When Pat and Tom Gamble moved into an assisted living facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana, they had one rule: Don’t bother them during Purdue games.

Staff soon found out they meant it. The Gambles spent the vast majority of their time together in twin chairs separated by a small table in their apartment living room, among black and gold decorations including Purdue pillows and blankets, and even a Boilermaker gnome. Pat’s paintings hung on the walls, idyllic landscapes she had done in the style of Thomas Kinkade.

When the Gambles flipped a game on, caretakers knew the Boilermakers’ schedule trumped that of bedtime, or anything else. Pat said plainly, “Activities in the residence, I won’t go if Purdue’s playin’.”

Pat cheers for the Boilers alone now. Tom’s chair is still present but empty, the result of a protracted battle with heart failure and, toward the end, dementia or Alzheimer’s symptoms. Once he entered hospice care in August 2023, he was gone three months later.

Pat grieved. Tom’s death ended a 64-year union which included a stay in Purdue married housing in the 60s, while Tom earned a degree at the conclusion of his army service. His entry into hospice care was an easy choice, but watching him slip away was anything but. As Tom became less lucid, his hospice care coordinator said, Elvis songs were among his few tethers to the present moment. He still knew all the words.

“We would turn on Elvis, and music soothed his soul,” the hospice coordinator said. “It was so hard on Pat, watching that.”

For all the years of Tom’s decline, Pat had a wish. She badly wanted to see a basketball game in Mackey Arena, as she and Tom had made a habit of until the 90s. She put a return to the arena on her bucket list when she moved into assisted living. But Tom’s health made travel impractical, and Pat’s wheelchair would have only further complicated a trip to a sports venue.

“How do you get handicapped seating, and where would you park?” said Pat’s daughter-in-law, Marj Gamble. “Like, where would you be? We didn't know how hard it would be to get her into the building from somewhere.”

Come this basketball season, though, Marj was determined that her mother-in-law get her wish. She remembered the “amazing” hospice care coordinator, who she knew had heard of the bucket list item. Marj wanted to see what he could do about it.

His name was Chris Kramer.

The Purdue standout and his wife had returned to Kramer’s hometown of Fort Wayne after his international career sputtered out due to injuries. “The last straw was the ACL on my left leg,” he said.

For a year, after the couple welcomed its second daughter, the former Purdue star waited for his next move. It came when a neighbor recognized him. “I was with my oldest daughter,” Kramer said. “We were shooting outside.”

The neighbor came out, stopped, and asked, “Are you Chris Kramer?”

“Yeah.”

“I used to hate you,” the neighbor said.

The neighbor, it turned out, was an Indiana University graduate and sports fan. He was also president of Eleos Hospice Care, and eventually pitched Kramer on a job that would channel the competitive drive seared into rivals’ memories of him as a defensive wrecking ball in the late aughts.

Kramer's title is care coordinator, but it includes many aspects of sales. Google Maps shows 20 hospice providers in the Fort Wayne metro area, and Kramer’s goal is to make Eleos the most trusted partner for the city’s abundance of senior living facilities. He makes his rounds at such places, keeping relations strong.

Kramer met the Gambles on one of these rounds, while he was still in training shadowing a social worker (an IU grad, he noted). He walked into the Gamble living room and saw the Purdue decor, Big Ten Network on the TV and paintings on the walls.

“I just knew these were my people,” he said.

The social worker mentioned that Kramer had played at Purdue. Kramer, imitating Pat, remembers she gave a hearty, “I remember you!”

“I've kind of had a special bond with Pat,” Kramer said.

He would check on her in the weeks after Tom’s death, sometimes just to say hello if she was at lunch or with friends. Other times, he asked how she was doing – how she was really doing. Sometimes it backfired.

“I don’t know if it triggered her, because obviously she knows who I work for,” he said. “It’s like a light switch would turn.”

The two would also talk “anything Purdue,” Pat said, and she bid him goodbye with well-wishes for his children and reminders not to catch a cold. “She’s motherly,” Kramer said.

Marj got a hold of Kramer in September, reminding of Pat’s Mackey Arena wish. Kramer said he would see what he could do. He called Elliot Bloom, his old coach Matt Painter’s right-hand man, explained the situation and the wheels turned. Bloom suggested a few game options, unwittingly including the year anniversary of Tom’s passing – “That’s not gonna be a good day,” Marj had said – before Saturday’s Marshall game was settled on.

From there, word must have spread among Purdue athletics employees – “We were treated royally,” Pat said.

When Pat arrived with Marj and her husband Tom A., Pat's son, they were greeted by Purdue staff and shown where to park.

“Right there, next to the President’s spot,” Tom A. said, and jabbed a thumb toward the parking lot situated between Ross-Ade Stadium and Mackey’s Northwest entrance. Perhaps only the Marshall players had a shorter walk into the arena.

Arriving two hours before game time, the trio was shown to the ritzy Spurgeon club in the bowels of Mackey to enjoy a meal. “Even the guy that met us at the car came back in later to check on us, to make sure we were doing okay,” Marj said.

They sat along a railing spanning the concourse between upper and lower bowls to watch the game. In a spot between the band and two sections of the Paint Crew, the Gambles had some of the loudest seats in the arena. But Tom A. and Marj were prepared – they brought earplugs.

Pat declined them. She seemed to enjoy the noise. At the final buzzer, the Gambles had witnessed a 30-point walloping doled out by the Boilermakers, with 43 fouls called in total.

Pat loved it.

“Wonderful, wonderful,” she described her experience afterward. “I’m glad about how it ended, too.”

Purdue is a special place for Tom A. and Marj, too; they’re both graduates. “Class of ‘85,” Tom A. said. “Pharmacy.”

Marj graduated in 1986. “Still, when you’re coming into town,” she said, “driving down (Sagamore Parkway), you still get that really excited feeling even now.”

On the trip, the group picked up enough Purdue merchandise to stuff a plastic bag slung atop the handle of Pat’s wheelchair. Sweatshirts and mugs were packed in next to something bulkier.

“I just got this,” Pat said, and motioned to the bottom of the bag. Marj said, “It’s a Purdue Squishmallow.”

It will sit in Tom’s chair.

“I’ll have his company,” Pat said, and smiled.