BROWN COUNTY, WI (WTAQ) – Today is the start of demolition work on the Brown County Veterans Memorial Arena, which has many reminiscing on more than 60-years of history.
For a number of residents it was the place where they saw their first concert, while for many others, it was just a place where life happened.
Rick Verhagen started working at the Brown County Veterans Memorial Arena in April of 1977.
The exact start date of his employment shouldn’t have been important, until he realized that he was starting exactly four days after Elvis was playing the building.
He claims he doesn’t mind much though, besides, he was too busy learning to become a jack of all trades.
“I would do everything from housekeeping, to bartending, to house lights,” explains Verhagen.
It turns out his job description was just as dynamic as the venue he was working at.
Complacency or normalcy wasn’t an option when you had to turn the arena from a hockey rink one night into the site of the Governor’s Ball the very next.
“When you walked into this facility you would not know you were in an ice rink,” he says. “The ice rink was carpeted, the curtain was tall, it was like you were in a building that was twenty feet high.”
Some of the events held there while Rick was working on the conversion team seem a little odd.
“Dirtbikes on Ice,” he remembers. “The staff wasn’t impressed with me, because it was in like January and we had to open all the doors.”
While others, might not even make any sense to a certain generation.
“I remember talking to [village of Ashwaubenon President] Mike Aubinger before he passed,” says Brad Toll, President and CEO of the Greater Green Bay Visitors and Conventions Bureau. “He had his polio shot in the Brown County Arena.”
Toll says he can vouch for someone that grew up close to an hour away that the arena immediately became a destination for entertainment.
While for those that were born here, lived here, and went to school here, there was no way to not step foot inside.
“Back in that day, all four high schools held their graduation ceremonies in the Brown County arena,” explains Terry Charles, with PMI Entertainment Group.
Charles was born in Door County, but grew up in Green Bay and has worked here as well.
He says, ironically, he wasn’t a big concert guy early on.
Well, that was no trouble because the arena truly had something for everyone.
“I remember coming as a kid,” he explains. “We would come to All-Star Wrestling, or the AWA, to see the Crusher and Nick Bockwinkel.”
Kristie Haney, Vice President of Events and Booking for PMI Entertainment Group, was at Green Bay Bobcats hockey games with her dad as early as three-years-old.
“They used to allow air horns,” explains Haney. “I was petrified.”
When discussing sports though, it was tough to beat UW-GB basketball, specifically, under the leadership of Dick Bennett.
“The place was packed, it was hot, and it was loud,” explains Charles. “Everybody who was somebody was there.”
And once you were there, you started coming back.
Often times to the same spot, in order to be around the same people.
“There was a group called Section F,” says Charles. “People got vanity license plates that said Section F.”
But beyond the basketball games, and Bobcat games, and dirtbikes on ice, and the occasional polio shot, the arena’s story can’t be complete without the concerts.
Kiss, Dolly Parton, Elvis, Ted Nugent, Cheap Trick, Supertramp, REO Speedwagon, and Heart all played there… within four months of one another.
It turns out that Rock & Roll, the old fashioned tour bus, and the arena were a match made in heaven.
“If you’re going to Minneapolis or Chicago, if you’re going to the surrounding areas, you can route through Green Bay,” explains Haney.
For her, there was no option growing up.
It was practically a right of passage to see your first show at the arena.
“Def Leppard in 1988,” she says. “The summer after my eighth-grade year.”
And so is the case for so many people in Green Bay and nearby.
Whether that first show was in the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, or sometime this century, odds are it was at the arena.
And once you went back, maybe with your own kids now, the history stayed intact, almost frozen in time to an extent.
“That seats still there, you know, from being a little kid,” says Toll.
But, father time catches up with everyone and everything, making a newer venue a necessity.
Tomorrow we’ll dive into what’s replacing the old arena and what sort of events could be going there.
More archived photographs of the Brown County Veterans Memorial Arena can be found on the Neville Public Museum of Brown County’s website.
