Until it was demolished in 2004, Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium was home to the Phillies baseball team, the NFL’s Eagles and apparently one former Green Beret, Tom Garvey.
Veterans are known to sleep in a lot of strange, difficult or crazy places, but no one ever thinks of a custom-built, AstroTurf-carpeted secret passage in an NFL stadium when envisioning those places.
Garvey lived and worked in a place just like that -- for around two years.
In an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, he tells the story of getting a job with his uncles’ contracting business in 1977. They were hired to run the stadium’s concession stands and parking lots. Eventually, they hired Garvey to watch the parking lots.
After coming home from Vietnam in 1969, he worked a series of odd jobs, one right after another. This new one might have been just another gig. Instead, it changed his world.
Garvey is a former Special Forces A-Team leader who served in Vietnam in 1968. Now 78 years old, he’s the author of two books. The first is “Many Beaucoup Magics,” chronicling his time serving in the Vietnam War while camped in the Ia Drang Valley.
The second, his newest, is "The Secret Apartment: Vet Stadium, a Surreal Memoir" about his time living in a secret compartment, 60 feet long by 30 feet wide, behind a root-beer concession stand at the stadium.
This new job came with a set of keys and a special entrance to the venue, which meant he was there all the time. One night, he and a crew slept in an empty stand near left field overnight when Philadelphia hosted Pope John Paul II.
When one of the crew members commented on how great it would be to live in the stadium, Garvey made it happen, bursting with excitement about converting the room. He worked day and night to build his secret new base of operations.
Soon, in the back of a left-field root beer stand was a line of boxes that hid the hallway entrance to his pad, complete with the comforts of home: a bed, coffee pot, refrigerator and more.
But true to special operations form, no photos were allowed. Garvey didn’t take photos in the apartment, either. He was afraid of getting caught. For a short time, he threw halftime parties in the makeshift apartment, but when strangers started showing up, he nipped those in the bud, too.
In fact, the only proof that his story is true comes from the confirmations of his friends and former partygoers who were lucky enough to be invited back to the secret compartment.
The former special operator told the Inquirer’s Stephanie Farr that he lived in “The Vet” for so long because he was there at any given hour of the day. He made sure everyone -- staff, guards and fans alike -- was comfortable seeing him walking around.
But, like all good things, eventually his time in the stadium ended. His uncles lost their contract in 1981, and Garvey moved out. After two years working the parking lot and roller skating around the empty stadium at night, he was finally “ready to grow up.”
Two years after leaving Veterans Stadium, he met the woman who became his wife, settled down and wrote his first book. The retired real-estate agent lives in Ambler, Pennsylvania, about 15 miles north of Philadelphia.
“Many Beaucoup Magics” and "The Secret Apartment: Vet Stadium, a Surreal Memoir" are available now.
-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.
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