Continued from previous week
Mary Jane Van Duyse Sorgel passed away during the summer of 2022, leaving a long legacy that still reverberates inside the stadium walls of Lambeau Field.
“Coach Lombardi wanted to get the fans going. And then I decided we’d do “Go, Pack, Go.” And to this day, I keep saying ‘They’re doing it again,’” Mary Jane told NFL Films in 2017.
“You know, I thought Mary Jane and the Lumberjack Band were wonderful,” Former Green Bay Packer Guard Jerry Kramer told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “She was attractive and enthusiastic.
She really looked like she was having fun. She was a Packer celebrity — no question about it. She did a lot of telethons and parades and dinners and was very visible for the franchise throughout the year.
The Door County Historical Museum also hosts an exhibit dedicated to Sorgel and the Golden Girls that’s been on permanent display since September 2019.
The exhibit — named “Mary Jane and the Golden Girls” features uniforms from 1959 to 1972.
But, possibly the most indelible mark she left behind is the influence she had on her students, friends and former Golden Girls.
Michele Ozkan had a chance meeting with Sorgel at a baton twirling camp in 1967.
When Sorgel offered her a spot on the Golden Girls, she jumped at it, though her experience was with twirling.
“I always looked longingly at the girls who were cheerleaders with the big fluffy pom pons,” Ozkan told reporter Anna Brugmann in 2016.
Hearing the words pom pons, Ozkan began traveling between Pottstown, Pa., to Sorgel’s home in Sturgeon Bay to cheer on the Pack.
She later attended college in Wisconsin and continued to cheer.
The team was just returning from a win in the NFL’s first Super Bowl when Ozkan started.
“Had I realized what I was encountering ... I probably would have been frightened,” Ozkan said. “But I just went in with a carefree heart and I got to use those big pompoms.”
Ozkan credits Sorgel for her greatest adventures.
Sorgel later offered her an opportunity to take on her dance studio.
There, she realized her passion for working with children.
Sorgel also provided something that she gave to a long line of young women in those days — confidence and the desire for perfection.
“Meeting Mary Jane Sorgel has been the single most (important) factor that has changed my life over and over again,” Ozkan said. “I don’t believe that it was a coincidence. I kind of believe it was meant to be.”
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