In stitches
Who kept the Packers’ uniforms patched and numbered?
GREEN BAY - Football is a numbers game. Nobody knew that better than Florence Van Sistine, who sewed thousands of digits onto Green Bay Packers jerseys for decades.
Before there was Nike supplying uniforms for the whole National Football League, there was Bertrand’s Sporting Goods of Green Bay serving the Packers. And Bertrand’s often meant Van Sistine.
Jerseys would show up at the Chicago St. house regularly for patching, alterations or new numbers. The NFL of those years was not the money-printing machine of today, so jerseys were not just replaced. They were fixed, reused and renumbered.
As was everything else. Van Sistine altered pants for players and coaches, modified hats, sewed on patches and worked on special gear for special problems, like bruised ribs, sore tailbones and, in Dan Devine’s case, a broken leg.
Van Sistine had her small part in Packers’ history.
For example, the Packers knew before the 1967 NFL Championship Game that it was going to be cold — although no one imagined Ice Bowl cold — and asked Florence to figure out a way for quarterback Bart Starr to keep his hands warm. She fashioned a furlined muff inside the jersey, with slits to stick his hands through. She tried to keep it from being obvious because the Packers didn’t want anyone to know about it, said daughter Sue Collins of Amberg.
Another time, Packers equipment manager Gerald “Dad” Braisher asked Florence if she could help the team cut down on fumbles, son Gary Van Sistine of Allouez said. She sewed leather strips onto the uniform to give the players more grip, though Van Sistine said he doesn’t know how well it worked.
While players didn’t come to the house that often, Starr showed up about 1959 to have Florence tailor his jersey, one of the first NFL players to do so. She shortened sleeves and shortened and tapered the overall jersey so there would be less for defenders to grab.
Braisher spent more time at the Van Sistine house than players. Collins remembers him sitting at the kitchen table, urging her mother on with “You’ve got to hurry, Flo! The plane leaves in an hour!” when new numbers were needed for last-minute roster additions.
Florence was seen as a source of information for neighbors because she knew before it was publicized who were the new people on the roster.
She operated an embroidering machine, which Bertrand’s moved to her house after Gary was born, and did much of her work without a pattern, which still astounds her family.
“She did Premontre on the back of a high school jacket and she did it in an arch. Without a pattern. I always wondered how she did that,” Gary Van Sistine said. She took the job seriously, too. “My mother was so honest, if she worked 15 minutes, she’d put in her book the exact time,” Collins said. “She was so honest and she was making such a piddly wage.”
Florence also made felt blankets the Packers gave to players each season. Grandson Rob Collins remembers “she made a lot of those things,” and family members pitched in by doing a lot of the cutting.
“I’ll never forget, our house was so full of green lint,” Gary Van Sistine said.
The grandkids sometimes were able to get souvenirs, such as pieces of trimmed jerseys, which were the same as money among their friends. Rob Collins has a photo of himself trying on Starr’s jersey, and for the interview for this story, he wore a Fuzzy Thurston jersey covered with hardly noticeable patches and stitched up holes.
One day in November 1995, Florence, who was 83, came home from church choir practice, had a small martini and fell asleep in her chair. She woke up later, told her granddaughter she was going to bed and didn’t wake up.
As far as the family knows, none of Florence Van Sistine’s work is in the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame, something they are hoping to change.
“She loved her Packers,” Rob said.