If the Bears win the Super Bowl this season, coach Matt Nagy said he wants to admit franchise matriarch Virginia McCaskey into ‘‘Club Dub’’ as a guest of honor.
‘‘Front and center,’’ Nagy said Sunday.
McCaskey, who was sitting in the crowd during Nagy’s declaration, blushed.
Baby steps.
When McCaskey spoke at a panel on the final day of the Bears 100 Weekend Celebration, it was the first time some fans had heard her voice. The 96-year-old secretary of the Bears’ board of directors is notoriously private.
But McCaskey let her sense of humor shine through Sunday. She spoke about her initial reaction to the Bears’ throwback uniforms, which feature a striped helmet and jersey, plus bumblebee-striped socks.
‘‘Well,’’ she told son George upon seeing the artist rendering, ‘‘those socks don’t turn me on.’’
Does she remember the 1936 uniforms?
‘‘I wasn’t paying that much attention to the uniforms,’’ McCaskey, who was 13 at the time, said with a mischievous smile. ‘‘I was more interested in the players who were wearing them.’’
The crowd erupted with laughter.
McCaskey turned more serious when she talked about the nascent years of the franchise. In the first decade of the NFL, her father, Bears founder George S. Halas, worked in real estate, ran a laundry company and even sold cars to make ends meet.
Halas borrowed money from his two kids’ savings accounts — birthday and Christmas checks from their grandparents totaling a few hundred dollars — to pay for groceries and rent.
‘‘Fortunately for us — and for so many people now — it all worked out,’’ she said.
On the last day of the convention, she acknowledged how far the Bears had come.
‘‘I’m still trying to find words for what they’ve meant to me,’’ she told the crowd. ‘‘And, I hope, to all of you.’’
