For this Yooper family, Detroit Lions devotion runs deep

GOETZVILLE — Usually it was a homemade bracelet or a handmade decal, just some small token that she’d give her friends to thank them for supporting her annual charity fundraiser. But Megan Stefanski tried something different this year.

The 42-year-old Yooper asked a friend to help her put together a little children’s book about a father and his daughter bonding over football games. Football was something she and all her friends had in common, so the book would be something they’d relate to. Plus, it would be a true story about Stefanski and her dad, who spent years driving five hours from their Upper Peninsula home to go to Detroit Lions games together.

She called the book “Yooperman’s Pride,” titled after the nickname downstate fans gave her dad, followed by the term for a group of lions that functions like a family, whether they’re related or not. It’s one reason going to Lions games always meant so much to her and her dad. The tailgaters there were just like that, she thought.

So she wrote a short story, her friend drew some illustrations, and they self-published a few dozen copies of the book through Amazon. Her plan was to buy them all herself and personally give them to a handful of her friends.

But other people somehow found out about the book. And they started buying it. At that point, Megan figured she might as well mention it on social media. “So here’s a little something I’ve been working on lately,” she posted, along with a link to the book.

Then the Detroit Lions retweeted it.

“Ordered our copy, can’t wait to read it to our cubs!” the organization wrote. And things got crazy.

Strangers not only bought the book by the hundreds, but for some reason, they started posting photos of themselves reading it to their kids, their grandkids, their dog. It became the thing to do with this book. “Before I knew it, all these other fans from these other teams were taking photos of themselves with the book,” Megan said. “And it just kind of spiraled.”

People posted photos of themselves reading the book to their kids, or out at the bar, at a hair salon, at the NFL draft. One guy held it as he sat at the edge of the Grand Canyon. Some people wore team jerseys in their photos, and soon it was not just Lions fans, but also fans of other teams posing with the book. All sorts of people, it seemed, got to see her book about bonding with her father over football.

Everyone except her dad.

A point of pride

Donnie Stefanski was standing inside his shrine to the Lions, which to the outside world was known as Yooperman’s Bar and Grill. He was surrounded by Lions photos, Lions jerseys, beer ads with the Lions logo on them and hundreds of ticket stubs from Lions games he’d attended. They covered an archway like wallpaper.

“It would’ve been nice to have had a championship so far in there someplace,” he said, pointing to all the ticket stubs. It was spring 2018, a few months after yet another losing season in which he’d remained utterly loyal, as he had through all the wasted draft picks, the bumbling coaches, the mediocre quarterbacks, the tissue-thin defenses, the butter-fingered receivers. “But other than that, it is what it is. I love the people I’ve met there, friends from all over the NFL. I’ve loved the friendships I’ve picked up through the years.”

As a lifelong Lions fan, Donnie was always an oddity in the Upper Peninsula, where most broadcast sports used to come from Green Bay, cementing the U.P. as a Packers stronghold. He grew up in Goetzville, played football in high school, got married, had three kids and took a steady job with the county road commission until he retired and opened his own bar and restaurant just down the road from his home. His wife, Joanne, gave him Lions season tickets as a Father’s Day present back in 1994, something he always wanted.

“I started thinking, 'I’ll go to two games this year.' But pretty soon, each week came, someone came around and said, ‘I’ll drive, let’s go,’ ” he said. “Well, pretty soon, I just never missed a game. And 25 years went by. I actually haven’t missed one.”

Nothing derailed his streak — not weddings, nor baptisms, not holiday meals with his family. “My mother, she lives about 1,000 feet from me, and I haven’t seen her in 30 years on Thanksgiving,” he said. “Of course, how I grew up, Thanksgiving’s a holiday if you’re a Lions fan. You have a home game every year.”

Megan liked football, too, and Donnie started taking her to the games when she was 10, even letting her skip school if it was a weeknight game. “I got to miss a day once ‘cause Joe Montana was playing Monday Night Football at the Silverdome,” she said, laughing. “My dad said I’d learn more at the game that day than I would at school.”

When she was old enough, she became their official driver. They’d leave Goetzville every Sunday around 2 in the morning. Donnie would drive through the tree-lined darkness until about West Branch, where Megan would take over the rest of the way to Eastern Market. There they’d mingle with fans from all over the country, people they’d never have a chance to meet if they weren’t brought together by their shared love of the sport.

It wasn’t just about partying, Megan said. Over the years, their group grew bigger as other tailgate parties merged with it until they numbered nearly a hundred people who traveled the country together, supported one another’s hometown charities and spent Thanksgiving with one another.

“That’s what it’s all about,” said Rob Gonzales, 62, a longtime friend. “We come from different walks of life, different occupations, different races. We’re all different. But the Lions have brought us all together. We’re like a family. You have your work family, your real family, and we have our football family.”

