GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) — Packers fans are known for one thing above all:
Devotion to their team.
As the oldest franchise in the NFL, and the only team owned by the community, it’s no wonder the fan base has that reputation.
Each Packers die-hard has their story. In that way, Bobby Anderson is no different. For him, that devotion began in 1997 at his childhood home in Madison, Wisconsin.
“I remember, my mom was cooking,” Anderson said during a sit down with WTAQ. “We were watching TV when Green Bay won the Super Bowl, and I ran in saying ‘Mommy, Mommy, the Packers won the Super Bowl.’ Ever since then, I’ve been a Packer fan.”
That fandom followed him.
Even when his family moved from Madison to Atlanta, Georgia, his love for the Packers remained.
“Back then I made a promise to myself. I said I would have a Packers car, a Packers room, Packer everything. I remember me saying that,” Anderson said.
Growing up with little in the way of means, young Bobby couldn’t afford much “Packers” gear. He had a yellow hat–not even the right shade of yellow, he tells me–that he wore proudly as a boy anyway.
As he grew and became a man, however, he remember his promise to himself as a boy. He decked out his car in Packer stickers and Packer flags–even while deep in Atlanta Falcons territory– something he said turned heads for both good and bad reasons alike.
Something was missing, though. He loved the Packers, but he had never been to Lambeau Field. That had to change.
“2015. That’s when it started. That’s when I went to my first Packers game at Lambeau Field,” Anderson recalled.
He drove up in his car and spent five days in the area.
“Those five days went by so fast. I just embraced it. I didn’t want to be no other place.”
When he went back home to Georgia, that feeling persisted…and it persisted for years.
“I love Georgia. I wasn’t trying to get away from Georgia. I was just tired of doing what everyone else wanted me to do. I’ve got to do what I want,” said Anderson.
But what is it that he wanted?
“In Georgia, people would look at me like ‘You’re doing a little too much,’ or ‘you might want to tone it down a little bit,’ but I always knew this is what I wanted to do, and I had to move [to Green Bay] to do it.”
In 2019, Bobby Anderson moved to Green Bay, just to be closer to his beloved Packers.
He knew nobody in town.
He had some money saved up, and after years of debating, he decided to go for it.
“I just said, you know what, I have no kids. I’m not married. I need to just go ahead and do this,” he said.
So Bobby packed up everything into his Green-and-Gold decked vehicle with a trailer pulled behind, and hit the road for the 14 and a half hour drive north. He had housing lined up and figured getting a job would be trivial…but not everything goes according to plan.
“I found it on Facebook Marketplace, they had a duplex on there, but in the pictures, there was people’s stuff still in there,” said Anderson. “If it’s available, it should be empty, right? He was trying to get the money from me up front, even when I was still in Georgia.”
It was a scam.
Anderson arrived in Green Bay with his planned housing fallen by the wayside. He was homeless, jobless, and nearly a thousand miles from home.
“As soon as I got here I went to Lambeau Field,” Bobby said, pausing for a moment. “I didn’t care about not having a job, or nowhere to live. I moved here for my Packers. I went straight to Lambeau Field and just had this moment of ‘I’m here’.”
He spent three and a half weeks sleeping in his vehicle, with his entire life in a trailer behind him. He slept in hotel parking lots as he drove around during the day looking for work. Eventually–he found it, driving Delivery at Greystone Ale House and working at the Packers Pro Shop.
Eventually, he found a place to live and fully established himself as a Green Bay resident. He started attending the games–and people started noticing.
“I pay attention to the games, and I look at the fans in the stands, and I’m looking at how everyone’s doing their own thing,” Anderson recalled. “And I’m just like, ‘ok, I have to come different. I can’t just be a regular fan. I need something that says ‘this is me’.”
See, Bobby has another name. He calls himself “Packer Owner”. He attends the games in a very recognizable ensemble that he started putting together back in Georgia.
“I went to Dick’s Sporting Goods in Georgia and I see this Lacrosse helmet, and it was already the Green and Gold colors. I didn’t touch it. The colors were already there. I was just like ‘My Goodness… yes.”
The “Packer Owner” attends games in that visored Lacrosse Helmet, emblazoned with the Packer “G” and topped with his Cheesehead, reading “PACKER OWNER” along its sides. Between his helmet and his giant “Packer Owner” chain in the shape of his helmet, he’s a hard character to miss.
“I have a distinct image when I put the helmet on, so that when, even out of 70,000 people, you can point and say ‘there’s Bobby.'”
