Mr. Brad Bovenkerk’s Chicago Bears connection is small enough to disappear in his palm.

It’s a 1950 Bowman Gum football card—76 years old, “near mint” and still crisp—featuring Bovenkerk’s grand-uncle, Richard “Dick” Barwegen. The photo shows Barwegen in a Baltimore Colts uniform, captured in the brief in-between: the season before he became a Chicago Bear.

This week, as the Bears ride the momentum of a 31-27 wildcard comeback win over the Green Bay Packers and push deeper into the playoffs, the card feels less like memorabilia and more like a family artifact that pulls the moment closer.

Bovenkerk, an English teacher and Inkspot adviser, said the card was always part of the family’s background—something his grandmother and father both kept on display for as long as he can remember. 

It was a quiet reminder that long before Sunday night highlights and million-dollar contracts, someone in their family had worn an NFL uniform for real.

That connection runs through Bovenkerk’s dad’s side of the family—the former gridiron guard was his grandmother’s older brother. 

The card fills in for the relative Bovenkerk never got to know. 

“My great uncle passed away when my dad was four-years-old,” Bovenkerk said, “so the only things I know about him are second-hand stories passed down from my grandmother and my dad’s older brother and sister. 

While “it’s super cool to have a family connection to the Bears,” Bovenkerk said, “the football Barwegen played is light-years away from the modern NFL. There are almost completely different games.”

But despite Barwegen’s Bears’ era feeling distant, the former player’s résumé jumps off the page: a guard who played in the AAFC and NFL, earned multiple All-Pro selections and made four Pro Bowls, according to Pro Football Reference.

The Chicago Tribune ranks him as one of the franchise’s best players, landing at number 51 on the newspaper’s ranking of the top 100 best Chicago Bears of all time.

For Bovenkerk, the numbers aren’t the point. What he is proudest of is the era his grand-uncle played during: a time when pro football wasn’t a fast track to fame or fortune. When the league was a grind and players often worked blue-collar jobs to make ends meet. 

That’s what stays with him—the idea that his grand-uncle’s career required a kind of determination that doesn’t always show up in modern highlight reels.

That’s why the card feels heavier than its paper stock.

When Bovenkerk’s dad, Bruce, passed away five years ago, the card was passed down to him. 

His father collected baseball cards and trading cards in the 1980s and ’90s, Bovenkerk said, and he inherited some of that collection—but this card mattered most. 

Not because it was rare, but because it was personal.

Now, as Chicago prepares to host the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC divisional round at 5:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 18, at Soldier Field, the story isn’t only about a long-ago lineman—it’s about how sports memories move through families, how a name can travel decades and still land in someone’s hand.

The Bears’ run is rooted in the present—modern stakes, modern spectacle, modern noise. 

But for Bovenkerk, the moment keeps circling back to something quieter: a family name that once appeared on a Bears roster, showing up again in a worn, well-kept card that’s survived long enough to make this postseason feel a little more like his own.