No one ever believed Mark Volpintesta. Never. Not once.
But boy did he have a story to tell.
This was the 1960s, and when fall gave way to winter the only two things that mattered in Wisconsin were having an assortment of stout snow shovels and the Green Bay Packers.
Mark, in seventh grade at the time, remembers well the instructions from his parents.
“My mom and dad would tell me, ‘Hey, tomorrow night Herb Adderley and Willie Wood are coming over for dinner but you can’t tell anybody,’ ’’ said Mark. “I was like, ‘OK. Why?’ ‘Well, they just want to have privacy and enjoy the company and have dinner.’ ’’
Al and Nancy Volpintesta were your average couple with your average family living in an average house in an average neighborhood on the south side of Appleton. So when Mark would run to school the next day to tell all his friends that two of the biggest stars on the NFL’s preeminent team were at his house for dinner the night before, his friends immediately flagged him for intentionally lying.
There was just… No way.
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It was just recently when 91-year-old Nancy Volpintesta decided she needed to put up some of the photographs she had of her friend, Herb Adderley.
“I’ll tell you what. I’ve got so many things here,’’ she said. “I put some pictures out in the last month or so; I don’t know why I just did.”
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She had heard Adderely’s health was not good and she tried to reach out, but could not connect.
“It broke my heart when I got that call (Oct. 30) about it,’’ she said of the passing of the 81-year-old Adderley.
“I did try to call his ex-wife but that didn’t work either. I’ve lost track to tell you the truth. It makes me feel so bad because we were such dear friends and I just couldn’t get to him at the end at all.
“It’s like losing a pal, I’ll tell you that. I feel terrible about it. We were dear friends with him, (her late husband) Al and I, and we loved his friendship. He was a true, blue friend. He wasn’t the kind of friend that was on and off; he was a friend.”
This most unlikely of friendships began in the most unusual of ways.
The Volpintestas, Packers season ticket holders, would start many of their fall Sundays tailgating
in the Lambeau Field parking lot, going to the game, then heading to the Hotel Northland to mingle and share a drink with the players.
It’s just the way it was back then.
“We were in the hotel after a game and I said to Al, ‘Look at that guy standing over there, all by himself,’ ’’ said Nancy referring to Nate Borden, a defensive end who played for the Packers from 1955-59. “He was just standing in the doorway with a beer. He didn’t come in. It just broke my heart. So we went and talked to him.’’
Borden introduced the Volpintestas to defensive back Emlen Tunnell, who introduced them to Adderley. And things just clicked.
Adderley and Willie Wood were the mainstays when it was dinner night at the Volpintestas, and they would bring other friends like Tunnell, Willie Davis, Bob Jeter, and Marv Fleming.
“We became lifetime friends,’’ Adderley told the Appleton-Post-Crescent in a 2012 interview following the release of the book he wrote with Dave Robinson, “Lombardi’s Left Side.” “It was a great friendship. It had nothing to do with color, just friendly people who invited us to dinner quite often.”
But it was more than that. Adderley was the kind of friend everyone would cherish. He would invite the Volpintestas to away games, he once took them to a Ray Charles concert in Milwaukee, he invited them to his wedding in Washington, D.C. and he would often ask them to join him at post-game parties.
“I was a paperboy for the Milwaukee Sentinel and I would have to walk through the yards to pick up the papers on the corner of Calumet and Lawe (streets,)’’ said Mark. “It was the day after the Ice Bowl. Everything was frozen and everything was running late.
“I’m waiting on the corner for my papers and I looked down the road and thought it was the truck and thought, ‘OK, I’m going to get my papers.’ Here, it was my mom and dad just getting home from the game at like 5 or 6 in the morning. They had been at Bart Starr’s house for a party and of course, were invited by Herb. And of course, they had a blast. But Herb was always behind it. He was that kind of a guy.”
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Adderley not only was ever-thoughtful when it came to Nancy and Al but also took great interest in their children.
“Herb Adderley, for example, called me on my 50th birthday, to wish me a happy birthday,’’ said Mark. “Granted, my mom had talked to him a while before that but that meant a lot to me. And when he wrote the book, he called me at Christmas because my mom had told him, ‘Hey, I’m giving all the kids the book.’ And he called me specifically to ask how I liked the book. Well, I had just gotten it and didn’t have an opportunity to read it yet but he always thought of you. And I think he thought of my mom and dad as family away from his family.”
And it was always that way.
“Back in the day, you may remember when Coca-Cola had the football promotion, the bottle cap promotion, where every bottle of Coke and Sprite and Tab if the cap had a football on it, it would either be an NFL team logo, it would be a Packer or it’d be the NFL All-Stars. And if you filled up a sheet, you’d get like a bobblehead doll. If you filled up five sheets, you’d get a football.
“One year I won three footballs because Herb Adderley, after every game, would take the bottle caps from the locker room and give them to me. As kids, we would roam the streets of Appleton with coat hangers and magnets fishing out bottle caps out the soda machines all around the city. Then my mom and dad would come home with popcorn buckets filled with bottle caps; it was just amazing. He would never forget that, every game when that promotion was going on. It was phenomenal; it was so cool.”
One time Adderley took Mark and his cousin inside the Packers locker room where they got to meet Jerry Kramer, Fuzzy Thurston, and Boyd Dowler, among others. Then there was the time he and his younger brother Bart met Adderley at St. Norbert College after a practice during training camp.
“We met him at the door because he couldn’t come out at the time and he says ‘Yeah, I’ll be right back,’ ’’ said Mark. “And he came back with Bart Starr to meet my brother Bart because that’s who my brother was named after. He would do things like that; he was very thoughtful.’’
And eventually so were Mark's childhood friends, to a degree.
While the Volpintesta's relationship with Adderely was a well-kept secret around Appleton, it wasn't to Al and Nancy's friends and family. My parents were friends with Al and Nancy for decades, and when I spoke with Al for a story about their relationship with Adderley in the Appleton Post-Crescent in 2012, Mark instantly began to feel vindicated after it was published.
"When you wrote the first article, as a matter of fact, I actually got some texts and e-mails ‘Oh my gosh, Mark, you weren’t lying to us. It’s the truth,’ " said Mark, managing a chuckle. "Thirty years later.''
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Nancy has a special football in her possession, a gift to her and Al from Herb. It’s an autographed football following the Packers' first Super Bowl win, signed by all the players and coach Vince Lombardi, that Adderley drove to their house to deliver.
“That football means so much to all of us,’’ Nancy said. “I’ve got it in my will that when I pass on that football has to be shared between my sons Mark and Bart because I couldn’t give it to one of them. It wouldn’t be fair.”
Yes, that football has great monetary value. But it’s the hidden value that has made it invaluable to the Volpintestas.
“That’s a treasure,’’ said Mark. “It’s so valuable. Not the money part of it, it’s that Herb actually went around and had these guys sign it for us. It wasn’t one of these printed, pre-signed footballs. These guys actually signed the ball. It was so cool.
“It’s The Duke, the brown Duke. We bought a case for it. It’s something we got from Herb Adderley, NFL Hall of Famer, Green Bay Packers Hall of Famer. It’s something to treasure.”
But the memories are what Mark Volpintesta really treasures. And one will always be treasured above all the others.
“The fact,’’ said Mark, “that he never forgot us.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Volpintesta. It has been corrected.