Campaigning to get Jerry Kramer into the hallowed Hall
Jerry Kramer is my favorite Packer of all-time.
He’s one of the greatest players to ever line up at his position, a multiple time All-Pro and Pro Bowler, a five time NFL Champion, a mainstay on the dominant Green Bay squads of the 60s, an integral part of the legendary “Packer Sweep,” and a member of the 1960s All-Decade andNFL 50th Anniversary Teams.
Kramer is also the best player not in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
That dubious distinction has followed Kramer – a member of the Green Bay Packers’ Hall of Fame – for years now, even being named as much on an episode of NFL Networks’ NFL Top Ten television series.
For years, debate has swirled around Kramer’s non-inclusion, with the same points of contention flying on both sides of the argument. What has made the 2012 version of the campaign unique is the role social media has taken in the conversation.
The Twitter feed @JerryKramer4HOF has been active since April of 2011, but it’s only been in the past several weeks when it really began to make noise. The account, run by Jerry Kramer’s daughter Alicia Kramer, has tweeted over 7,000 times with the majority of them campaigning for her father’s cause and interacting with supporters. At the same time, she maintains a website and Facebook pagedevoted to her effort, including an online petition that supporters can sign.
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Nearly every day Ms. Kramer can be counted on to send out double-digit tweets to the world, and her efforts have garnered attention in the media. Publications like OnMilwaukee.com and SB Nation’s Acme Packing Company blog have taken to writing about the push, among several others.
All of this publicity has brought the elder Kramer’s case back into the fans’ consciousness 44 years after he retired from football. This is important because Kramer claims that one of the biggest reasons her father isn’t in the Hall or the yearly discussion is that most people simply assume that he is already in, and that idea directly led to the start of her campaign.
“A friend of mine reminded me that dad needed to be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He said with my Facebook skills, I should start a campaign,” she recently told The Good Point. “As an athlete, I believed he had the credentials and that he should be in.
“I also heard people announce dad as a Hall of Famer, refer to him as a Hall of Famer. I thought if I gathered some support, maybe we would have shot, but I never expected this. I knew Dad was loved by lot of people, but I never realized how he impacted most of them.”
Since beginning her efforts over a year ago, Kramer has discovered that maintaining her position of relevancy requires a tremendous amount of effort every day.
“I tweet a lot to stay relevant; to try keep my subject on everyone’s mind without being rude or overwhelming,” she said. “I would say that I am ‘connected’ most of my day, although it has been less over the last few weeks. I am really burned out at the moment, working every day for the last year. And I have tried to answer every question, accommodate every request, and thank every person who has contributed something.”
The effort may be taxing, but she won’t give up.
“I’m Googling, emailing, texting, Facebooking, tweeting, chatting, etc. I don’t believe the human brain was built to take in this much information at one time or to try and forge so many relationships. I built my life around the internet to be accessible to supporters. It has worked for the campaign, but not for me personally. I wish I had time for it all. I tried to simplify the process by creating a webpage. But people still had questions, opinions and stories to share and I still wanted to be able to thank all of those who contributed.”
Still, she is pleased with the results she has seen so far, as well as the incredible support she has received from the fans that have taken up her cause.
“I think we have been very successful in bringing the topic to light. I mean, you and I are here, talking about it. So you must have heard it from someone or somewhere. That’s the beauty of social media,” she said. “Packer Nation’s response has been overwhelming. I can truly say that Packer nation is like a family. They help their own.”
It’s that fan support that continues to drive her determination to see justice brought to her father’s legacy.
“I have Packer fans from all over the world connecting with me, telling me they heard stories about my father, and it is really cool. I don’t have millions of followers on Facebook and Twitter. What I do have are a couple thousand real and passionate people who care and want to make a difference.”
While she is pleased with the response and enjoys hearing fans championing her father’s cause, as the campaign has worn on she has found out the limitations inherent with social media and the Hall of Fame. Currently, the only way for a player from Kramer’s era to receive a nomination for the Hall of Fame, a person has to hand write a letter and mail it.
“This really frustrated a lot of my supporters. They wanted an email address to send their nominations to. It really put a lot of people off to have to send a letter through snail mail, but maybe that’s why Canton still chooses to receive nominations that way.
“I’ll admit my attention span is short and the thought of hand writing a letter just irks me, but if it is important enough, I will do it. And I did.”
Ms. Kramer encourages fans and supporters to write nomination letters themselves, and she knows many already have. Given all of her work and the work of her supporters, she feels cautiously optimistic about her father’s chances.
While she has confidence that 2013 could be the year her father finally gets in, she isn’t going to get complacent, and vows to keep working up until the announcements are made.
Beyond her own efforts, she encourages anyone who wants to get involved to do just one thing: share.
“The most important thing anyone can do is to share the story,” she said. “Share it with other people who love football. Ask them to write a letter nominating Dad to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I also want to thank all the people who have helped me; who have supported me. Without them we wouldn’t be here right now talking about this. But we are. Keep sharing the story. We can make this happen.”
Senior nominees for the Hall of Fame are announced in late August. Only then will Ms. Kramer know if she can finally rest.
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