San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
NFL MUSEUM GETS SUPERFAN’S WHEELCHAIR
S.D. man with cerebral palsy attended 500 plus games all across U.S.
Among the many historic artifacts at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, are Jim Thorpe’s 1911 Carlisle Indian School sweater, two game balls from the very first Super Bowl in 1967 and the late Chicago Bears running back Walter Payton’s team jersey.
On Monday, San Diego NFL superfan Brian Gushue’s travel-worn wheelchair joined their august company.
The 57-year-old Clairemont resident, who was born with a mild case of cerebral palsy, used the 1980s-era wheelchair to attend hundreds of NFL football games all over the country.
On Nov. 6, 2017, Gushue achieved his epic, 40-year quest to attend 500 NFL games played on natural grass football fields. He chronicled his travels in his 2021 autobiography: “The Grass is Always Greener: One Football Fan’s Improbable Quest to Attend 500 NFL Games.”
In the years since, Gushue has continued traveling to games around the country — he saw No. 566 on Thursday in Phoenix and will see 567 today in Las Vegas — but his wheelchair’s traveling days are over. On Monday, after one last game together at the Patriotsbrowns matchup in Cleveland the day before, Gushue donated his wheelchair to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Jason Aikens, curator at the pro football museum, said he was very happy to add Gushue’s wheelchair to the hall of fame’s artifacts collection. Aikens said he periodically curates exhibits dedicated to NFL fans and he hopes to one day put Gushue’s wheelchair and other items on display to celebrate the wide range of fans — including those with disabilities — who love the sport. A similar artifact in the museum’s collection is a trophy from the Goodyear Silents, a semipro football team made up of deaf athletes who played from 1915 to 1927.
“Brian has a great and interesting story and we’ve never had a wheelchair donated to our collection before,” Aikens said on Tuesday. “We thought this would be a great way to represent some of the fans that have special needs who attend football games. We want to be sure that everyone is represented.”
In his book, Gushue wrote that his parents always encouraged him to lead an active and independent lifestyle, despite his disability, so as a young boy he played street football with the kids in his neighborhood. Gushue always played quarterback — like his lifelong idol, Miami Dolphins quarterback Bob Griese — because even if he couldn’t run very well, he could always throw a good spiral. As a young man, Gushue enjoyed attending baseball and football games — his very first NFL game was a San Diego Chargers home game on Dec. 4, 1977 — but over time his passion became focused solely on the gridiron.
“When I see these NFL games in person, they remind me of all those wonderful times as a kid,” Gushue said. “Football to me was an access point. It was something that I was lucky enough to play despite my disability. It was an icebreaker for me in playing with neighborhood kids and wonderful for my self-esteem in general. And when I see NFL football, I see the best of the best.”
Gushue said he restricts his game-going to the 16 NFL stadiums with natural grass because: “I like the look, feel and smell of grass. When I see artificial turf I feel like I’m looking at a carpet, not a playing field.” He has supported his footballgoing habit in a number of ways. Before he retired from his career as a newspaper copy editor in 2012, Gushue paid for his travels with his paychecks. Since then, he has creatively relied on revolving credit, low-priced Southwest Airlines fares and upper-deck stadium seating, and by selling some of his season tickets for NFL games that he doesn’t plan to attend.
Sometime in the mid-1980s, one of Gushue’s friends with paraplegia named Wes Johnson lent him the wheelchair, a nofrills, hand-propelled Stainless Medical Supplies model. Johnson later gifted the chair to Gushue.
Gushue said he usually attended games using forearm crutches, but he found that using the wheelchair at games — the first time was on Dec. 14, 1996, at a Chargers-bears game in Chicago — was far less taxing physically, so it became his preferred mode of game travel. And after the Americans with Disabilities Act passed in 1990, stadiums began building raised platforms for wheelchair users, so Gushue and others could see over other fans’ heads, even when they were standing up or walking by.
Although the wheelchair served Gushue well over the decades, there were a few mishaps.
In 2005, he and a friend were leaving a game in Green Bay, Wis., and they forgot to load the wheelchair into their vehicle and drove off without it. When they returned to the stadium parking lot to retrieve it later, they learned some fellow game-goers had commandeered it to roll away an inebriated friend. Eventually, a city cop recovered the wayward chair. It was on another trip to a game in Denver in 2019 that the wheelchair was damaged almost beyond repair during its air transit from San Diego.
“That got me thinking that this chair is really valuable to me and important to football history,” Gushue said. “I realized I don’t want to use it until it falls apart, so how about if I offer it to the Pro Football Hall of Fame?”
Gushue has been an admirer of the museum since his first visit to it in 1990 to attend Griese’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony. And after attending his 500th game, Gushue donated all of his paper football tickets to the museum in 2018. On Monday, Gushue donated a couple dozen more tickets to the museum that he has acquired since then. Aikens said he appreciates the donation of old football tickets because most of the NFL teams have now transitioned to digital tickets.
Although Aikens can’t guarantee when Gushue’s wheelchair and tickets will have their own display, Gushue said he’s content knowing this donations are now safe on hallowed ground.
“I’m thrilled to know they’re being stored there, that this repository of football history has items that I once possessed,” he said.
And what comes next? Gushue has a new wheelchair that he broke in Thursday on the trip to the Cardinals game.
He’s also well under way on his next football quest. He wants to see 25 games by all of the NFL’S 32 teams. He figures it could take him about 10 years to achieve this goal.
Once that quest is fulfilled, Gushue said he’ll write his second book, “100 quarters,” representing the number of timed quarters in 25 games. Then he’ll retire from the records game.
“I think I’ll have earned the right by then to just be a super casual fan,” he said.