Longtime Tacoma resident attending 65th consecutive Rose Bowl. It may be his last
“I wish you could’ve met Jay before,” sighed Patti Reifel, from the basement of their west Tacoma home. “He had so many great stories to tell.”
Her husband, Jay, sits quietly in his chair. He’s a tall, slender man with kind eyes and a warm smile. Patti goes to fetch another box of Rose Bowl memorabilia that Jay has collected over the years. Game day programs, framed photos and old newspaper articles, flags and pennants, tickets, even a football signed by Ronald Reagan.
The 2024 edition of the Rose Bowl Game on New Year’s Day on Monday, this year a College Football Playoff semifinal matchup between Alabama and Michigan, will be the 65th consecutive Rose Bowl Jay Reifel has attended, a streak that dates back to his first Rose Bowl game in 1959, when he was eight years old. It will also likely be his last.
Reifel was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s five years ago and the disease has progressed, now considered severe. He has difficulty carrying on a conversation these days in the final season of his life, but his family is determined to keep his proud Rose Bowl streak alive.
Particularly, his daughter Emily, who has attended 30 Rose Bowl games in a row with her dad. When she was 10 years old, she took it upon herself to start joining him.
“My grandfather (Jay’s dad) had passed away,” Emily said. “My dad ended up going to the game by himself and it bothered me so much.”
So she started going with him and never stopped, even after she graduated from the UW and moved to New York City, where she worked her way up in a career in event planning, starting at a front desk job at the Waldorf Astoria. She now directs events at the historic Plaza Hotel.
“Traditionally, I’d guess these are things that fathers would hope to do with a son,” Emily said, laughing. “I saw when I was very young how passionate my dad was about sports.”
Jay Reifel grew up in Pasadena and was always around the Rose Bowl. His parents owned a condo there, located on the parade route. Every year, they threw a big party, watched the parade and walked to the stadium for the game.
“It was such a big day in their house,” Emily said. “It made me feel like I should follow in the footsteps of their tradition.”
They have four tickets to the game every year. Some years, Patti goes with Emily and Jay. Other years, their second-born daughter Hailey and her family join. Sometimes friends with rooting interests in particular teams tag along. They still park at their old condo, even after it was sold years ago.
“We pay homage to where this whole thing started,” Emily said. “Then we walk down this hill (to the stadium). It’s a pilgrimage every year.”
FROM PASADENA TO TACOMA
Jay attended the University of Puget Sound, graduating in 1972. Patti, who grew up in Lakewood and attended Lakes High School before the UW, was fixed up with Jay by a friend. They had their first date on a tennis court. They shared their first kiss at Maximilien, a French restaurant at Pike Place Market in Seattle. Six months after their first date, they were married. They’ve been married for 45 years.
Reifel was a longtime school administrator in the South Sound, serving in various positions in the Bethel School District, Tacoma, Puyallup and in Gig Harbor.
“He was a servant-leader,” Patti said.
However busy life became, he never missed the Rose Bowl — sometimes a decision that put him in the dog house, like the year he left Patti watching one-month old Hailey and toddler Emily by herself.
“I was a little miffed,” Patti said.
Jay and Emily’s favorite games over the years have been the ones involving the Huskies. After moving to Tacoma, Jay became a diehard Seattle sports fan. Their first game together was the 1993 Rose Bowl, in which Michigan defeated Washington a year after the Huskies won the national championship.
“We were big Husky fans,” Emily said. “He said to me, ‘Sometime, you’ll go to college, go to the UW, you’ll join a sorority and come down (to this game) with all your friends,’” Emily recalled.
The prediction came true: in 2001, the Marques Tuiasosopo-led Huskies played (and beat) the Drew Brees-led Purdue Boilermakers in the Rose Bowl when Emily was in college.
The best game, according to Emily? It had to be the 2006 Rose Bowl between the undefeated Texas Longhorns and undefeated USC Trojans. Texas, led by star quarterback Vince Young, came away with a 41-38 win in an unforgettable matchup.
They met fans from all over the country over the years, Jay always eager to chat with anyone sitting next to him in the near-100,000 seat stadium.
“People would always be really interested in hearing his stories,” Emily said. “He remembered so many statistics, what happened in all the games, the winners of all the games. He knows so much history. … It’s been a little hard to watch him over the years sort of not be able to be as present and as vocal about those memories or experiences.”
Emily has tried not to think too much about Monday’s game likely being the last Rose Bowl she attends with her dad, a nearly seven-decade streak destined to come to an end, as all inevitably do. They’ll be joined by two of Jay’s close friends, also.
“I think it’s gonna be a hard day,” Emily said. “I feel really grateful for his friends coming, too. I wouldn’t be able to handle it by myself.”
As far as Emily’s streak, which will extend to 31 games on Monday, she’s unsure what it holds.
“It may be something I choose to do by myself,” she said. “I don’t know if I’d want to share it with anyone else. That might change as time goes on. As long as my dad is still with us, I feel like I owe it to him to keep going.
“I don’t think it’ll be the last one for me. I’m not ready to give it up.”
This story was originally published December 31, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
