Engineering alums forge 50-year friendship in Section 17

Jerry Miller and Tom Hamer have shared much in the last 50 years – they’ve seen each other’s families grow with the births of children and grandchildren and swapped a few stories about their careers and their days as College of Engineering students.

And every time they meet, they do so in the very same place: Memorial Stadium, Section 17, Row 67 – Jerry in Seat 2 and Tom to his left in Seat 3.

When the Nebraska football team plays Purdue on Saturday, Nov. 1, it will mark the 331st Husker home game since Miller and Hamer first sat together.

The Huskers’ 56-0 shellacking of South Dakota on Sept. 19, 1964 marked the unveiling of the first expansion of Memorial Stadium since it opened in 1923. The addition of 17,000 seats in the new South Stadium turned Nebraska’s football home into a 48,000-seat venue.

It was also the day Miller and Hamer met.

“We picked out the seats we wanted independent of each other,” said Hamer, a 1963 Agricultural Engineering graduate, who lives in Tecumseh. “I went down to the ticket office and looked at the new seats. I wanted to sit in the very back row, which Row 67 was at the time. That way we could get up, walk around and not be in anybody’s way.”

Miller, who earned a Civil Engineering degree in 1960, said he had no idea his decision to purchase football tickets would also provide him a lifelong friendship.

“Didn’t think about it much in 1964,” said Miller, who is from Lincoln. “Bob Devaney had just come and Nebraska football just took off. We really didn’t know what was going to happen in the future, let alone two years in. That’s where I met Tom and we found out we were both engineers and both graduated from the College."

At almost every home game since, the two engineers have reconnected in Section 17.

Hamer claims to have been to “almost all of them” and Miller says he missed only three, including one a few years ago for his grandson’s wedding.

“He claimed it was an open date when they planned the wedding, then they filled it in with Idaho,” Miller said. “He’s still in my will.”

For eight years, they were together in the very top row of the South Stadium. Both remember putting blankets and tarps across a chain-link fence to break the cold October and November winds. Then in 1972, another 31 rows were added behind them, eliminating the need for makeshift shelter.

For most of games, Miller’s wife, Alfreida, was in Seat 1 on the aisle and Hamer’s wife, Karen, was in Seat 4. But it was always Jerry and Tom in the middle.

They are such a fixture in the South Stadium that they were in a poster commemorating the Huskers’ 200^th consecutive home sellout. Hamer’s hat was easy to spot.

“We’ve got a picture upstairs from that game, and we’re in the lower right-hand corner,” Hamer said. “You can see the back of our heads. I’ve got a duster on, so I kind of stick out there.”

But through it all, Miller and Hamer are there to the end of every game.

“We’re not fair-weather fans. Neither of us has left a game early,” Miller said. “When I take my grandkids, I tell them we’re not leaving early.”

Hamer said he can’t imagine having spent the last 50 years of Husker football games sitting next to anyone else and Miller feels the same way.

Now that both are retired, they realize that it’s the fourth quarter of their Memorial Stadium friendship.

“He’s been such a good friend over the years. I’d much prefer to sit beside someone I know than to sit beside a stranger,” Miller said.

When the final whistle blows for this year’s final home game, Nov. 22 against Minnesota, the friends will part the same way they have every year for half a century.

“The last game of the season, we say, ‘See you next year,’ ” Hamer said. “We plan on them being there, and it’s good to know they’re going to be there.”