BY PETE WICKLUND
Journal Times | Posted: Thursday, January 17, 2008 12:00 am
RACINE - Forgiveness is generally one of the guiding principles ministers live by. But the Rev. Walter Hermanns recently endured a big test on how far that principle reaches.
He also received an up close and personal lesson in divine intervention. And all of this has to do with Sunday's National Football Conference championship game between the Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants and a shredded ticket.
The story, which has a happy ending, all started with the Dallas Cowboys when they won home-field advantage in the NFC playoffs. Hermanns' wife, Lynn Helmke, who like her husband is a big fan of the Packers, incorrectly presumed that playoff tickets they received for Lambeau Field were negated by Dallas' position.
Unbeknownst to her husband, she put the tickets in a bin of papers to be shredded. Yes, shredded.
"She didn't realize the possibility - the slim possibility - that Dallas would lose," Hermanns said.
But the Cowboys' lost to the Giants in the divisional round of the playoffs and Green Bay received home-field advantage for this Sunday's championship game.
Helmke said she is at a loss as to why she did what she did. She said she understands how the playoff system works. It's an apparent slip of the mind.
"It made no sense," she said.
This is where a turn of bad luck turns good.
Hermanns, an outreach minister at Racine's Emmaus Lutheran Church and a chaplain at Lincoln Lutheran facilities, is wheelchair-bound due to multiple sclerosis.
His good friend Andrew Duncan assists Hermanns with various tasks. On Friday Hermanns directed Duncan to shred the papers in the bin. Duncan got to the stack of four playoff tickets that were bundled together with a rubber band. He unattached the band and put one of the tickets into the shredder.
"Something rang a bell and he said 'Are you sure you want to shred these?' " Hermanns said.
The two men realized what happened, emptied the shredder and tried to recover every piece of the ticket and put each piece into a plastic bag. Hermanns then called the Packers' ticket office and explained the situation.
"It almost sounded like they had heard crazy stories like this before," Hermanns said.
Hermanns purchased the tickets with a credit card, still had three remaining tickets and purchased the seats through a special lottery for those who bought handicapped-accessible seats in the past. All three factors likely worked in his favor.
Hermanns describes his realization that his wife had put the tickets in the shred pile as "surprise," although he hinted his discussions with his wife about the matter may have been a wee bit heated.
Helmke is not going to Sunday's game, but it's not out of punishment.
"She's elected to watch the game in comfort and warmth," said Hermanns, who has borrowed a friend's snowmobile suit to keep warm during the game's expected single-digit temperatures.
Going with Hermanns will be: his daughter Laura, 18, a senior at Park High School; her boyfriend Matt Haney, also a senior at Park; and Hermann's good friend Darryl Sturino, a local funeral director.
Hermanns said they plan to arrive at the ticket office early Sunday just to make sure there are no problems with the shredded ticket.