Jerry Kramer's Hall of Fame induction will be happy, despite the crying

Richard Ryman | Green Bay Press Gazette

When Alicia Kramer introduces her father, Jerry, at his Pro Football Hall of Fame induction, there will be crying.

"I'm a known crier. This will be so emotional," she said during a telephone interview from her home in Idaho. "I'm getting choked up talking to you on the phone."

Crying isn't a handicap during Hall of Fame inductions, but even if it were, Alicia never stood a chance. It's her "reward" for her six-year campaign to get her often-overlooked father into the hall.

"The obvious part was for her to be the presenter," Jerry Kramer said, also by phone from Idaho. "She picked herself when she decided to (campaign for the election). I suggested she not do (the campaign) and she suggested I be quiet. She is related to her mother."

Ice Bowl Packers return to Lambeau As part of the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame Inc's 50th anniversary, players from the 1967 championship team returned to Lambeau to be honored.

Alicia, 45, is one of Kramer's six children, and the oldest in his second family. She was born four years after her dad's career ended and lived in Idaho, so what she learned about his playing time came from memorabilia he'd squirreled away — "He keeps everything," she said — and eventually on trips to Green Bay for golf tournaments and other appearances, where she met fans and former teammates.

To her, of course, he was just Dad, but "everybody kept telling me what a great football player he was."

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A great player on a great team, which for years proved his undoing. Ten of Kramer's Lombardi-era Packers teammates and Lombardi himself were elected to the hall, which created pushback from hall voters who apparently decided 11 was enough. Kramer's name came up 10 times over the decades and each time he fell short of votes, even though he was picked by hall voters in 1969 as the best guard in the first 50 years of the NFL and was on the all-decade team of the 1960s.

With her interest in her dad's career and emerging social media, one Facebook post led to another. Before she knew it, a campaign was underway.

"It wasn’t really a campaign at first. It was just sharing knowledge," she said. "There were times I thought it was overwhelming and no way this was going to happen for Dad. I felt like I was alone in the potato fields of Idaho."

As her father will tell you, Alicia Kramer can be quite driven. He recalled when she was a freshman in high school and wanted to attend a three-day basketball camp. He thought it would do her some good, though not the same way she thought it would.

"I said that’s exactly what she needed, some humility," he said. "She’d run into some of those big Idaho farm girls and come home with her tail between her legs."

When she returned, her father asked her if she wanted to shoot for a bit.

"She said, 'Dad, I’ve learned some moves and I’m going to burn you,'" he said. "If anything, (camp) encouraged her."

Alicia Kramer was an athlete from a young age.

"I came home in fourth grade and I wanted to play football and Dad wouldn’t let me," she said. "He was afraid I’d hurt my lady bits. He encouraged me to play basketball. I played volleyball and ran track. It was because Dad encouraged me.

"He took me bowhunting, fishing ... and still, as an older woman, encourages me on how to negotiate for myself. He elevates people. You feel better after being around him."

Alicia Kramer's effort began in earnest in 2012, with an assist from Gallatin Public Affairs of Boise, Idaho.

She accumulated testimonials from former teammates, opponents and even players who never competed against her father but respected his accomplishments. Jerry Kramer said he received 60 testimonials from Hall of Fame members.

"They were nice enough to take the time and write a letter, some after 40 years," she said. "I didn’t know these men."

To Jerry Kramer, who is 82, the effort would have been a success in any case, although, make no mistake, he wanted to be elected. But the many letters validated his career, even if it wasn't certain the hall would.

"I said if you are not impressed with this you don’t give a damn about your profession. I thought if nothing else happens, this is a very nice keepsake," he said. "I’d rather have the goodwill of their opinion and not be in the hall than not have their good opinion and be in."

Fans got into the act, too. Alicia Kramer isn't the first person to call Packers fans rabid, and she means it in the nicest way.

Press-Gazette columnist Pete Dougherty wrote that when Jerry Kramer was notified that he was a seniors finalist, Joe Horrigan, the hall’s executive director, said, 'Jerry, I want you to know that this will reduce my incoming mail by 90 percent. Those people in Green Bay have questioned my manhood, my heritage, my intelligence. Everything.'"

Being nominated again was an accomplishment in itself.

"The day we learned he was even nominated again, I wouldn’t trade that day for anything. He was smiling a little bit bigger," Alicia Kramer said.

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She was with her father in Minneapolis when the hall induction vote took place before Super Bowl LII. Jerry Kramer becomes the 25th Packers team member in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and 12th from the Lombardi era.

A Sports Illustrated reporter wrote about the day he was elected and the speed with which Alicia Kramer found herself anointed his presenter.

"It was just a natural movement. She had been working at it so long," Jerry Kramer said. "I’ve got four boys and two girls and there hasn’t been a peep out of anybody. They know how hard she’s worked."

Steve Tate, a Packers fan who was with the Kramer party for part of that weekend, said there was never a question about who the presenter would be.

"Alicia did so much, it was almost a full-time job. Most family members might have done it for a year or two," Tate said. "When Jerry said it, it made perfect sense, right?"

As it stands, all of Kramer's children — Tony, Diana, Dan, Alicia, Matt and Jordan — will be at the induction.

It's a fair guess Alicia Kramer won't be the only one crying Aug. 4.