Nearly every family has a problem child, that one who can’t be broken, who won’t go along to get along. And Juan Peña couldn’t be prouder of his, though his 6-year-old son, Ezra, the third of four boys, drives him nuts every Sunday of the pro football season.
That’s because the Peñas, minus curly-haired, bright-eyed Ezra, aren’t just any fans of the New England Patriots. They’re super fans, a class of fandom so zealous it can risk familial strain, stare down adversity even of the most virulent kind and inject the kind of energy and the money that help make the NFL experience what it is. They come in all shapes and sizes, ages and fan loyalties.
Like the Peñas.
They’re such big fans that CBS asked their permission to use a clip of the family celebratory eruption during last year’s Super Bowl, when the Patriots sealed a win over the Seattle Seahawks in the final seconds, during Sunday’s game.
The video has more than 105,000 views on YouTube.
In it, the only disinterested face was Ezra’s.
Turns out Ezra is an unyielding Broncos fan, and he can’t be won over. The Peña parents, Juan and Courtney, grew up in New England, devotees of the silver and blue.
They moved to Denver eight years ago for Juan’s job as executive director of CrossPurpose, a Denver-based anti-poverty ministry, and to be a pastor and elder at Providence Bible Church.
“I wasn’t born in Boston,” Ezra said Thursday afternoon after school, playing with toys in the living room of the family’s home in the Clayton neighborhood. “I was born in Denver.”
OK, he was a Patriots fan for a short amount of time, “when I was young,” Ezra said, just a couple of minutes before a throng of about 30 orange-jersey-wearing neighbors arrived at the family’s door chanting their favorite Denver son’s nickname, “Ezzy! Ezzy! Ezzy!”
Juan and the three other boys tried in vain to fight them off with snowballs.
“I’m really proud of him,” Juan said of Ezra. “It would be so easy for him to give in, but he’s his own man. He stands by his decisions.”
Jennie Grimes: warrior in orange
Jennie Grimes wore her “Bronco gear” to chemotherapy in Los Angeles last Monday for good luck.
The 35-year-old who grew up in Denver is battling stage 4 breast cancer. On Saturday she flew to San Francisco to see her beloved Broncos once again.
During the long struggle since the recurrence of her cancer in 2010, Sunday Broncos games have been the highlight of her weeks during the season, even though she now lives in Santa Monica.
Sundays “are a fun time in a week that sometimes doesn’t have a lot of fun times,” she said on the phone Thursday night.
The trip was a gift for Grimes and her boyfriend from another breast cancer survivor.
Grimes’ family has had season tickets since 1975. She and her brother and sister meet up for away games in different cities sometimes. When she lived in Chicago, she and some friends started a Broncos bar group to watch the games together.
Once when her hair was coming back, she had “Broncos” shaved into the hairline around her head.
One of her most vivid Broncos memories was in 2011, when she got to go on the field with other cancer survivors, a memory so overwhelming she can’t remember who Denver played and who won, a rarity for this super fan.
Win or lose, she’ll wear her Bronco gear to chemotherapy again next week.
“I’m still a Broncos girl,” she said, “no matter what.”
Orange Vader, dark lord with a big heart
James Chavez is not what he appears to be on Sunday. Even dressed in an orange-and-blue Darth Vader costume, he’s anything but a dark lord.
The 49-year-old who makes and sells burritos hasn’t missed a home Broncos game in decades. He scrapes together the money, or sometimes people give him their extra ticket, but he finds a way to get in the game.
Chavez finds a way to do a lot. Orange Vader shows up on TV frequently, and the fact gives him a level of celebrity in the south Denver neighborhoods where he grew up and in Thornton, where he lives now.
He gets businesses to “sponsor” him by giving to Denver Police Activities League specifically to pay registration fees and buy cleats for children who could not otherwise afford to play organized football.
On game days, he visits nursing homes in this costume to lead the residents in Broncos cheers.
“They’re Broncos fans, too, and it puts a smile on their faces,” said Chavez.
He won’t make it to the Super Bowl, but Chavez is organizing an event for families and fans who don’t have people to watch the game with from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday at the Glitter Dome in downtown Denver.
He sees Orange Vader’s job on Sundays as important to the team and the fans.
“I try to keep people up,” he said. “Just because we’re behind, it’s not over; we’re still in it. I try to get them to not give up.”
Badge in San Francisco, heart in Denver
When, Todd Mather (pictured above) went to his first NFL game when he was 10 years old, he put on his orange parka over his Denver Broncos jersey.
“My mother said, ‘Honey, I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ ” Mather recalled Friday.
The Broncos were playing the Oakland Raiders. Mather is a California kid who deeply loved the Broncos. For the past 21 years he has been a cop in the Bay Area — in Piedmont, Calif., a town surrounded on all sides by Oakland.
His family had a relationship with late Al Davis, the principal owner and general manager of the Raiders.
Mather has never lived in Denver. And that’s unusual because he has season tickets and flies to Denver often. He wears a regulation Broncos helmet to the games. A TV room in his house is a shrine to the team, including jerseys of his favorite legendary players — John Elway, Bill Romanowski, Greg Kragen and Terrell Davis.
When Romanowski moved to Piedmont, Mather made it a point to say hello, and they have been friends ever since.
When he was 8 years old, his best friend was originally from Denver.
“You know how you like what your best friend likes when you’re a kid,” he said. “Well, he was a Broncos fan and it stuck for life. That was 1976. After that I was asking Santa for Broncos stuff.”
He made his first trip to Denver for the San Francisco 49ers’ famous “snowball game” in November 1985, when a Broncos fan threw a snowball at the opposing kicker and holder, causing a botched snap and helping preserve a 17-16 Broncos victory.
In 2014, during the AFC playoffs, then-Broncos tight end Joel Dreessen tossed a ball to Mather’s now-17-year-old son, Dominic, providing a prized family heirloom
The 47-year-old patrol officer said he’ll be with the Broncos to the end.
“I’ve been doing it my whole life,” he said. “It’s ingrained in me.”
Absence is Super Bowl luck
In 2014, John Harding paid $3,200 for a ticket to Super Bowl 48, the trip of a lifetime to see his beloved Broncos against the Seattle Seahawks in East Rutherford, N.J.
During the third quarter he sat dejected on stairsteps in a concourse, as the Broncos were well on their way to a 43-8 drubbing.
The picture still haunts Harding, the 58-year-old owner of John’s Sports Collectibles in Colorado Springs. He’s even been asked to sign some copies as a joke by Broncos haters.
“I looked like somebody who got left at the mall without a ride,” he said.
But he has no regrets about going, because he supports the team any way he can.
“You have to take chances in life,” Harding said. “We won’t always win, but you gotta go for it.”
Still, Harding didn’t even think about going to this year’s Super Bowl.
“I’m not going to the game, because I’m bad luck,” he said. “I got us killed the last time.”
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174, jbunch@denverpost.com or @joeybunch
