A chance encounter brought these Packers fans together. The connections they discovered are astonishing.
GREEN BAY – When Andrew Larsen and Steve Schumer met at Curly's Pub in Lambeau Field during the 2008 NFL draft, they had no idea they'd set off a chain of events that make the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game look like child's play.
Larsen is from Rockford, Illinois, and Schumer from Gillette, New Jersey. Seemingly they had nothing in common except they both were Packers fans, which normally would be enough.
Schumer was an email friend with Dean Koester, a Packers fan who, like Schumer, worked for IBM, but in Atlanta. Koester, as it turns out, graduated from Rockford (Illinois) Guilford High School a few years behind Larsen, although the two had never met.
But we're just getting warmed up. Larsen's office in Rockford is on land my parents farmed when I was born. Larsen, a couple years younger than me, is friends through youth sports with several Belvidere High School graduates who I coached in youth baseball, and his older brother, Ned, and I, likely played high school football against one another. I knew none of that when I randomly contacted him for a story I was writing in 2020.
Schumer's bona fides as a true Packers fan were made official in 2015, when he was named the 17th member of the Green Bay Packers FAN Hall of Fame, and received his Hall of Fame plaque from Packers President and CEO Mark Murphy. Bookmark that thought.
And Koester — well, his bona fides are of a different nature altogether. He is, make no mistake, a die-hard Packers fan, as is his daughter, Hayley. She shouts at the TV more than he does, in fact. Hayley, who lives in Austin, Texas, started dating a guy a couple years ago who also was a Packers fan. His name was Brian and his dad had something to do with the Packers, Hayley told her father. All to the good, of course.
Koester inquired, as fathers are wont to do, about Brian's last name. "Murphy" was the answer. Parental approval was quick in coming. They married in September.
The first time Koester met Larsen and Schumer in person was before the Pittsburgh Steelers game on Oct. 3, although they had corresponded for a couple of years.
"There was this weird connection between Steve, Dean and I, and we had never met Dean," Larsen said. "And then there was that Mark Murphy connection."
'This guy is me'
It all started when Larsen spied Schumer sitting by himself at a table at the Curly's Pub bar, reading a pro football magazine and checking his laptop. Larsen could see the Lambeau Field Atrium floor from the second-story bar, and it was particularly entertaining on draft day, when it had tables full of amateur draft experts.
Looking at Schumer, Larsen thought to himself, "This guy is me. I've got to meet him."
They struck up one of those immediate friendships where they were sure they'd known one another all their lives, which Packers fans are particularly prone to. There are zero degrees of separation between most Packers fans, who, as a rule, know each other before they ever meet. That was doubly the case for Larsen and Schumer.
"When the Packers drafted Jordy Nelson, everybody was asking 'who's that?' But Steve and I knew who he was," Larsen said.
If you come to a conclusion that there are other forces at play here, you shouldn't be judged. Schumer said it was the only time he'd been to Lambeau not attending a game and it resulted in one of his closest friendships.
Koester, who talks with them often, mostly by text and emails, said he's never met anybody with the memories and depth of knowledge that his friends have.
"What’s fun is, we’ll be talking about the Packers and it will make us think back to, 'Yeah, this reminds me of when (Lynn) Dickey was throwing to (James) Lofton and (Paul) Coffman,' and we’ll both remember those games and we’ll remember the plays. It’s right there. It’s right in our heads," Schumer said.
Koester was a natural fit, joining in long, detailed discussions about the Packers.
"Meeting somebody in person, it was just the cherry on top," Schumer said of the Steelers game gathering. "We had already connected and we’d been connected for a few years."
Schumer collects Packers friends easily, though most don't share the depth of connection. But if they're Packers fans, they still get a ready reception. He recalled meeting a man 25 years ago when they were both at a playground with their kids. The man was wearing a Packers sweatshirt, so Schumer had to talk to him.
"We must have been talking for five or seven minutes," he said. "I told my wife, I invited him over to watch the Packers game. She said, ‘You invited him over? You only talked to him five minutes. He could be a mass murderer.' I said, 'Jeanne, he’s a Packers fan. The rest of it doesn’t matter.'"
They remain close friends.
Different paths to fandom
Schumer said he introduced Koester to Larsen through email. They had some virtual group discussions, and at some point they stumbled over the fact they both were from Rockford and attended the same high school.
"I said, 'You have got to be kidding me!' He lives in Atlanta. It was so out of the blue," Larsen said.
Larsen and his brother, Ned, were at Packers training camp in 1967, when he was 8 years old. Ned talked him into going to Bart Starr's house and knocking on the door. Bart wasn't home, but Starr's wife, Cherry, was. It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows about the Starrs that she invited them in, gave them a tour and photos of Bart, and the next day introduced them to him at training camp.
"When Cherry Starr invited us into her home and introduced us to Bart the following day at practice, and then Bart plunged over the goal line to win the Ice Bowl four months later, my fate was sealed," Larsen said. "At the age of 8, I was all-in for the rest of my life."
Schumer became a fan in the 1970s, which was not exactly a bandwagon era for post-Lombardi, pre-Holmgren Packers fans.
He was hanging out with friends on a playground and they all started naming their favorite football teams. Being in New Jersey, the answers were pretty consistently "Giants, Giants, maybe Jets, Giants" and so on. Schumer, 11, was not really following football, but he certainly wasn't going to admit that to his friends. He also realized as they worked their way to him, he didn't want to be like everyone else. He had no idea where Green Bay was, but he knew a little bit about the team — well, he'd at least heard of them — so on the spot he became a Packers fan.
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"I got immediate crap for it. That only reinforced my choice. I liked being ridiculed for being different," he said.
Following the Packers from New Jersey in the 1970s and 1980s was not easy. They were rarely on television, so he devised other ways to keep tabs on his team. He subscribed to the Green Bay Press-Gazette, which always arrived a couple days after publication, and to other resources, like the Packer Report. Also, he created a one-person fan club, which allowed him to ask the Packers for the annual highlight film, which the team would lend out. He'd use his school's projector and watched the film on his living room wall.
"It was like gold because I'd see a half-hour of highlights I had never seen during the season. And then I'd send it back to the Packers," he said.
Although he grew up in Illinois, Koester's Wisconsin connections are as solid as his Packers connections. His grandfather, George Koester, played on a Green Bay city football team in the 1920s and worked for Northwestern Mutual Life in Milwaukee, and his dad designed a label for Milwaukee's Best beer that's still in use.
Koester was a fifth-string quarterback on his high school football team, until one day, through a series of unusual events, he found himself a starter. He played defensive back at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where, it can't be ignored, Mark Murphy was athletic director some years later. The Northwestern coaching staff included Dennis Green, future head coach of the Minnesota Vikings; future Indianapolis Colts head coach Jim Caldwell, and Ron Turner, the future University of Illinois head coach and Chicago Bears offensive coordinator.
Point being, he knows his football.
He and his wife Kara moved to the Atlanta, Georgia, area 25 years ago. Kara's older brother was in Larsen's class at Guilford, although they didn't know each other well.
And then there's Haley, meeting Brian Murphy halfway across the country in Austin, Texas, a long way from Atlanta, or Evanston, or Green Bay.
Which all goes to show, there are Green Bay Packers fans all around the world, but sometimes it's a very small world indeed.
Contact Richard Ryman at (920) 431-8342 or rryman@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @RichRymanPG, on Instagram at @rrymanPG or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/RichardRymanPG/.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: For these Packers fans, life offers zero degrees of separation
