Most Steelers fans take great pride in the fact that their team made it to the Super Bowl six times.
For Brackenridge native Tom Henschel, that's nothing.
He's been to all 39.
Henschel, 64, a retired airline employee who splits his time between Florida and Winfield, is the Steeler Nations black-and-gold ambassador to the big game.
"Oh, I am committed," Henschel said. "It's my claim to fame."
From the early days when it wasn't even called the Super Bowl, through the years of Steelers domination, through the Neil O'Donnell-induced heartbreak of Super Bowl XXX, to the recent spate of New England Patriots appearances, Henschel has been in the stands.
The trip to Detroit will be especially sweet for Henschel because he can cheer on his beloved Steelers.
"There's probably seven or eight teams that I like, but when it comes to the Steelers ..." Henschel choked up. "I'm just so proud to be going."
Henschel said he's been a lifelong fan because his father raised him and his four siblings right.
"He started taking us to games in the '40s," Henschel said. "He'd take us to the high school games, then to the Pitt games, then to see the Steelers on Sunday. Of course, back then, it wasn't hard at all to get tickets."
Back in the early days of the Super Bowl, those tickets weren't hard to come by either, he said. Henschel's Super Bowl streak began when he was working as a baggage agent at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. He took a second job bartending part-time at a hang-out for flight attendants.
"With all these girls coming in there we got all the ballplayers, too," Henschel said. "I got players giving me tickets the first couple of years."
The first game -- when Green Bay beat Kansas City, 35-10, on Jan. 15, 1967 -- wasn't that big of a deal. It wasn't called the Super Bowl yet and wasn't even a sell-out: Only 61,946 fans showed up at the 90,000-seat Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, but one was Henschel.
Once his connections dried up, Henschel began buying tickets from scalpers. When that became hard, he used a secret strategy.
"Oh, I don't want that in the paper," he laughed.
Several years ago, Henschel and two other fans who have been to every Super Bowl wrote to the NFL, explaining that keeping their streak going was getting tougher every year as tickets became increasingly scarce. For the past six years, the NFL has sold the men Super Bowl tickets at face value. This year they cost $600 each.
One of the other men in Henschel's "Never-Miss-A-Super-Bowl Club" is Stan Whitaker, of Denver.
"Of course I'm disappointed the Broncos aren't in it, but this will be a good time for Tom, so I don't mind so much," Whitaker said.
No one knows how many fans have seen every Super Bowl in person. Henschel's group consists of five men who have run into each other at the game over the years.
Whitaker said he's recently discovered another club of five men in New York who also claim to have been to every game. The two groups are planning a dinner together in Detroit next weekend, he said.
The NFL doesn't keep records of fans who attend the Super Bowl and can't say how many there might be, spokesman Brian McCarthy said. League records show that 12 sportswriters, photographers and league officials have attended all 39 Super Bowls, McCarthy said.
The closest Henschel came to breaking his streak was in 1972 when he woke up sick in his New Orleans hotel room on the day of Super Bowl XI. Henschel suffers from asthma and believes he suffered a severe attack.
"I woke up at five or six in the morning after a night of partying and I couldn't breathe," he said.
He passed out while crawling through the hotel and woke up in a New Orleans hospital emergency room, surrounded by nuns who told him he needed to be admitted.
"I said, 'Sister, you don't understand, I have to go to the Super Bowl today," Henschel said. "As soon as she walked out, I tore out that I.V. and got dressed and took a cab back to my hotel room."
By the time Henschel's girlfriend met him at the hotel to go to the game, he was feeling much better.
"We had pretty good seats that year, too," he said. "The Cowboys beat the Dolphins."
Of course, most people have a hard time making it to just one Super Bowl. The vast majority of fans must be content with parties that feature pizza, Terrible Towels draped over the television and those beer commercials.
When you ask Henschel about those $2 million ads the Super Bowl is famous for, he just grins and shakes his head.
"Never seen them," he said. "I've never seen the game on television. I've had friends tape it for me cause they say I should see the commercials. But once I watch the game live, I don't want to see it." Additional Information:
Super fan
Tom Henschel's thoughts on attending all 39 Super Bowls:
