Sunday night’s semi-destructive revelry was still unfolding on the streets of the City of Brotherly Love when Uber driver and Eagles fan Luis Reyes decided he’d pick up one more fare before heading home.
“He asked me to take him to the cemetery so he can place an Eagles cap and to let his dad know that we finally won,” Reyes told CNN.
It was one of untold bittersweet victory celebrations that since Sunday have blurred the line of earthly time and space to include Philly fans who breathed their last long before time ran out on Super Bowl LII.
Reyes’ rider asked him to help find the headstone, which had remained unmarked since his dad died in October, the driver said.
After they did, Reyes snapped a photo, which he posted on Facebook with this note: “Taking a passenger to the cemetery so he can place a #Eagles cap on his fathers tombstone and letting him know we’re finally champs.”
Stefanie Heron-Birl’s husband on Monday took an Eagles flag to her dad’s grave.
“He could see the game. He knew that they won,” Heron-Birl said of late father while waiting for Thursday’s victory parade. “He was there, … he just wasn’t there in person.”
Heron-Birl’s called her dad “total piece of work” who followed Eagles games on a small radio blaring WIP-FM’s play-by-play announcer Merrill Reese.
“While my Dad would not have gone to the parade … ( “what? Deal with all those crowds? No way!”), the Birls are going and the Sunday game day tradition of watching football continues with my Dad’s three grandsons,” she wrote on Facebook.
Jeffrey Yerk also headed on Monday to his father’s grave in nearby Telford, Pennsylvania.
At the cemetery, Yerk sat down and poured some Wild Turkey honey bourbon into a shot glass. He took a swig, then poured a “couple” out for his dad, Arthur Yerk.
“Well, Dad, check it out, buddy,” he recalled saying. “They finally got there.”
Yerk remembered Sundays with his father, Arthur Yerk, he told CNN. The family had season tickets, and with five boys, “it was always a big deal who went to what game with him.”
Yerk stayed at his dad’s grave for more than an hour, reading him headlines and stories about the big win.
“I got very, very emotional right then,” he said.
“It was something he always wanted to see — begged to see — just never happened for him,” Yerk said. “I just kept waiting for the year. Even the bad years, I’d go chat with him about the Eagles.”
