Museum to ‘replay’ Packers’ 1939 title game — on Twitter

The NFL champion Green Bay Packers take the field again this week. Well, sort of.

For its third annual Live Twitter ReEnactment, the Milwaukee Public Museum is hosting a retelling of the 1939 NFL Championship Game between your Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday.

The Packers, coached by Curly Lambeau, won that game, played on Dec. 10, 1939, 27-0. The, um, kicker: It was played at State Fair Park in West Allis.

The surprising bit of local history made the game a prime choice for this year’s Twitter re-enactment, said Jaclyn Kelly, an educator at the museum.

Kelly launched the first such event at the museum in 2015 to promote the refreshing of the Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit. That year, they re-enacted the fire that decimated the Third Ward in 1892.

Here’s how a Twitter re-enactment works. After selecting an event, Kelly works with an intern to identify important voices to tell the “story.” For the 1939 NFL Championship Game, they developed five “characters” — fictional but historically accurate amalgams of people connected by the game.

Then, during the appointed hours, history graduate students from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee assume the role of one of the characters and tweet about the event in real time.

People on the outside can follow the conversation by going on Twitter and searching for the hashtag — in the case of the 1939 Packers game, #MKE39 — and sharing or replying to tweets in the stream.

The grad students “playing” each of the characters have researched their roles, Kelly said, with help from the Milwaukee Public Library, the Wisconsin Historical Society archives at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the Milwaukee County Historical Society and Neville Public Museum in Green Bay.

Kelly, who has been with the museum for nearly 10 years, was biased when it came to choosing this year’s topic. She worked as a beer vendor at Lambeau Field for four years, and has been a Packer Backer her whole life.

As for the Packers’ 2017 season, she’s still hopeful history can repeat.

“Man, I hope they run the table,” Kelly said.

MILWAUKEE JOURNAL A photo illustration created for the Dec. 11, 1939, Milwaukee Journal shows the first touchdown scored in the NFL Championship Game played at State Fair Park in West Allis. Milt Gantenbein caught a 7-yard pass from Arnie Herber. The Packers won, 27-0.