Bart Starr often falls asleep while watching his Green Bay Packers on TV, but on Sunday, for the first time in a long time, he remained engaged for their entire victory over the Vikings. He made a few comments about this touchdown or that one, and he even once identified Aaron Rodgers by name.
Starr has been surging in recent weeks, driving hard toward the established goal of a halftime appearance at Thursday night's Packers-Bears game at Lambeau Field for the unveiling of Brett Favre's retired No. 4. He's on schedule to fly Wednesday morning from his Birmingham, Alabama, home to Green Bay to finish the job, and this comes as no surprise to those close to him, those who watched the Packers legend survive two strokes, a heart attack and four seizures in September 2014, and then a life-threatening bronchial infection three months ago.
Though Starr's wife of 61 years, Cherry, said her 81-year-old husband doesn't remember specifics of his career and doesn't connect with old clips from his glory days, Starr's trainer, Brian Burns, said Tuesday his most resilient client can now recite a few basic facts he didn't know last month.
"I ask him what his number was, and he says, 'Fifteen,'" Burns said. "I ask him who he played for, and he says, 'Vince Lombardi.' I ask him what position he played, and he says, 'Quarterback.' One time he said, 'Linebacker,' and we got a good laugh over that. But he's made incredible progress. He is really coming back."
Starr is going back to Lambeau for what is likely the last time, and Cherry said she hopes the cheering of the sellout crowd "brings back memories for Bart, even if it's just for that moment." But here's the funny thing, said her son Bart Jr.: Bart Sr. would be the last Hall of Famer on the planet to want to take attention away from the official man of the hour, Favre.
"He never talks about himself," Bart Jr. said Tuesday. "He has no ego, and he wouldn't ever view this as having anything to do with him. He just wants to be part of an evening honoring Brett Favre."
But it's not that simple. Favre is a beloved Green Bay figure who deserves credit for delaying his ceremony a year to give Starr a chance to attend it, but Starr is the icon who bonded with Packers fans like no other quarterback. It's less about the five championships he won or the heroic touchdown he scored in the 1967 Ice Bowl than it is about the dignified way he carried himself. The way he forever opened his door to strangers who showed up at his home unannounced wanting an autograph or a photo or just a few minutes of his time.
"We've gotten over 1,000 pieces of mail or emails in the last two weeks from people all over the country," Cherry said. "They write to Bart things like, 'We're pulling for you,' or, 'I'll be at the game wearing your jersey.'" One young boy from California wrote to say he couldn't wait to join his family of Packers fans at Lambeau to see a quarterback who had retired decades before the boy was born.
Starr wasn't always a sure thing to make this trip to Green Bay. He suffered significant brain damage 16 months ago, and doctors didn't know if he'd ever make it out of the hospital. Three rehab sessions a week with Burns at his Cahaba Fitness facility in Birmingham got Starr in a position to return to Lambeau, until a bronchial infection landed him back in the hospital in late August.
"I remember sitting on his hospital bed thinking to myself, 'No way. He's worked too hard to let something like this stop him,'" Bart Jr. said. "With what he'd already demonstrated in coming back from the strokes and seizures and heart attack, I knew he could transcend this. And once he got back to rehab, I said, 'OK, he is so determined to do this.' To watch his relentless pursuit of the goal we'd set for him has been remarkable."
Out of the hospital and back in rehab, Burns said it took a week, maybe two, for Starr to "turn that switch back on and get that twinkle back in his eye." Starr had undergone two stem-cell treatments in Mexico in an attempt to speed his recovery, but it was what his son called "his indefatigable spirit" that fueled this final drive to Lambeau.
Starr began walking greater distances with less aid from his support network. He put aside his oversized exercise ball in favor of a football he would throw to Burns from 10-15 yards away.
"He used to toss it to me underhanded," the trainer said. "Now he throws it with that same over-the-top motion he had, spirals -- he puts [it] on the money all the time. We could do it 10 times in a row and he gets me in the chest every time. He's got a little of his swagger back, and I get emotional about it. The first time he could tell me his name and that he played for the Packers, I stopped the session because I started losing it a bit. I'm pretty sure I'll lose it when he walks on that field Thursday night."
Burns won't be the only one. He had Starr practice holding up his hand and waving to the Lambeau fans, but muscle memory should take care of that. When Starr's executive assistant, Leigh Ann Nelson, recently held up a copy of David Maraniss' biography of Lombardi, "When Pride Still Mattered," and asked him to name the man on the cover who he'd failed to identify for more than a year, Starr responded, "That's Coach Lombardi. Why do you ask?" Starr is scheduled Wednesday morning to board a jet provided by Century Insurance (he served on its board for 34 years) and to travel with Cherry, Bart Jr., Burns, Nelson, longtime family friend Brady Thames and others to the Wisconsin town he helped Lombardi put on the global map.
"It's a beautiful end to a beautiful story," Bart Jr. said.
It's a homecoming story like no other. Rain and snow are in the Thanksgiving-night forecast for Green Bay, but those who watched Starr conquer far worse at the Ice Bowl can expect a steady downpour of halftime tears.