The Seattle Seahawks not only lost the Super Bowl this week, but they also lost a longtime fan. Michael Vedvik, 53, a Seahawks fan since the 1970s, died early Monday of a heart attack.
His wife, Stephanie Vedvik, remembers him as a “vibrant” football fan with a “large personality.” During the football season, she says, he wore something with a Seahawks logo on it every day, even to work.
An obituary that appeared in The (Spokane) Spokesman-Review describes him as a small business owner in Kent, Washington, who loved his family, his work and the Seahawks. The obit also blames the Seahawks’ “lousy play call for Mike’s untimely demise,” which Stephanie Vedvik says was a joke meant to cheer up her husband’s loved ones.
“He was his own person, and he would have loved it,” Vedvik said. “We have gotten a little criticism, but it was an obituary just meant for our family and our friends, and it was meant to lighten it up for us.”
His death, Vedvik said, “just devastated our whole family.” She said she was too upset to write the obituary, so his sister did it.
“She sent me the copy and it was just standard and I said, ‘OK, that’s fine,’ and then she said, ‘Well, Dan (her husband) wanted to add this line. I think it’s funny. What do you think?’ and I said, ‘I think it’s great, I think Michael would have just loved it.’ If I had read this to him about somebody else, he would have had a laugh and thought it was hysterical,” Vedvik said.
“It was like my last joke, this was a man who married me in Las Vegas in front of Elvis 11 years ago because he didn’t want a traditional wedding — he wanted it to be fun. He wouldn’t have us all sitting around crying like we had been doing.”
Vedvik said that they were happy to see the Seahawks win the Super Bowl last year, but that sadly her husband never even learned the score of this year’s big game.
The Seahawks lost Super Bowl XLIX to the New England Patriots 28-24. With seconds to play on the 1-yard-line, Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll called for a pass, and Malcolm Butler made a game-saving interception for the Patriots.
“He was really looking forward to the Super Bowl all week, but he hadn’t been feeling well so he thought he could watch it later,” Vedvik said. “He went up to bed, this had been something going on for a while, and I had been trying to get him to go to the doctor, and I went up to check on him periodically, he had been sleeping. He thought he had indigestion, he thought maybe it was a little bit of stress. … He didn’t think it was serious.”
Vedvik said she thinks her husband may have had a hand in making this story go viral.
“He would have loved being famous for 15 minutes. He loved the Seahawks, and he had a great sense of humor,” she said.
CNN reached out to the Seahawks for comment but was unsuccessful. Michael Vedvik’s funeral is set for Saturday at a church in Mead, Washington.