Enthusiasm for NU goes beyond borders

[Husker_Power]

Enthusiasm for NU goes beyond borders

LJS

 

It wasn't what you'd characterize as ideal. It was the middle of the night and the Chinese booze on hand tasted like sour milk.

 

No matter. Tim Pendrell was ecstatic. He may have been 12 time zones away from the action and his Internet connection may have made trying to watch a football game an exercise in frustration, but so what.

 

The Huskers stood on the brink of beating Texas.

 

It was 2006 and he was in Beijing taking part in a UNL study-abroad program. Pendrell was living in the Shao Yuan dorms at Peking University, mostly surrounded by Russian, Kazakhstani, Korean and Japanese students. He was away from home but not far removed from following the Huskers. Never.

 

And as the Nebraska-Texas game wandered into the fourth quarter, a wonderful thing happened: His Internet connection started working, the video of the game coming through as though he were sitting in Lincoln.

 

Pendrell opened his dorm room and invited the Kazakhstani party from across the hall to come watch. Nebraska took a 20-19 lead and Pendrell explained they were witnessing Nebraska's return to prominence.

 

"They all got very into the game and shared my excitement," Pendrell writes. "We were all shouting, 'Husker jia you, Husker jia you, Husker jia you,' which is Chinese for 'go team.' It literally means 'add oil.' "

 

His Kazakhstani friends seemed impressed by the noise of the crowd and the snow falling on Memorial Stadium. Life was good.

 

"And then Terrence Nunn fumbled the first down," Pendrell remembers. "Bu Shi!!! Bu Shi!!! Bu Shi!!! Nooooooo!"

 

Texas kicked a field goal. Bu Shi!!! A thousand times Bu Shi!!!

 

Pendrell is back in America, attending grad school at New York University. But he joins a great collection of Husker fans with a story to tell about following Nebraska football while in a land far away.

 

Dean Lindgren, a 1976 graduate now of Ankara, Turkey, stays up into the wee hours of the morning to listen to Husker games. Games that start at 6 p.m. here start at 2 a.m. there.

 

It was about 2 a.m. in Turkey when Alex Henery kicked a 57-yard field goal to beat Colorado. Lindgren's son and daughter were at the game and gave him a call, holding the phone up so he could hear the crowd's roar.

 

"Sometimes I take a nap at halftime but run the risk of missing some of the third quarter," Lindgren writes. "I'm pretty committed to hanging in there for the whole game though."

 

So is 1st Sgt. Gary Williams, who follows the Huskers from Iraq.

 

He watched last year's 37-31 overtime loss to Texas Tech in the middle of the desert on an outdoor movie screen. Heartbreak in the sand. But at least he was watching. Sometimes he is not so lucky.

 

Williams has to track most games through the play-by-play on the Internet at 2 or 3 in the morning. The Burwell native is sent DVDs of the games he misses from the athletic department. It is a real treasure to him when he gets to see a game as it happens, like he did for the Colorado and Gator Bowl wins.

 

"Both great for a Husker's soul while deployed," he writes.

 

Curtis Huttenmaier knows how Williams feels. After graduating from Beatrice High School in 2003, Huttenmaier joined the Marines. He served two tours in Iraq as a machinegunner and squad leader in an infantry battalion.

 

Since he couldn't watch or listen to the games, he waited for his dad to send newspaper clippings of Husker news by mail.

 

"I enjoyed that so much and it was really able to keep up the morale of myself and others when we would chat about football," Huttenmaier writes. "I have a standard red hat with a white 'N' on the front that I took with me on both tours and wore as much as I could. I would have worn it more than my helmet if there hadn't been snipers to worry about."

 

You can find Husker fans in the places you'd never expect — like the Papal Audience in Vatican City.

 

While on a tour of Italy last year, Husker fan Tom Meyerhoeffer saw a man in a crowd of thousands wearing a Husker hat. He pushed through the crowd to ask if the man was from Nebraska.

 

No, the man said. Bonn, Germany. Turned out there was a Husker-themed bar in Bonn, Germany.

 

Then there's Daniel Jackman. He grew up in Grant and still remembers well when his dad took him to see Nebraska play Bear Bryant's Alabama in 1977.

 

Big Husker fan, big enough that he plans his weekends around listening to Husker games even though he lives in Bangkok, Thailand. The time difference between here and there is 12 hours.

 

"Two years ago, my wife sometimes found me asleep in my office listening to the Internet radio on Huskers.com," writes Jackman.

 

He went to bed at about 6 a.m. last year after staying up all night to follow the Gator Bowl.

 

The games may often start in the wee hours, but Jackman usually grills a couple of Johnsonville Polish Sausages — "no Fairbury dogs over here," he writes —and grabs a big bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos (red bag) and one of his Husker hats.

