enlarge Michael C. York/Special to the Telegram

Mike Ayer of Holden has for a half-century kept an autograph book that was filled that long-ago night in Bangor, with so many names that eventually would make it to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

enlarge Michael C. York/Special to the Telegram

There was worry the crowd in Bangor would be small, that September night in 1959. Tickets didn’t sell until the day of the game. But now, the autographs, stubs and memories remain for those who saw the New York Giants and Green Bay Packers of a legendary era.

BANGOR — The game over, Rosey Grier walked off the Garland Street football field, heading for the high school locker room beneath the grandstand. A young voice, coming from somewhere near Grier's waist, stopped him.

"Will you please sign my (autograph) book?" Grier, all of 6-foot-5 and 280 pounds, reached down and put his arm around Frank Jordan.

"He picked me up like a rag doll," said Jordan, recalling that night in 1959 when he was 14. "He signed my book while he was still holding me. He put me down and asked if anyone else had something to sign.

"It happened right there," said Jordan, pointing to the opening in the fence that surrounds what is now called Cameron Stadium. It seemed, he said, like it happened yesterday.

Fifty years ago to the day, the Green Bay Packers played the New York Giants in a preseason game on this very field. It was the first time two professional football teams played in Maine and it very well may be the last.

"It boggles the mind," said Bangor chief city councilor Jerry Parker, during a brief observance Saturday before Skowhegan and Bangor kicked off their seasons. The players wore 50th anniversary decals on their helmets. A plaque noting the 1959 game was shown to the crowd and will be mounted at the stadium.

Fans who were at the game 50 years ago were asked to stand. Maybe 20 did, while those around them applauded.

"You couldn't make something like that happen today," said Parker. "You just couldn't. No one but the Jaycees thought they could pull it off (then)."

The Maine Jaycees and its local Bangor organization thought it would be a good idea to invite the NFL to help celebrate the 125th anniversary of the city's birth. The NFL wasn't the big business it is today. Why not try and make it happen?

Baltimore, the reigning champion, was invited but looked at a map and declined. The Giants, who were New England's team before the Patriots existed, got the next invite. The Giants' training camp was at St. Michael's College in Winooski, Vt. Just down the road. They agreed and preparations began.

The Packers, under new coach Vince Lombardi, arrived as early as Sunday before the game. Dan French of Unity, a 25-year-old member of the Bangor Jaycees, said some of the Packers attended mass at St. John's Catholic Church, then explored the town.

The teams stayed in local hotels. Some players were invited into homes. They ate at local restaurants, going back several times to The Baltimore, owned by the Baldacci family.

French was one of several go-fers who also served as escorts, accompanying players to public appearances. He asked Giants linebacker Sam Huff if he tackled Jim Brown, the great Cleveland running back, as hard as it looked on televison.

"Huff just smiled," said French. "He said I'd have to ask Jim Brown."

French hustled towels to the teams during practices at the Garland Street Field. He got an earful of Lombardi, who sometimes would vent to French on the mistakes his players made.

"He swore like a drunken sailor. I told people then I didn't think he'd last as a football coach. Jim Lee Howell, the Giants' coach, was a real nice guy."

Interest built during the week but no one was buying tickets, said Stu Haskell, a former University of Maine athletic director. "I was hired to do public relations work for the game so I was particularly interested in how tickets were going. It didn't look like I was doing my job."

Instead, most fans bought their tickets the night of the game. There was seating for about 15,000, said French, and the crowd was said to be 12,000. French thought it was a little smaller. By any estimate, it was a huge crowd for a football game in Maine.

"Everywhere you looked, there was people," said Mike Ayer, who was 12 when he came with his buddy, Frank Jordan. "That crowd looked massive."

No one fully understood the significance. Paul Hornung, Bart...