Dewey Corn, an alumnus, never set off to accumulate a streak of this magnitude. But good health, good fortune and unwavering loyalty kept the 85-year-old High Point resident on track.
In November of 1975, he went to an N.C. State football contest and just happened to attend the next 60 consecutive games. He then decided to see how long he could keep it up.
Thirty-three years later, Corn has attended 389 consecutive games of his alma mater — a statistic that includes away contests and bowls.
“It just worked out that I was able to attend the games,” Corn said.
Even family tragedies have conspired to allow Corn to prolong his streak. Cornís brother died one year in October, but it just so happened that the funeral fell on an open date.
Coincidentally, the same thing happened when his mother-in-law passed away during another season.
And in 2003, Corn refused to let his health deter his attendance. According to family friend Mark Bost, Corn didn’t even let a pneumonia scare slow him down.
“I know for a fact that he came down with pneumonia right at the start of the season,” Bost said. “He probably should have been in the hospital. But he didn’t go to the hospital — he went to Raleigh two weekends in a row.”
Corn downplayed the incident and said his doctor would have classified it as a ìmild caseî.
“It didn’t influence my activities all that much,” Corn said. “I usually try to stay in top physical condition anyways. He told me not to exert, but to just continue my normal lifestyle.”
The lifestyle
1946 was a big year for Corn. He enrolled at N.C. State on the G.I. Bill after spending three years in the Navy. He married Christine, his wife of more than 62 years, with whom he has two daughters.
He witnessed his first Wolfpack football game –a win over Duke — in Riddick Stadium. State, coached by Beattie Feathers, went on to an 8-3 season, earning a trip to the second annual Gator Bowl.
Corn graduated in 1949 and took a teaching job before returning to State in 1952 to complete his M.S. degree in agricultural education.
Before 1975, Corn rarely attended more than two Pack football games a year.
“My children were young at the time and I had less time to spend on athletics and the need for more money to raise the family,” he said.
Though Corn is a fervent football supporter, he never played the game himself. Instead, he invested his talents into baseball and softball.
Corn has been a resident of the High Point, N.C. area for roughly 51 years, where he’s known for his pitching prowess.
“At one time, I know he was a he was a pretty mean softball pitcher,” Bost said. “He played for his church team for many years. I’ve heard a lot of comments from people that played softball with him that he was a pretty wily pitcher back in the day.”
Corn has been a Wolfpack baseball fan for many years, attending several games and NCAA tournaments. He used to own State season basketball tickets, but decided to give them up because of the nature of the basketball schedule.
Corn is also loyal to several organizations, including the Wolfpack Club and the Alumni Association, in addition to maintaining 46 years of perfect attendance at the High Point Civitan Club.
The Streak
During his 33-year run, Corn estimates he has traveled roughly 30,000 miles. He’s traveled as far as Tucson, Ariz. to Boston, Mass., and many places in between.
Every home game, he makes the 95-mile trip from High Point to Carter-Finley, arrives early and sits in his seat in section 27.
He doesn’t tailgate, so he stops on the way home to get a bite to eat and saves his ticket stub, a tradition he started more than a few years ago.
And when he joins his friends on ACC road trips, there’s no need to look up directions.
“He knows exactly where to stay, exactly where to park and exactly how to get there,” Bost said. “He’s like a human GPS system.”
All the travel cost has probably added up over the years, though Corn said he can’t estimate the total cost.
His daughter used to work for United Airlines and that allowed Corn to get discounts on some travel. He estimates that he doesn’t spend more than $100 on any particular away game.
“Often times, if we double up with other fans, we split the cost,” Corn said. “I don’t want to get the figure too high because my wife is listening. And if it gets too high she may cut my allowance or she may bill me an amount that she could spend on clothing or something of that sort.”
The moments
Corn has witnessed thousands of Pack players and seen hundreds of games during his 33 years of perfect attendance. But there are just a few select ones that stand out in his mind.
The games include a few that went down to the wire.
“I remember 20 years ago we were playing South Carolina in Carter-Finley and the game ended — except South Carolina drew a penalty,” Corn said. “We fired the ball into the end zone and our player caught it. We caught the ball after time had actually expired.”
A similar phenomenon happened in a game against Penn State.
