The Favre Legacy

On October 29th WKBT aired a story about my family.  We thought it was going to be a silly little piece about the fact that our last name is Favre.  That is not really how it turned out.  From the idea, to the cameras, to a beautiful story that had us all laughing, smiling, and crying, it was so much more than we had expected.

A couple of months ago Jennifer Livingston asked my step mom if she could do a little news story about the La Crosse Favre family.  Maybe she would cover my brothers playing sports for Aquinas, UW-L, and Viterbo.  She would probably tie in a little of how we all feel about sports and having the same last name as the notorious football player.  We all rolled our eyes when she said yes.  Well, it has been a family source of contention since Brett started jumping teams and doing his whole back and forth bit on the retirement issue.  We can agree on most issues in our house but politics, religion, and Brett are touchy topics and are sure to make tempers flare when touched upon.  Why not air this laughable hostility on local TV...or so we thought. 

Most of us were less than thrilled at the idea of having cameras in our faces as we watched my brothers play football.  Even less excited about the idea of having cameras in my mom's house during our already crowded and crazy Sunday night family dinner.  We literally feed our whole, already large, family including my step mom (who runs the circus every week), me, my son, my boyfriend, my 6 brothers, my sister, her finance, and her  two children every Sunday.  The full grown indoor rotweiler, and two little orphan Annie type dogs.  Add part of the Aquinas football team, a few UW-L football players, don't forget Viterbo baseball players, and that is only some of the Sunday regulars.  On top of this, now we have a news crew with huge cameras and an interviewer making the rounds with a microphone.  You get the idea!!  It was literally a zoo, I would not have been surprized if an elephant had walked through the livingroom!  So this was what was going to be on TV.  We were all a little nervous and excited to see what Jennifer would pull together out of this insanity.  We couldn't wait for it to air.

One week after the 6th anniversary of my dad's passing, the show aired.  We held our breath to see what fools we had made of ourselves, and cringed at the thought of everyone we knew seeing it.  Then it started.  The story of how we became this huge crazy Favre family, and the man who inspires us, my dad.  It told about how my dad met my step-mom and how easily and genuinely we became a family united.  It was really touching that Jennifer payed honor to my dad and showed how amazing my step-mom is.  It just really reminded me of how blessed we all are to have each other.  It was perfect that the story came at a time of year that can be a little difficult, even six years later.  It made us all really proud of what we have in each other.

http://www.wkbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=13409468