MIAMI — Bob Remy remembers the chilly March 1967 morning in New Orleans with the clarity of high-definition television. In the shadows of the towering monument to Robert E. Lee — the Confederate general who was deliberately positioned facing north because he vowed never again to turn his back on a Yankee — Remy stood third in line outside the Saints’ ticket office, eager to get a crack at the expansion franchise’s first season tickets.
Remy was in his 20s, and he represented a consortium of 24 blue-collar coworkers at Alvin Calendar Field, the local naval installation, and the NASA plant in New Orleans East. Remy relieved one of his friends in line at 5 a.m., waiting for the doors to open at 8, when the line of more than 100 snaked around the corner at Lee Circle.
“I’ll always remember the Tulane students who spent the night waiting in line,” Remy said. “They were at the wrong door, and when they realized their mistake, they had to go to the back of the line. Those brilliant students.”
Remy and his buddies had ponied up about $50 for each of the season tickets. They were so close to big-time NFL football they could taste it.
“Finally, they open the door, and a guard comes to the door and says, ‘We’re going to take five at a time,’ ” Remy recalled. “OK. I walked in and to the right there was this long counter. I tell the woman behind the counter, ‘Ma’am, I want 24 seats on the 50-yard line on the Saints’ side,’ and she says, ‘They’re sold.’ I’ll never forget this. I looked around at the five people inside the office and told her, ‘Sold to who?’ ”
The sales clerk pointed to a large seating chart behind her, indicating in red which seats already had been reserved for special sponsors and business people.
“I thought I was in Red Square!” Remy said.
Although some of his friends drifted away from their staunch allegiance to the Saints due to an unhealthy, prolonged exposure to bad football, Remy kept his tickets when the Saints moved into the Superdome in 1975. A year later, he parlayed his experience working on the stats crew with the New Orleans Jazz into a permanent gig on the Saints’ stats crew.
For a sports junkie and voracious collector of Saints memorabilia, watching games for free, even horrid games, was worth the emotional toll it exacted.
“I’ve never missed a home game, even in the preseason,” Remy said. “Now, I’ve left early when we had tickets. I mean, we’d be sitting there and we’d be down 30-0 in the middle of the third quarter, and we’d say, ‘Let’s go to a bar.’ ” That’s why Remy was floored in 1986 when Aaron Broussard, then the mayor of Kenner, La., called him about his idea to build a Saints’ Hall of Fame. “I said, ‘Mayor, the New York Yankees don’t have a Hall of Fame!’ ” Remy said. “The Saints hadn’t won a thing. They couldn’t win an exhibition game, they couldn’t win an intrasquad game.” But with Remy’s help, the Hall of Fame was built. Broussard was president of Jefferson Parish in 2005 when he got into trouble after Hurricane Katrina for his decision to evacuate pump operators in advance of the storm, allowing thousands of houses in the area to flood.
“I joked with Aaron, ‘When you built the Saints’ Hall of Fame you took half my stuff. With Katrina, you took the other half,’ ” Remy said.
The bewildering days after Katrina were a blur. Remy’s son and daughter-in-law lived in Lakeview, and they were two months away from having their first child. Remy evacuated with his family and wound up watching the Saints’ first post-Katrina game against Carolina in the lobby of a small hotel in Jackson, Miss.
The stats crew finally reunited for three “home” games at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge.
“People had lost their jobs, lost their homes, lost their family members,” Remy said. “They could’ve been 3-13, they could’ve been 13-3 — it wouldn’t have mattered. I kept a journal on a calendar. It was like: ‘Sunday, Saints game; bought refrigerator, washer and dryer.’ We would drive up to Baton Rouge for the game, come home and clean up more mess.”
The day before the NFC Championship game, Remy watched his 4-year-old granddaughter play her first soccer game — she stopped in the middle of one play to pose for a picture. Then, the next day, he watched the Saints he had followed with a hand over one eye for 43 years finally make it to the Super Bowl.
Remy went down to the Superdome field and got another piece of memorabilia — a snapshot of himself pointing to the spot where Garrett Hartley kicked his 40-yard game-winner over the Vikings.
“I had to apologize the next day to (Saints communications director) Greg Bensel because there was excessive celebration by the stats crew,” Remy said. “But I don’t think anyone noticed.”
They noticed, but no one minded.
“You start thinking of all the things that went against us all these years,” Remy said. “This is the year.”