100 Years Of Memories From CU's Most Famous Fan

Peggy Coppom of "CU's Twins" will turn 100 this Tuesday, November 19; we lost her younger twin Betty to an illness on August 5, 2020.

        CU's popular "twins" were born on November 19, 1924 in Walsenburg, Colo., a small town of 3,100 people situated halfway between Pueblo and Trinidad in the southeastern part of the state. Peggy, the older twin, and Betty were born to Maple and Lester Fitzgerald, who was a meat cutter and amateur welter weight boxer.

        The Fitzgerald family moved from Walsenburg to Haxtun when the twins were toddlers, then to Longmont before their sophomore year in high school in 1939, and a year later, to Boulder where the twins enrolled at Boulder High School and made the cheerleading team.

        "Boulder was really conservative then, practically a church on every corner," Peggy recalled. "A very small town at the time, maybe 12,000 or so. It didn't change until the 60's when all the hippies arrived." (She was right, the 1940 census had Boulder's population at 12,831.)

        Her favorite places are either gone or relocated: Marie's on Broadway, King's, the Gondolier and Turley's (her favorites nowadays are BJ's and Efrain's). She wasn't a fan when Pearl Street was converted into a mall back in 1976, as she felt it, "lost the flavor of a good old-fashioned downtown."

        Peggy attended CU for one year before deciding to get married and start a family. She married a man she met in high school in Longmont, John Coppom. Both sisters would marry pilots in the Army Air Corps; John flew 25 missions in his B-17 bomber over Germany in World War II before returning home to marry Peggy in September 1944. Betty soon followed in marrying Harry Hoover, who flew reconnaissance missions during the war. Many of those pilots never returned from their missions, but both of their future mates were among the lucky few to survive.

        One of her most vivid memories of her early years in Boulder came on V-J Day on August 14, 1945, when president Harry Truman announced the end of World War II. John had returned home from the war the previous year and the two were married; they joined hundreds of Boulderites driving up and down Broadway, honking their horns in celebration when she went into labor with son Jack, who was born later that evening.

        The Fitzgerald's fell in love with CU when they used to listen to football games in Haxtun on KOA-Radio before moving to a house on 6th Street up on Mapleton Hill. "We enjoyed listening to those games, hearing the exploits of players who were also from small towns, like Kayo Lam and Byron White."

        Once in Boulder, the family started to sporadically attend games beginning in 1940; while Peggy couldn't pinpoint the first actual game they attended, she thought the Buffaloes won, as CU beat Kansas State, Wyoming and BYU at then-Colorado Stadium that season.

        Not including the COVID 2020 season when no fans could attend football games, she has missed just three at home since first attending every one regularly starting in 1966. That's the year John and Peggy first bought season tickets, theirs on the west side of Folsom; Harry and Betty had bought theirs on the east side in 1958 (they would eventually move over to the west side and join Peggy and John).

        Translated into numbers heading into Saturday's Utah game, that means Peggy has trekked to Folsom Field 335 times as a season ticket holder, in addition to several games annually prior (and those don't include almost every spring football game as well). Betty probably owns the all-time record by a fan of just over 400, with Peggy third likely in the 380's – the old mark which is now wedged in-between was held by the late F.M. "Dutch" Westerberg; he saw every CU home game (394 of 'em) from 1921 until 1999, when he passed away at the age of 94.

        "It was easy to buy a ticket to every game," she recalled. "Once we could afford season tickets, we jumped in." Their tickets were located in the first row off Balch Fieldhouse. After the Flatirons Club and Fred Casotti Press Box were constructed ahead of the '68 season, seating was adjusted a bit and she became a permanent holder of seat 29 in row 41 at the top of section 104 – at roughly the 35-yard line for the last 58 years.

        The twins attended over an estimated 2,500 CU sporting events in person in nine sports: football, men's and women's basketball, baseball, soccer, volleyball, track and field, lacrosse and women's tennis. Known mostly for their devout following of the football and basketball teams, Peggy's unabashed favorites were CU's 1965 through 1967 baseball teams, where son Jack played centerfield, was a three-year letterman and a second-team All-Big Eight performer as a junior in '66. She was most proud of the fact that he led the team in batting (.333 average, fourth in the Big 8), total bases (32), runs scored (17) and fielding percentage (.983).

        She cited several of her fondest memorable games. Three football wins over Nebraska (1986, 1989, 2001), the Miracle in Michigan (1994), the Orange Bowl win over Notre Dame ("Our guy was clipped, don't even talk about that some say we didn't deserve that win."), the 20-14 win over No. 2 Oklahoma in 1972 and the 27-24 one over the No. 3 Sooners in 2007, Askia Booker's three-pointer at the buzzer to beat Kansas in 2013, the win over No. 1 Stanford in women's basketball, and the triumphs over Nos. 1 Washington and Nebraska in volleyball.

        "I was watching the game at home when we beat Michigan," she said. "After we scored I was screaming at the TV and ran outside, screaming and jumping around with all of my neighbors."

