“It’s always been a thing when people are coming out, the ushers are high-fiving everybody, yelling with them and so forth,” he said. “I made some friends, played on a softball team with some guys I met down there.”īy comparison, ushers today are asked to engage. “You couldn’t talk to anybody (attending the game), but they were OK, everybody got around fine,” Altstadt said. It was a whole different environment in some ways because the NBA wasn't that big yet.” Two ends of the spectrumĪltstadt remembers that the Arena ushers were supervised by an older couple, and he recalled them as “real disciplinarians.” 'The crowds were into it, but a lot of people come in suits and ties and things. I remember them beating Boston in their first year as an expansion team and as the Celtics were walking off the floor, Bill Russell was the player-coach, yelling, ‘I can't believe we lost to these (expletive)!’ “It was a great place to watch a basketball game. “The crowds were enthusiastic, but you just don't remember the noise like you see now,” he said. Technically he didn’t see the Bucks win that first title in 1971 - they finished the four-game sweep in Baltimore - but he was there all season frequently working one of the venue’s floor corners, making some money while attending UW-Milwaukee. He started ushering games at the Milwaukee Arena as a teenager in 1966, when it was mostly concerts visiting the venue. Altstadt felt that span of time as well as anyone he was ushering for the last one, too.

The Bucks beat the Suns, 105-98, securing Milwaukee’s first NBA championship in 50 years. Tuesday, he was back with a much better view, working the upper deck at Fiserv Forum for the night that would go down in Milwaukee history. Fortunately they won (Game 6) I had thought, ‘Am I going to come to work for the seventh game and end up in the atrium again?’ I wouldn’t have done it. “I was scheduled for the sixth and seventh games. “Everyone’s sneaking peeks at their phones trying to see what's going on,” Altstadt said. Though he could hear the ebb and flow of the crowd, he was nowhere near a monitor that was showing the action. The 71-year-old Franklin man had been assigned the atrium at Fiserv Forum as one of the night’s ushers when the Milwaukee Bucks held an indoor watch party for the game taking place in Phoenix. Ironically, it turned out the worst place Gary Altstadt could be to see Game 5 of the NBA Finals was inside one of the team arenas.

Usher bucks