His trademark look has led to appearances in both local and national media. People stop him for pictures on the street…and inside Lambeau Field itself.
It’s September 18th. The Bears have traveled north to take on the Packers–the latest game in the league’s oldest rivalry.
Bobby’s there, of course. It’s an exciting one for him: opening day. He’s never actually gotten to go to one. The first year he was here, he was too busy working the team shop to enjoy the home opener. The second year, COVID-19 prevented fans from returning. This year, however, Bobby was finally able to take advantage.
He’s wearing his helmet. He’s screaming his lungs out.
Bobby Anderson reacts to action on the field September 18th, 2022 during the home opener against Chicago. (Rob Sussman, WTAQ)
He isn’t eating anything at Lambeau Field, however, and furthermore: he never has. It’s not an issue of food quality or price.
“When I’m in my seat, I’m in my seat. I don’t get nothing to drink. I don’t eat nothing, because then that will make you go to the bathroom, and those waits at the bathroom…you’ll miss halftime. I don’t get up.”
He stays locked in. He owes it to himself.
“Just going to the games. Just Lambeau Field. I could never dream before of going there even one time a season, much less six or seven times a season,” Anderson told WTAQ.
Anderson’s fandom is contagious. It had spread to his family, his father in particular.
“I took him to his first Packer game when they played against the Falcons, and I took my mom too. I wanted them to experience what I experience. My mom was getting more excited than me. She took the cheese off of my head and screamed ‘there you go, Aaron Rodgers!'” Anderson laughed.
The expression on his face changed, however, when thinking of his father.
Shortly before he left for Green Bay, he made a promise to his father, who was battling colon cancer.
“I remember when I left, I was talking to him, and I was about to leave in a couple of weeks. I said ‘Dad, I’ll take you to a game,'” Anderson said, his voice cracking with emotion. “And he said ‘I’ll definitely come up, just send me the ticket.’ And one month after I got here he passed away.”
That…was difficult. But Anderson carried on. He did so knowing his father was behind him until the very end.
“Before I left, we had a conversation, and he told me ‘yeah, man, go on out there. Live out your dreams.”
Bobby cherishes his family. It was because of them he followed his dreams to come to Green Bay to follow the Packers, and it’s because of them that, after three years, he’s decided to return to Georgia this November.
“I miss my mom. A male figure needs to be there, and with me being the son, [my family] is not going to say ‘you need to come back home.’ But I will.”
Anderson is driving the nearly 15 hours back with no regrets.
“I’ve done everything I could possibly want to do, plus more, since I’ve been out here,” Bobby said.
I asked Bobby what his number one memory from his time in Green Bay was, and that questioned stumped him completely. Eventually, I decided to have him come up with three. That was a little easier.
“Catching a football from [Former Packers backup QB] Tim Boyle. He’s an NFL quarterback. I don’t care if you’re a fifth string, you’re still on that field. You practice, you’re an NFL quarterback.”
That happened during a pregame warmup. His number two moment happened during his time working as a delivery driver, when he delivered an order to former Green Bay Defensive Tackle Mike Daniels.
“When I get excited, I start shaking a little bit [after he opened the door]. I’m just like ‘uh, I got your foot right there, wow, Mike, I just moved here from Georgia, love the Packers.”
His number one moment, he says? Meeting Donald Driver, his all-time favorite Packer, at Driver’s charity softball event–but only after trying two other times to make contact.
“When he came up to me, I said ‘Donald, you are a hard man to reach’,” Anderson laughed.
Anderson has a lot of signed Packers gear, but his Donald Driver jersey signed by both Driver and his son, Penn State standout Cristian Driver, is among his most prized possessions.
At Lambeau, the Packers are on offense.
Aaron Jones scores a touchdown to give the Packers the lead in the first quarter.
While Anderson doesn’t have very many games left as a Green Bay resident, that doesn’t bother him.
“I’ll fly to the games now, brother,” Anderson laughed. “Nothing’s gonna stop me. I’ll still be repping my ‘Go, Pack, Go’ all the way in Georgia.”
Of that, there’s little doubt. Returning as a die-hard Green Bay fan to Falcon’s territory is nothing alien to Anderson. Being different is easy for him. Standing out from the crowd is easy for him. If you had to sum up his philosophy on life, you could do so in four words: be different, have fun.
“It’s okay to be different,” Anderson says. “Enjoy your life. You only get one to live. Do what you need to do. I did what I needed to do, and I had so much fun out here.”
Comments