Cliff Christl started gathering oral histories with former Packers and others associated with the team in 2000 and will continue to gather them as Packers historian. Excerpts from those interviews will be periodically posted at www.packers.com
The Astor Hotel served as home to many Packers, especially the single ones, for at least three decades. Players started staying there in the late 1920s, notably after Jake Geurts and Herman Holz purchased and remodeled the hotel in 1929, and some were still living there after Vince Lombardi took over as Packers coach in 1959. Two women, Mayme Toule and Sue Wallen, ran the hotel for most of the years when Curly Lambeau was coaching and probably played a bigger part in the Packers' survival than anyone has ever realized. They looked after the players almost as if they were their own kids and made them feel at home while living in a strange city with no roots. Jim Miller was Toule's son and Wallen's nephew, and he hung around the hotel as a young boy and later worked there as a teenager. The Astor Hotel bar was also a popular hangout for Packers fans both during Prohibition and after. "The Astor Hotel was like a fraternity house for the players and Sue Wallen was our house mother," Packers Hall of Fame center Charley Brock said after the hotel was destroyed by fire in 1966. Actually, when Lambeau was coach, other than when the Packers lived at Rockwood Lodge in the late 1940s, he'd tell his players, especially the rookies, to report to the Astor when they arrived in town and they'd be welcomed to Green Bay and given the arrangements for their stay. "She looked after us like she was our mother," end Nolan Luhn, who played for the Packers from 1945 to 1949, said of Wallen years later. "A real nice lady. She'd talk to every one of the players every day. She'd more or less screen prank calls or whatever. She knew every player and their mom and dad and girlfriends." Toule worked at the Astor for much of the 1930s before Wallen replaced her as assistant manager. Wallen then worked there until she remarried in 1947. Six years earlier, her son, Earl D. Wallen, a Marine private, died at Pearl Harbor. He was Green Bay's first casualty in World War II. Miller was born in Green Bay in 1928.
On the years his mother, aunt and he worked at the Astor: "My mother was married to James R. Toule, my biological father. I was born in '28 and my dad died in '28. My mother was already working there at the time. She started as a clerk and became manager. When she became manager, I can't pinpoint that. I'd say she ran it – and this would be a pretty accurate guess – from '32 until '38, when she remarried. Charles R. Miller was my stepfather. I was a bellhop there in '42. And when my mother remarried, my Aunt Sue took over as manager. And she managed it until she married later on. I went to junior high at Green Bay West and then we moved to Missouri."
On the players who lived there during the season when he worked there: "In those days, the Packer players, the single ones, stayed there. Of course, they weren't making millions, they were making hundreds. The married players didn't stay there. I literally saw Clarke Hinkle, all the greats of the time."
On his mother and aunt looking after the players: "This was back when young men had a little more principles. I know my mother and Aunt Sue did. So no problem for me. You're familiar with Johnny Blood. My Aunt Sue told me that at least once she had to send Johnny Blood money to get back to Green Bay to play ball. He was quite the vagabond. I lived in Pensaukee (north of Green Bay) and (Blood) spent the summer here way back when romancing one of the Drolette girls."
How would you describe the Astor? "It was a small hotel. The Astor fronted on Adams Street. I'll describe the street from south to north: Bosse's News Depot was on the corner (of Adams and Cherry streets). Next was Timmer's Barber Shop, which was adjacent to the Astor lobby. The front entrance of the Astor had a marquee over the front with cables and turnbuckles and the Astor Hotel logo on it. Next, came the Astor bar with a door from the hotel lobby to the bar. Then, I believe, it was a car dealership, possibly an office supply store and Oliver's Ice Cream shop was on the corner (at Adams and Pine streets)."
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The Astor Hotel: Frat house to Curly Lambeau's Packers Jim Miller, son and nephew of the - Packers.com
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