Hall of Famer Harry Car son has always known what the Super Bowl XXI champion Giants meant to those long-suffering fans who endured 30 years without a title, and to any of the loyal fans who bleed Giants blue.
So the silver anniversary, open-to-the-public reunion The Captain has organized for June 12, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, isn’t solely for Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick and Lawrence Taylor and Phil Simms, for virtually every coach and player who captured this town’s imagination and helped launch legends.
It is for you, too.
“People have called me when their mother or father have been given last rites,” Carson was saying yesterday, “and I find myself sitting on one side of the bed with a father or husband I didn’t know two days ago, and I’m holding the hand of that husband who’s a big Harry Carson [fan] or big Giant fan.”
Carson remembers a husband married 54 years to a woman who used to take her kids to Monmouth when the Giants practiced there. She was about to lose her fight with pancreatic cancer. Carson, feeling a sense of pride that he could represent the Giants, attended the funeral.
There are so many other stories.
They are why Carson had hoped to transform, for the reunion, New Meadowlands Stadium back into Giants Stadium, so Giants fans could share the memories with their champions.
But the stadium was unavailable, so the gathering was shifted to the Exposition Center.
“When we put this whole thing together, I wanted to share with the everyday fan the experience, because it won’t happen again,” Carson said.
There will be videos, Q-and-A with players and coaches, autographs. Tickets start at $199, with “VIP” tickets at $786.
Many Super Bowl alums will arrive June 11, and the reunion will last until the 14th.
Jeff Hostetler will not attend, because of a previously scheduled trip to Africa. Carson found Ray Handley, who has all but entered the Witness Protection Program since his ill-fated coaching reign following Parcells, but Handley returned the form Carson had sent to one and all.
“He just said respectfully, ‘I won’t be able to attend,’ and that was it,” Carson said.
George Adams is taking his son on a campus visit to LSU. Secondary coach Len Fontes died in 1992. Defensive-line coach Lamar Leachman is ill.
Until yesterday afternoon, Carson was certain that everyone else — with one exception — will be there.
“I can’t find Brian Johnston,” Carson said. “He’s down in North Carolina somewhere.”
The Post then found Johnston, a second-year center in ’86, in Raleigh, N.C., and informed him that Carson had been trying to contact him.
“Really? You’re kidding me,” Johnston said. “I’ve been in the home-building industry since I left football.”
Now Johnston hopes to make it.
Carson’s first call was to Parcells.
“He said, ‘Whatever you guys want me to do, I’ll be there,’ ” Carson said.
When he reached Belichick, the three-time Patriots Super Bowl champ said, “Count me in.”
“The sense that I get, from both Parcells and Belichick, is, ‘We would not be where we are had it not been for you guys,’ ” Carson said.
It also was imperative for Carson to get commitments from Simms and Taylor before he proceeded. Taylor, to his credit, isn’t hiding from his old teammates in the wake of his recent sex-offender disgrace.
“However he wants to handle what he’s going through, that’s on him,” Carson said.
Whether it was Living On the Edge or Living Over the Edge as a drug-fueled Superman, he will forever be their No. 56, and they will all be forever young again when they stroll down memory lane together one more time.
“We’re going to be 25, 26, 27 years old again,” Carson said, and you could hear the excitement in his 57-year-old voice.
They will talk about how Parcells pushed their buttons and drove some of them mad in the process … about Taylor, on no sleep, chasing terrified quarterbacks … about fourth-and-17 to Bobby Johnson … about Rambo Bavaro carrying defenders … about Phil McConkey effortlessly fielding punts in the NFC Championship Game against the Redskins in the wind tunnel that was Giants Stadium … about McConkey fueling the fire by waving that white towel … about Carson vs. the Hogs … about Jim Burt holding his little son in his arms in the stands … about Simms in Pasadena … about their love for Wellington Mara, and their appreciation for the man who was instrumental in making them Giants, the late George Young.
“That is the one team, I can honestly say, we checked our egos at the door,” Carson said. “We were of the same mind and the same focus.”
They were giants.
“It seems like these 25 years have gone by very quickly,” Harry Carson said.
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For ticket info, go to bigbluetravel.com or call 212-Big-Blue.