A Lee Remmel short story

This from Peter King's Monday Morning Quarterback on Si.com:

A piece of the Packers is missing today. A big piece, if you ask me. Lee Remmel retired the other day after 62 years -- 62 years! -- covering and working for the team. He first covered the Packers in 1945 as a beat reporter for the Green Bay Press-Gazette -- wrote about the team for 30 years, then began a PR career for the team in 1974.

I'll always remember Remmel's great press box cuisine at Lambeau in the 1980s. Lee would have a giant cheese wheel. I mean, a 10- or 15-pound wheel of Wisconsin cheddar, something to snack on through the game, along with the greatest brats ever served in a stadium.

Later, he got to be close with Brett Favre, so close that Favre played the kind of jokes on Remmel that he'd play on Reggie White or the newest rookie. Like this one: "We get on the bus before a Monday night game in Chicago, and I put a remote-control fart machine under Lee's seat. He sits right behind Mike [Holmgren]. I sit about four seats back. It's real quiet on the bus. The machine's got four different fart settings. I got the remote, and I hit one, and it goes off. Everybody looks around. Then I hit another one, a different one, and now everyone's looking at Lee, like he's got a little problem. Mike's in front of him, and you know Mike. He's always so serious before the game. But I can almost see him shaking, laughing a little. Lee was so mad at me. He wouldn't acknowledge me for a week.''

Remmel survived Favre's needles, was a pro's pro and served the people in our business well for a long time.