Bombers superfan has seat for 70th season

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This article was published 19/03/2018 (2229 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WHEN Don Ramage holds a framed photograph of himself standing beside legendary Winnipeg Blue Bombers coach Bud Grant, a memory that has become trickier to navigate suddenly becomes as sharp as ever.

As he looks down at his favourite picture, Ramage, 92, recalls the evening that led to the snapshot, beginning with the call he received from a mutual family friend asking him if he would join them as they hosted Grant for dinner. He also remembers the verbal agreement he would later make with Grant, who, at first glance, seemed willing to swap the Grey Cup ring he had on his finger for a leather Bombers jacket Ramage had worn on that night two years ago.

“We had made a deal earlier and then when he was getting ready to go home he retracted,” Ramage tells the Free Press, smiling from his couch at his home in Charleswood.

Ramage would share many more stories over the next 30 minutes, providing a first-hand account of his life-long dedication to the Blue and Gold. This year will mark his 70th as a Bombers season-ticket holder — a streak that surpasses any other in this city and perhaps even across the entire CFL.

Over the years he has been to more than 600 CFL games and attended 48 Grey Cups, 41 of which were in consecutive years. Perhaps most impressive is that since he became a season-ticket holder in 1948, Ramage has missed just six games.

It’s a number he thinks is still too high, so he makes sure to let you know he had a good reason for missing each one, including two games to recover after he suffered a stroke and another to attend his mother’s funeral.

It was at that moment his daughter, Patti, reminded her father of the time she received a call when the two were at a game together, notifying them of the news his first grandson had been born. Instead of getting up and leaving right then and there — and by doing so forgetting one of Ramage’s most important rules: you always stay to the end — he turned to his daughter.

“When the game is over,” he would say. The two would later sneak into the hospital after visiting hours, bringing with them a football as a gift for the newborn.

“It was the city of Winnipeg and it was a big thing,” was Ramage’s defence. “We had hockey teams and so on but nothing as big as the Bombers were at that time.”

Though he was 22 years old when he first purchased season tickets, his love for the Bombers goes back much earlier than that.

When he was a kid, as young as seven years old, Ramage said he used to walk to the old stadium on Osborne Street and wait by the north end zone. If he were lucky enough a field-goal attempt would sail over the bleachers and if he was the first to track it down, he’d have his ticket inside.

“You could give the ball at the gate and you could get in free,” he says.

Ramage has survived three stadiums. After the team moved to St. James Street to what eventually became Canad Inns Stadium, he remembers feeling how modern the new digs looked. To this day Ramage still refers to it as the “new” stadium. When Investors Group Field was built in 2013, he was called on to help raise the Canadian flag near one of the end zones for the home opener against the Montreal Alouettes.

His seats have always been located in the west-side stands. “They thought they had money on the East side,” he says. “We had the sun to our backs.”

Ramage says it was the relationships he was able to foster with the players that fuelled his on-going commitment, even now as the Bombers look to snap a 27-year Grey Cup drought.

“I’ve seen worse,” he says, once again smiling.

But after all he’s witnessed over the last 70 years, through all the highs and lows, never did he imagine the opportunity he received on Tuesday.

In what was an informal kickoff to CFL Week here in Winnipeg, which officially begins today, CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie and the Grey Cup made a pit stop to greet Ramage at the seniors home he resides at. For an hour, with the Cup sitting on a nearby table, Ramage mingled with family and friends and posed for pictures. Others from the home were also invited, watching as Ramage was presented with tickets to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame VIP reception the following night.

In a way, it was much like the attention Ramage is used to getting whenever the Bombers are playing at home. On game days, he’s served dinner first and then heads off to the game, but only after receiving a few high-fives from the other residents, all of whom make sure to wish him a “good game.”

“It’s amazing how many elderly ladies, and there are lots here as you can appreciate, that know about the Bombers and they ask me, ‘what’s wrong? They got beat again,’” he says. “I think they’re on an upward trend now.”

jeff.hamilton@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @jeffkhamilton