PORTLAND – The hole behind the collar, worn from living on a hanger year after year, didn’t matter.

It wasn’t being worn by its original owner, but that didn’t matter either.

Dave Wakefield of Portland stood along the fence on the Deering side of Fitzpatrick Stadium Saturday morning watching his senior son, Adam Bishop, play wide receiver for the Deering Rams.

None of that mattered. What was important was what Wakefield was wearing. Wakefield showed up at the Class A football championship warmed by a genuine 1959 Deering State Championship football letter jacket. In a quick survey of the crowd, it was the only one visible.

“No, it isn’t mine,” said Wakefield when asked if he was part of the last and only Deering team to win it all in football. “It belongs to a friend who wanted me to wear it for good luck.”

That friend is Pat Reidman, who played tackle on the team and currently teaches Special Education at Westbrook High School. He gave the jacket to Wakefield in October for good luck.

While the team certainly has done well since the transfer, Deering wasn’t too shabby before.

“I am getting a lot of reaction from it,” said Wakefield. “I know I’m wearing it, but I forget about the (state championship) patch on the front. People stop me and ask me if I played and have a lot of comments about it.”

The jacket brings back memories of a different time. A time when “Mr. Blue” by the Fleetwoods was the No. 1 song in late November 1959. “Ben Hur” won an Oscar, as did its leading man, Charlton Heston, and the country moved into the late Eisenhower years.

It’s an era we know today as “happy days.”

But the reality is that while the location is the same, it is 44 years later as attention is drawn from the jacket back to the electronic scoreboard, artificial turf, and the roar from the standing-room-only crowd at Fitzpatrick Stadium.

“The guys from that team are scattered all over the country,” said Wakefield. “Wearing this brings back memories of that season and what a great team it was. I guess I am here for them as well.”

Apparently there isn’t much left to commemorate of that 1959 team. It was thought that there was nothing left at all. No ball, no trophy, no jackets. While it appears the game ball from that day is still in Deering’s possession, Reidman plans to donate his jacket to the school to celebrate the title. It might get a little less space now.

As the Rams finished off Brunswick and hoisted the Gold Ball, most might think that a very good Deering team did what it was expected to do. That might be so, but watching from the sideline was a proud father who just happened to bring a piece of past Deering glory with him to make sure.

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