By Judith Roberts
Seven is a lucky number.
While LSU boasts 70,000 season ticket holders, Ruston resident Loy Seal was one of seven individuals selected as part of the Tiger Stadium 100 Fan Memory Wall.
Tiger Stadium is celebrating 100 years this season, and during the Sept. 21 home game against UCLA, Seal will be recognized on the field, and an interview of some of his memories of Tiger Stadium will be featured on the videoboard.
“It is a deep honor,” Seal, a 1972 graduate of LSU, said. “It’s a once in a lifetime experience.”
Seal and his wife Deborah have been season ticket holders for 50 years, and Seal said he went to his first LSU game at 3 months old.
“My dad was in graduate school at LSU, and they took me to all the games,” Seal said. “The first game that I remember was a Mississippi State game in 1961, which was the 10th anniversary of my dad’s master’s degree.”
His favorite LSU memory, however, came just a decade later.
“(It was) the 1971 game against Notre Dame,” he said. “Notre Dame was favorite; Notre Dame was highly ranked. And LSU beat them 28 to 8. Bert Jones from Ruston threw three touchdown passes in that game to Andy Hamilton, also from Ruston. And (Hamilton) caught a pass in the game where he literally knocked the Notre Dame All American defender off his feet and then caught it all along and ran in the end zone.”
Seal and his family moved to Texas in 1985 so he could pursue a master’s degree in religious education from Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary, and he let his sister have the tickets while he was out of state.
“I kept buying them because I didn’t think I’d ever get them again,” he said. “My sister, who was teaching in Baton Rouge, bought them from me. And so, she was there sitting in my seat, and there was a man sitting directly in front of her, and they met. And a year later they were married. So my sister met her husband in Tiger Stadium.”
Seal said he and his family – which now includes daughters- and sons-in law and grandchildren – are ready to make their way to Tiger Stadium again next month to cheer on their favorite team – and cheer on Seal as well.
“I have many cherished memories,” Seal said.
And in case anyone is wondering – seats 32 and 33 in Row 23, Section 421 – if anyone happens to sit there, those are the ones where so many Seal family memories have been made for 50 years.
