Judy Vollono will be back at the Hall of Fame Game on Aug. 6, 2026, and this one will mark her 57th trip. The 82-year-old Canton fan said she plans to be in the stands again when the Arizona Cardinals meet the Carolina Panthers at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium.
For Vollono, the date is the point. She has kept showing up since Sept. 13, 1969, when she watched the Green Bay Packers beat the Atlanta Falcons 38-24 and still has the tickets from that first game. She bought seven tickets from her then-bosses for $5 each and remembers that the seats were bleacher seats before they were redone. “Before they redid the seats, they just had bleacher seats,” she said.
The Hall of Fame Game now kicks off the NFL preseason, but Vollono’s attachment to it runs far deeper than one night each summer. She and her late husband, Chuck, bought programs from every Hall of Fame Game, along with pennants, commemorative festival pins, drink coasters and other keepsakes. She said she keeps them in her room, and the collection has become part memory bank, part family record. Among the items she values most is a pennant from Super Bowl XLIV featuring Drew Brees.
This year gives her an extra reason to go. Brees is among this year’s Hall of Fame enshrinees, and Vollono said she would love to meet him. “He’s a nice guy; a good guy. I’d love to meet him,” she said. Brees was chosen by the San Diego Chargers in the second round of the 2001 NFL Draft, won the NFL Comeback Player of the Year Award in 2004, later joined the New Orleans Saints, and led them to a win in Super Bowl XLIV in 2010 before retiring in 2021 after 20 seasons.
Her streak has not been smooth. Vollono said she was there when lightning struck and play was suspended in 1980, and she said lightning struck again in 2024. In 2016, she said fans were sent home because the end zone paint would not dry. Those interruptions did not break her habit. They only seemed to prove how firmly the game has been fixed in her summer calendar for more than five decades.
So the next chapter is simple: Vollono will make her way to Canton on Aug. 6 and watch another Hall of Fame Game from the same long-running seat in her life. Whether she gets to meet Brees is the unresolved part, but the bigger fact is already set. At 57 games and counting, she is not watching the tradition from a distance. She is part of it.
