In their 80s, loyal brothers still keep pace with Patriots
From the New England Patriots' moves to a half-dozen stadiums, to the American Football League's merger with the National Football League, to an organizational turnaround that brought a former doormat three Super Bowl wins in four years - the Newton brothers have seen it all.
Robert Newton, 80, of Weston, says he has held Patriots season tickets since 1960, the year the team - then known as the Boston Patriots - played its first game. His brother, Francis Newton Jr., started joining him at games that year and bought his own tickets the next season, and the pair have been fixtures on the 50-yard line ever since.
"We've been good fans, no question about it," said Francis Newton, 83, of Sudbury.
Robert Newton said he decided to buy season tickets when he was working as a physician in Brookline and the team doctor, who worked in the same building, approached him about it. "Having been an enthusiastic football fan all my life, I said I would indeed be very interested in being a season ticket holder," he said.
"I've missed occasional [games], but not very many," said Robert Newton, who is retired but still serves as medical director of the New England Cryogenic Center, a facility on Needham Street in Newton that he founded in 1982. "I didn't miss them because I didn't want to go or anything. It's just that circumstances sometimes made it impossible to go. Over the course of those years we've had quite a lot of fun.
"Every time there was a move from one stadium to another, and the season tickets became harder and harder to get, they always allowed me to keep my 50-yard line, but the seats that were originally right down on the field kept going back further and further, and they became much more expensive," he added. The brothers' seats are now in the upper deck at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough.
"They're very nice seats, even so," he said.
The Patriots do not have information dating to the beginning of the franchise, but team spokesman Stacey James confirmed that the brothers are among the roughly 1,000 season ticket holders who go back to at least to 1971, which is the earliest year with reliable ticket records.
Although he's been attending games for nearly half a century, Robert Newton cited recent feats for most of his favorite memories - wins over the Indianapolis Colts, games decided by late field goals, last year's 16-0 regular season.
"Of course, initially, the team was not a very good team," he said. "You had to be a real fan to sit through some of those seasons where if they won four or five games you could say you were pretty lucky."
The brothers have sat through 16 seasons in which the Patriots won five or fewer games, including 1990, when the team won only once. The team went nine seasons without posting a winning record, from 1967 to 1975. But the pair have been rewarded for their loyalty in recent years with the Patriots' playoff appearances and three Super Bowl trophies.
"Over the last four or five years, we have just had one unbelievably good team," Robert Newton said. "It's quite a difference, and lots more fun when they win. But I'm willing to go to a game in which they lose if they play it well."
The brothers followed the Patriots to New Orleans for the team's first Super Bowl berth, a 46-10 loss to the Chicago Bears in 1986. While season ticket holders are now entered in a lottery for the chance to buy Super Bowl tickets, that year each season ticket holder was allowed to buy two tickets. Francis Newton gave his extra ticket to another brother, Alan, and Robert Newton brought his daughter to the game.
Unable to find a direct flight from Boston to New Orleans, Robert Newton and his daughter flew to South Carolina, drove a rental car from there to an Air Force base in Mississippi where they spent the night, and then drove to the game.
"The French Quarter just teemed with people from Boston coming to watch the Patriots get slaughtered in the Super Bowl," Robert Newton said.
His daughter, Jennifer Flory, said it was difficult to watch the Patriots lose, but she enjoyed spending time with her father and uncles.
"They all just had very strong personalities and would argue about any subject," Flory said. "They all had pretty similar views, but it was always a heated discussion. It was pretty humorous."
The brothers typically attend games with just each other, although they have made friends with fans who sit beside them. Until a few years ago, they parked a car at a convenience store and walked about a mile to the stadium, but they now make the trip via train.
"I never think about selling a ticket," said Francis Newton, who works as an administrative law judge in Boston. "I go to the game."
"I'll go as long as I can get down there and get up into those seats, which is getting harder and harder," said Robert Newton. "But we're still able to do it." 