research, the first reunion of Notre Dame alumni from the Green Bay area was held in 1914. And in 2024, the Notre Dame Club of Northeastern Wisconsin celebrated its 100th anniversary.
Over the first 50 years of the chapter's existence, one of the more active alums was Bobby Lynch. For example, in 1925, Knute Rockne was the main speaker and Lynch, the toastmaster, at a testimonial banquet in Green Bay for Jim Crowley, a Green Bay East graduate and famed member of the "Four Horsemen" backfield, who also played three games with the Packers in 1925.
Lynch had played baseball at Notre Dame and coached the team there before Cy Williams. According to the all-time roster in the Notre Dame Baseball Record Book, Lynch played shortstop there from 1899-1901. However, elsewhere in the guide, he was listed as team captain in 1902. In 1903, he was listed as the school's coach.
Whatever, Lynch was one of Notre Dame's first big baseball stars. A native of Chicago, he was most famous for batting leadoff and playing shortstop for the Logan Squares, a semipro team, that beat the World Series champion Chicago White Sox and the National League champion Chicago Cubs on back-to-back days following their 1906 World Series.
In 1913, Lynch landed in Green Bay and managed the city's Class C Wisconsin-Illinois minor league baseball team for its final two seasons of existence and remained a resident of the city for almost 50 years.
In 1921, Lynch revived semipro baseball in Green Bay. And in 1940, he and former Packers great Verne Lewellen, who once had a tryout with the Pittsburgh Pirates, headed the organizing committee that brought minor league baseball back to Green Bay with the creation of the Bluejays and the Class D Wisconsin State League.
Also active in that effort was Richard "Red" Smith, then an assistant coach for the Packers, and a former football and baseball player at Notre Dame in the 1920s. He later played with the Packers, had a brief stint in major league baseball, and served as a coach with the minor league Milwaukee Brewers and then the Chicago Cubs under Charlie Grimm, the first manager of the Milwaukee Braves.
To sum this all up, it would surprise me if Williams, Lambeau, Lynch, Smith and a number of other Packers who played summer baseball on semipro teams around Green Bay, especially in the 1920s, didn't all know each other. And it's certainly possible that some of those Packers, who played on amateur or semipro teams in the Green Bay area, traveled to Three Lakes for an occasional game.
Brett from Cedarburg, WI
I recently inherited an antique radio from the 1930s and it got me wondering about old Packers radio broadcasts. What is the oldest surviving complete game radio broadcast involving the Packers?
Sounds like an interesting project. I can tell you this: In 1951, Russ Winnie, the radio voice of the Packers from 1929-46, did a re-creation of the famous, 1935 Arnie Herber-to-Don Hutson touchdown pass as part of the halftime entertainment during the final home game. There was no original broadcast available then of that game or any of Winnie's broadcasts from what I know.
So I don't think you'll find anything from long ago. But for your own personal use, could you create something from the 1931 fight song, the 1968 Glory Days record album and/or maybe some of the old Packers highlight films?
Kenn from Oak Park, IL
I was wondering if there was any archival audio records of Packers games broadcasts from the 1930s. I am a volunteer lighthouse "keeper" at the Grand Traverse Lighthouse Museum near Northport, Mich. We have the museum set up as it appeared when tended by keeper James McCormick and his family during his service from 1924 to 1938. James was fond of listening to Packers games over the radio, and we have a vintage radio set up in the drawing room. If some sort of audio clips were available, it might be fun to see if they could be played through the vintage radio as keeper McCormick would have heard them.
Another neat project. Unfortunately, I don't believe there's any old audio available. That's a better question for Packers curator Brent Hensel, but he told me he's not aware of anything, either.
