Local Rams Fans Follow Team to Berlin

Once in a lifetime. That’s what locals have been calling the opportunity to visit Berlin to watch the Aug. 11 exhibition game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Kansas City Chiefs.

On Saturday, the Rams--along with a flock of VIP fans--flew to Berlin aboard a jumbo jet chartered by team owner Georgia Frontiere. On Sunday, more than 50 members of the Rams Booster Club left Los Angeles, bound for the American Bowl via holidays in Munich and Dresden.

“My whole family is excited,” said Orange County Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, one of a few locals invited to board Frontiere’s fun jet. Vasquez--who counts the glamorous team owner among his supporters--took his wife, Elaine, and his son Jason, 11.

“We’re looking forward to the game, of course,” said Vasquez, “but also to the fact that we’re going to be in the middle of some of the most dramatic changes in the world in the past six to 12 months.”

The same went for Fortune 500 businessman John Crean of Santa Ana Heights, a guest with his wife, Donna, and his daughter Emily Vogler, aboard the team plane. “I’m tremendously excited,” said Crean, a manufacturer of recreational vehicles.

“In fact, I’ll tell you how excited,” he continued. “I hate to fly. I find nothing more uncomfortable. But if it’s important enough, I do it. And what could be more important than watching the Rams play in Berlin at this point in history? Nothing, if you’re a fan. I’ve been a fan for 20 years.” Crean, a new member of the team’s advisory board, predicts that the Rams will beat Kansas City by 7 points.

Also booked on the chartered jet were Mary and James Roosevelt of Newport Beach, close friends of Frontiere. “I’m looking forward to a great game,” said James Roosevelt, the eldest son of F.D.R. As for Berlin, well, he’s “seen it all before,” he said. (After World War II, Roosevelt spent time there helping the Allies coordinate control of the city on behalf of President Harry S. Truman.)

But Roosevelt is excited about seeing the new dynamics. “I especially want to see how much change is actually taking place in East Berlin,” he said.

His wife still gets chills when she remembers the time she spent in Berlin during 1963. “I was living in Switzerland and was sent to West Berlin to attend a language lab conference,” said Mary, a supervisor of teacher education at UC Irvine.

“I remember seeing Checkpoint Charlie and finding it terrifying,” she said. “There was this little barrier that opened and closed--much like the ones you see at Camp Pendleton and El Toro today--and people were constantly trying to go under it. They would just crash through without stopping and get fired at.

“One night, I saw a garbage truck make it through. When it got into West Berlin, children popped out! They had hidden beneath the garbage.”

Mary remembers a Berlin museum where cars that made it through Checkpoint Charlie were on display. “I’d like to visit that museum if it’s still there,” she said.

Vasquez plans to leave a bit of Orange County in Berlin. During the week’s pregame festivities, he said, he plans to present the Berlin mayor with a set of Orange County centennial pins, and maybe something from the Nixon library.

“It’s going to be something,” Vasquez said. “Orange County in Berlin. A chance for us to just walk from West Berlin to East Berlin. Incredible.”

Hitting the road to watch a Rams game is nothing new for the Rams Booster Club, said its president, Judy Matthews of Tustin. “Many of us follow the Rams everywhere. Myself, I’ve been with them in New Orleans the past five years in a row,” she said.

But even Matthews admits that the trip to Berlin is as exciting for the boosters as a 100-yard kickoff return. “We’re the folks who don’t leave Anaheim Stadium until the game is over ,” she said. “What a thrill to be in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin cheering on the blue and gold. Of course, the Rams will win by 10 points.” (After wins in Tokyo last year and in London in 1988, the Rams are unbeaten overseas.)

The plus of traveling with the boosters, Matthews said, is that members are hanging out with people of their own kind. “They share your passion,” she noted.

According to Bonni Ort--a partner with her husband, Jim, in All-Travel Services in Anaheim--the boosters who signed up for the Berlin tour package share a passion for football and travel.

That’s why the Orts (Jim is on the booster board) put together a $1,549-per-person Bavarian whirl that includes sightseeing in Munich--including a dinner show at its beer-slinging Hoffbrauhaus--and a day in Dresden, where boosters will visit Zwinger Castle.

The group plans to tour East and West Berlin the day before the game. Then, on game day, they’ll rally at a pregame dinner in the Steigenberger Hotel.

“It’s going to be great fun touring the country before the game,” said Mary Jane Stratman of Orange, the club’s executive director. “I wouldn’t visit a foreign country alone. But going with the boosters, I have no fear. I’ve gone on some of their trips. They’re well-organized, and there’s always someone around.”

Stratman has been preparing carefully for her Bavarian blowout. “I have a list of souvenirs I plan to buy: T-shirts and lapel pins from the game; and china from Dresden,” she said.

And maybe a few pounds from everywhere. “I’ve been walking 3 miles a day to get myself nice and thin so I can enjoy the food and the beverage of the country,” she said. “And not necessarily in that order.”