Among them was Ron Crachiola, a longtime superfan known as “Crackman.”

“I was reading about Donnie in the Free Press, about this fella that comes down from the U.P., and I thought, 'Man, I’m gonna have to meet him,'” said the 71-year-old Macomb Township resident. “So I tracked him down in the Eastern Market. That was probably 23 years ago or so, and we just hit it off.”

They’d tailgate together, paint their faces in team colors, and wear costumes and jerseys and funny hats. They bought a decommissioned Lions shuttle bus, which they used to take people to and from the tailgate.

They had some wild times together. They were once driving home from a Lions game in Green Bay. It was late, and it was dark. Donnie was passing out in the passenger seat. “It was the first time I was up there, so I didn’t know all these shortcuts and back roads,” Crachiola remembered. “I said, ‘Donnie, where do I go?’ He’d say, "Oh, turn right." So I’d go right and I’d be driving, and then another stop. Where do I go? "Turn left."’

Somehow, they ended up in Sault Ste. Marie, an hour north of Yooperman’s home, in the middle of the night.

“He said, ‘Ah, you big dummy,’ " Craciola recalled. “So we pull over by this big ditch and we got out, and I said, ‘Come on, we’re going at it.’ So me and him started wrestling. Oh, it was funny. We were wrestling in front of his pickup, and we’re just banging each other around and rolling around. We rolled down into this ditch — a big, deep ditch full of snow — and we just tumbled down this ditch laughing and hugging each other. It was love for each other, me and him. We were like two brothers from different mothers. We were the best buddies.”

The Lions honored Donnie on the field for his 100th game. And at his 200th game, they did it again, this time giving him tickets to that year’s Super Bowl between the Patriots and the Rams. “It won’t be the same without the Lions, but we’ll enjoy it,” he said in thanks at the time. “At least the Packers won’t be there.”

In 2019, the day after Labor Day, right before the season started, Donnie collapsed in his bar. He’d been having chest pains the week before, but a doctor told him it was just indigestion and sent him home.

Someone called Megan, who rushed over to the bar. It was too late. “He just hit the floor, and by the time I got there, he was already gone,” she said. He was 61.

The Lions’ home opener was merely days away. Megan decided to still go to the game. It was somewhat out of habit, partly in tribute, mostly to carry on with normal life.

“I always knew I was going to go,” she said. “He would’ve done that, too. It’s just what we do. He had surgery once, hernia surgery, and he was at the game two days later.”

It wasn’t easy. She was always the driver, but she had a cousin drive this time because she didn’t think she could do it. She held it together until they got to Detroit.

“It wasn’t really bad until we pulled in the parking lot,” she said. “When we pulled in the parking lot is when it hit me. It was the first time I’d seen everybody, our whole tailgate family. It was very hard. We always had the same four seats, and there was his seat. You didn’t sit in his seat. There’s only eight seats in our row, right over the tunnel. He always had the aisle seat. I still think about it every Sunday.”

At that first game of the season — the first after he was gone — the Lions played a video tribute to him over the Jumbotron, after which her dad was saluted by the applause of tens of thousands of fans who knew a superfan when they saw one.

“I miss him every day,” said Crachiola, who wears around his neck a pendant that holds a pinch of his best friend’s ashes. “We had so many good times. Donnie was just Donnie. He was a man’s man, quiet in his own way, but unforgettable. The guy was just the best.”

Family tradition

Since he died, Megan has carried on his traditions.

She drives the five hours to all the home games, tailgates with her dad’s old friends, and sits in Section 100, Row 18, Seat 14. Her dad’s seat.

“That’s my seat now,” she said. “I could’ve upgraded over the years. I could probably be in Row 1 in the end zone by now, but I don’t care to. I like our seats. I like the people around us. It’s a family, and those were his seats, so it’ll always be my seat.”

She also hosts the annual fundraiser he started several years ago in support of Hospice of the E.U.P. For years, the family has held a tailgate-style party at the bar with their football friends, some of whom drive from faraway states just to be there in support. This year, they raised $25,000 in that one day.

Just before the season opener this year, the Lions sent Megan a copy of her own book. Inside the front cover were signatures from dozens of this year’s players — a recognition of a superfan who’d no longer be at the games and the large group of fans who’d come together, thanks to him.

“That’s why I called the book, ‘Yooperman’s Pride,’ ” Megan said. “A pride is a group of lions, and my football family is one pride. And that’s how I met them all — through him. We’ve all just become close. I feel like any of them will do anything for you. They’re like your family. Football is family.”

John Carlisle writes about Michigan. His stories can be found at freep.com/carlisle. Contact him: jcarlisle@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @_johncarlisle, Facebook at johncarlisle.freep or on Instagram at johncarlislefreep.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: For Yooper family, Detroit Lions devotion runs deep