“We were playing the Nittany Lions at home once and we had about a one or two point lead,” Corn said. “There was about three seconds to go and they kicked a fifty some yard field goal and won the game. That knocked us out of the Gator Bowl that year.”
Over the years, some of Corn’s favorite players have included All-American quarterback Roman Gabriel and former ACC player of the year Philip Rivers.
But he also thinks highly of Russell Wilson.
“I’ve been very impressed with Wilson at quarterback,” Corn said. “He’s played like a veteran even though this is only his first year.”
National Superfans
Though Corn’s streak is impressive, it pales in comparison to several other college football fans across the country. Perhaps the most famous of these is Giles Pellerin.
According to the Associated Press, Pellerin attended every University of Southern California football game, both home and away, from 1926 until his death in 1998. Pellerin, who was 91, went into cardiac arrest in the Rose Bowl parking lot where he was attending his 797th consecutive Trojan game.
Pellerin estimated that he spent nearly $85,000 and traveled more than 650,000 miles by plane, train and automobile to attend USC games.
During his run, Pellerin came close to missing several games until fate, it seemed, stepped in.
A near miss came in 1949 when an emergency operation to remove his appendix sidelined Pellerin just five days before a home contest. The day of the game, Pellerin told nurses that he was gong for a walk. Instead, he sneaked out to the Coliseum.
In order to attend USC’s 1969 opener, Pellerin defied doctors orders to stay bedridden after a stomach tumor surgery just weeks before.
And in 1993, Pellerin suffered a ruptured aortic abdominal aneurysm following a road game at Penn State. Fortunately, the Trojans had an open date the next week because Pellerin remained hospitalized in Pennsylvania for 12 days. After signing a waiver absolving hospital officials from any liability, Pellerin was released in time for USC’s next match-up.
This year, Harry Wilson, a resident of Anderson, S.C., was planning to attend his 63rd consecutive Clemson University-University of South Carolina match up. The 81-year-old Wilson has been attending Clemson football games since 1939.
But before this year’s match-up, Wilson was bedridden by the effects of colon cancer. To help make him more comfortable, Clemsonís athletic scholarship organization gave Wilson and his wife free tickets to a climate-control box above the stadium.
Another dedicated fan, Herschel Scott, 82, known in the Yellow Pages of Monroe, GA., as “Mr. Bulldog,” recently died. Prior to his death, Scott had attended 471 consecutive University of Georgia football games, both home and away, since 1962.
His tombstone reads “A Bulldog Born, Bulldog Bred, Here I Lie a Bulldog Dead.”
Additionally, Corn said he used to communicate with a fan from Ohio State University with a similar record. At the time, the man had attended about 15 more games than Corn.
“I lost track of him,” he said. “But some day I might try to check my records to find out if heís still attending. There may be a lot of people that have attended more games than I have.”
ACC streaks
It’s probably impossible to know how many super fans exist since there are no records kept and little is documented about the phenomenon.
For this story, a query was made to the ACC football media relations directors regarding the issue. Of those that replied, only Clemson and the University of North Carolina claimed to have fans with exemplary attendance records.
As previously mentioned, Harry Wilson of Clemson has attended 63 consecutive matchups between Clemson and USC. But it is not known what his overall attendance record is.
Additionally, Bob Bradley, a former Clemson sports information director, attended and worked 502 consecutive games between 1955-2000.
At UNC, sports information director Kevin Best said a fan broke his consecutive streak when he was unable to attend the Maryland game this year. But Best did not know the exact number of games the fan attended.
The future
Eighty five year-old Dewey Corn has attended 389 consecutive games since 1975, and a possible bowl game this year will mark number 390. Corn credits his good health and good luck for his ability to maintain his record.
So what does the future hold for Corn? Is he likely to stop going to Pack football games anytime soon?
Corn and Bost both indicate that his goal is to reach number 400 and gradually back off from there.
“I’ve never really had a goal until now,” Corn said. “But I’d surely like to get there. If all goes well, I should meet that goal sometime next year.”
But Christine Corn knows how dedicated her husband is, and she’s not so convinced.
“He won’t stop going unless heís disabled,” she said.
And after a while, Dewey Corn conceded that his wife might have a point.
“She may have figured it out just right,” he said. “It’s hard to give up something like this if you enjoy doing it. And usually, whatever it is you enjoy doing, you stop only when you are physically or mentally forced to.”