        When asked who her all-time favorite Buffs are, she gave the perfect answer.

        "There were many I knew better than others, but if I did (have a few favorites), I wouldn't say so. I wouldn't want anyone to feel that I left them out." She did say how exciting it was to watch athletes through the years like Carroll Hardy, Joe Romig, Dick and Bobby Anderson, Cliff Branch, Jeff Campbell, Darian Hagan, Rashaan Salaam, Jeremy Bloom, Lisa Van Goor, Shelley Sheetz, Chauncey Billups and Evan Battey perform their best for the Buffaloes (Battey always made sure to stop and give the twins a hug on his way off the court after games). And she likely could have rattled off hundreds of other names, those were just a handful that immediately came to her mind.

        When attending road games, they usually drove (the only Big 12 towns they never made it to were Ames and Waco), and she recalled being treated the nicest by Oklahoma and Texas fans.

        "We'd walk by their tailgates, and they'd invite us, 'Come have a hot dog' or "Please join us for some Texas barbecue.'" She wasn't overly keen on how they were treated by Nebraska fans, or the location in the stadium of the visiting team's seats ("In the upper corner – we were closer to the sky than the field."). Driving to Lincoln in 1990, they actually saw a sign aimed for CU fans driving to the game that was placed on a fence off Interstate 80 that was insulting and classless (the one that read, "Sal is Dead, Go Big Red"), referring to death of Sal Aunese the previous year due to stomach cancer.

        "We made that drive often, and with relatives in Nebraska, we often had Thanksgiving dinner with them," she recalled. "But that was outright disgusting, Betty and I were sick to our stomachs when we saw that. But they got theirs when we came alive in fourth quarter and Eric Bieniemy scored all those touchdowns." (EB scored four in the quarter in CU's 27-12 win.)

        The Coppom and Hoover families also became big Denver Bronco fans, owning season tickets at one time, annually went to summer concerts at Chautauqua, Christmas events at Macky Auditorium, Cheyenne Frontier Days and Boulder's "Pow-Wows," an event once featuring a rodeo, rock drilling and "pig catching." She has been to almost every Pearl Street Stampede since 2006 when then-athletic director Mike Bohn worked with the city to create what has become one of Boulder's most signature events (the twins rode on the fire truck several times in the parade).

        Betty was an original member of CU's Ladies Quarterback Club (1970), which eventually morphed into the Buffalo Belles. Peggy couldn't attend the weekday luncheons at first due to her job (an appraiser in Boulder County's Assessors Office), but became a regular attendee in 1993. She also recalled what may have been a precursor to the Buff Club, when in the 1950's head coach Dal Ward would bring players to weekly events at Boulder's Elks Club.

        She remembered they would often fly to CU away games wearing gold CU sweaters, and on the return trip if the Broncos had a home game, they'd change into orange ones and head to Mile High Stadium from Stapleton Airport.

        John passed away after a long illness on Christmas Eve in 1973; they were married 29 years. A devout Catholic who attends mass every day, she always prays for him, Betty and among others, often any CU athlete who has suffered a serious injury.

        After Betty passed away, CU's first game in 2020 came in November due to the pandemic, a 48-42 win over UCLA. Athletic director Rick George and head coach Karl Dorrell delivered a game ball to Peggy at her home in north Boulder. And after Colorado's first home win under Deion "Coach Prime" Sanders, she was brought to the locker room where Sanders presented her with the game ball after CU thrashed Nebraska, 36-14.

        Peggy has never understood all the fuss about her and Betty being CU's most famous fans. They have taken more pictures with CU followers through the years than any coach or athlete. Awarded Honorary C's in 2017, the Alumni C Club reserves a seat for her at every pregame tailgate, where many former athletes clamor to take photos with her.

        Nationally they may not be as recognized on the level of a Jack Nicholson rooting for the Lakers or Spike Lee for the Knicks, but when it comes to college fan bases, their only equal might be Sister Jean of the Loyola Chicago men's basketball team (she just turned 105 in August). The twins were inaugural inductees into the Legacy Wing of CU's Athletic Hall of Fame in 2022. How did Peggy sum up their induction?

        "I can't think of one person or anybody that's ever been given an award like this for simply having a good time."

        On October 29, Boulder's oldest restaurant, The Sink, honored the twins with a caricature on one of its walls filled with celebrities -- like actor Robert Redford, who worked as a janitor there while attending CU – there is a halo above Betty, who also has angel wings. It was only fitting, as The Sink celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2023.

        One of Coach Prime's publicly-stated goals was to get her to a bowl game, and that was accomplished last month when the Buffs became bowl-eligible with the win over Cincinnati.   So that birthday present came early. There's a private party for her the Sunday after the Utah game – for which the only present she really wanted was for kickoff against the Utes not to be at night, and that came through with the 10 a.m. kickoff.

        Peggy, the entire Buff Nation wishes you a happy 100th birthday … and many more!

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