COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Pam Wurster still has the bumper sticker somewhere, a memento signifying heartbreak and nostalgia and the unpredictability of life all at once.
On scarlet background, the white letters with shades of gray spell out “Remember Ann Arbor.” Wurster can’t remember exactly when the bumper sticker came into her life, but she’ll never forget why.
On Nov. 22, 1969, Wurster and 11 friends made the trip from Columbus to Ann Arbor to watch Ohio State football play Michigan. They were all residents of the same apartment complex — except for one friend of a friend from Cleveland who tagged along.
The Buckeyes were 9-0 and one of the most dominant teams in college football history. A win over the Wolverines would extend OSU’s winning streak and confirm the 1969 team’s place as one of the greatest in college football history.
Instead, Michigan rose to the occasion with a shocking 24-12 victory that ruined everything.
“It was real gloom and doom for a while there," Wurster said. “Even though that was a big game then, I think it just mushroomed the competition between Michigan and Ohio State.”
Buckeye fans who attended the game or watched from their dorm room in Columbus remember with precise detail the circumstances leading to OSU’s demise. The early defensive lapses. The missed field goals. The four interceptions.
Yet they also remember the small details. Ed Bolte, a 1971 OSU grad, remembers sitting near the top of Michigan Stadium. He and traveling companion Bill Pritchard marveled at the announced crowd of 103,000 that topped the population of their respective home counties.
“The players looked like ants,” Bolte wrote.
Joe Chinnici, a 1964 OSU grad, remembers how loud the Michigan fans in the men’s room were at haftime. They reveled in a 24-12 halftime lead which the Buckeye fans incorrectly assumed would be temporary.
Neither team scored in the second half. Chuck Hootman, a 1970 OSU grad, recalled the verbal abuse he and his fellow Buckeye fans absorbed as they made their ways back to the parking lot for the long, silent drive back to Columbus.
Daniel Wolf, another 1970 alum who attended the game, called it “one of the worst days of my life.”
“I promised myself I would never step foot in Ann Arbor again and have kept that promise,” Wolf wrote.
Ohio sports fans have experienced their share of heartbreak over the past five decades. John Elway leading “The Drive” in 1986 torments Cleveland Browns fans. Michael Jordan hitting “The Shot” in 1989 haunts Cleveland Cavaliers fans.
Well, Robert Zelwin attended both of those games in person, and neither matched the despair the 1972 OSU grad felt leaving that Buckeyes loss in 1969. The only thing he could compare it to was the moment six years earlier, when his middle school principal announced President Kennedy had been shot.
“Certain things in your life you just remember,” Zelwin said. “It just gnawed on me.”
Tom Waltermire was an OSU sophomore attending that game with his future wife and his mother. The undefeated run had created an aura of invincibility around the Buckeyes. With quarterback Rex Kern and four 1970 first-round NFL Draft picks, some observers posted that Ohio State could compete with professional teams.
That day in Ann Arbor, they learned no team is invincible.
“When reality first crashes a youthful cocoon, it is extra painful,” Waltermire wrote. “None of us spoke the entire drive back to Akron, except to order food along the way.”
Kenny Cohen, a freshman in the fall of ’69, did not travel to Ann Arbor. He watched from a television in the common area of Drackett Tower in the north campus. He has never heard as many doors slam as he did that day.
“We were so psyched up — we were undefeated,” Cohen said of the tamer response in the orms. "You felt like you had everything going for you.
“You felt they were unstoppable. You felt they could have beaten anybody. You felt they could have beaten pro teams.”
As painful as those memories remain, many of those fans also remember the better days that followed.
Zelwin broke his uncanny streak of attending the most soul-rending losses in Ohio sports fan history when he watched the Buckeyes win the 2003 national championship at the Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, Arizona.
Wurster looked for that bumper sticker for hours on Tuesday. She is sure she’ll locate it eventually. After all, “Remember Ann Arbor” has another meaning as well.
The friend of a friend who tagged along that day was an Otterbein graduate whose mother lived in Westerville. A few weeks after the game, he called the teacher from Columbus to ask her out.
By the summer of 1971, Pam and Edward Greer Wurster were married. They remained so until his death in 2017.
“It was there for dual meaning,” Pam Wurster said of the bumper sticker her late husband purchased. “Don’t take anything for granted, because we all thought we were going to win. But also, remember Ann Arbor because that’s where we met.”
The memories of Nov. 22, 1969 will not fade, though some are sweeter than others.
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