 

Small world, indeed. No one knows better than Jackman.

 

It's Warsaw, Poland, where Jackman met his wife. Of all things, she was from Lincoln.

 

Their first discussion was about Valentino's Pizza and the Huskers.

 

"And the funny thing, when I first met her parents, I found that her parents and my parents sat right next to each other in the stadium," Jackman writes. "Talk about meant to be."

[huskered17]

Good read. Valentino's Pizza, always get some when I'm back in town, but now I have to also go to Tastees for my wife. She fell in love with them back in 92, when I took her back for her first Husker game .

 

GBR!!!

[BigRedPowerWagon]

Just goes to show you what this team means to somepeople.

[Touchdown Tommie]

Great story....it is amazing how many people are all over the country that follow the Huskers. I thought I had it bad enough being in MN, but now it is not too bad at all. If I am ever in Germany I am gonna have to check out the Husker bar there!!!!!

[Husker_Power]

here are two more I found on the LJS blog:

 

Amazing responses from long-distance Husker fans

 

I've received some awesome stories from many readers about following the Huskers from afar.

 

Just wanted to say I appreciated the response. Wish we could tell all the stories.

 

But here's one I received today from Lynn Scholl, a technical sergeant in the Air Force. Scholl is originally from Petersburg, Nebraska.

 

Here's what Scholl wrote:

 

"Like many of the people in your story I too am a Husker fan, in the military and overseas. Last year I was deployed in Iraq and got permission to fly my Red 'N' and Blackshirts flag on both sides of ole Glory on the day of the spring game which was neat considering we were getting attacked all day but they went up anyway. This year I am deployed to Incirlik AB in Adana Turkey and those same flags are with me (I never go on a deployment without them) and hang in my room. I too will be working on no sleep during football season trying to catch all the games I can, even if it only means I watch the computer.

 

Some call us crazy, overzealous or just plain nuts about our team but I know what it is really about, passion. I guess when you are far away from home and gone as much as some of us are pictures of family and friend sometimes are not enough and I think that is where the Huskers come into play. It gives that sense of normal in our lives and takes our mind away from where we are at for a couple of hours a week.

 

Have to tell you this story, in 2005-2006 I was deployed from here to Turkey for 4 months and during that time we would go to a local pub in our off time called 'The Bunker Bar'. During that 4 months we got to know the owner and staff well however the language barrier was something we had to work around. To make a long story short whenever we entered the bar the whole place would yell 'Huskers.' Fast forward 3 years, I get stationed back in Turkey and my first week there I decide to see if the Bunker Bar is still up and running and sure enough it was. They didn't know I was coming and I didn't know if the same people would still be there but to my joy when I entered the establishment from way in the back the owner yelled 'HUSKERS.'"

 

Best wishes to Lynn and all the other military personell who read the blog. It's always a privilege to tell their stories.

 

*****

 

Here's one more story, a great one from Bob Stevensen, Lt Col in the Nebraska Air National Guard:

"In October of 2007, I was deployed to Al Udied Air Base in Quatar. As a Guardsman, I was supplementing the USAF active duty by filling a pilot position and allowing a heavily tasked active duty aircraft commander to stay home for another month with his family. I did have an alternative motive though. My son, Josh, was also deployed to Al Udied as a Loadmaster on a C-17 out of the 6th Airlift Squadron from McGuire AFB in New Jersey. It was great to be deployed together but my missions tended to be every day for 4-10 hours and his were two or three times a week for 20 hours.

 

"One night, I got back at about 0200 and caught the end of the NU vs TX game live on Armed Forces Network. That year we were leading into the fourth quarter and then gave up 19 points to lose 25-28. I began watching excitedly just in time to see the team lose their lead, the wheels to fall off and our beloved Huskers to chalk up another one for the L column. Then I headed to bed. About every 6 hours, Armed Forces Network replays games and did so in this case as well. I was sound asleep when there was a pounding on my door. "Dad...Dad, I know you flew late but you gotta get up...the Huskers are beatin' Texas 17 to 9 at the start of the 4th quarter...you gotta see this." This young man, serving his country, still had that 11 yr old kid inside who cried tears of joy when the Huskers won their first championship in the 90's. I just did not have the heart to tell him. 'What' I said, 'You gotta be kiddin' me...I'll be right there.' We went to his dorm room where all the Husker fans in his squadron had gathered and I sat through the torment again. That was a tough loss and I didn't tell him about my knowing until we were both back in the states."

 

Good stuff. Enjoyed reading all the stories.

 

[redout22]

Very nice article

[Fuzzy]

ugh, coming from the military i know how it is, it seems the majority of the military routs for Texas Longhorns...grrrrr. Good to know im not the only Husker fan in the military, haha.

[Micheal]

thats awesome, good to see the Husker Nation is truely national, and sometimes international