Daughters scatter Pats fan’s ashes at Super Bowl parade in Portland

PORTLAND – As other fans tossed confetti and ticker tape during a downtown rally for the New England Patriots, two sisters who grew up in the Patriots’ Massachusetts hometown of Foxboro scattered their father’s ashes.

“It just felt like the perfect tribute,” said Sheila Brennan Nee, 44, of Falmouth, who carried the ashes Wednesday in a Patriots travel mug during a parade celebrating the team’s Super Bowl victory over the Carolina Panthers.

During the parade, Nee raised the mug as if toasting onlookers. Her sister carried a Super Bowl license plate and magazine.

“I think he was walking right with us,” said Susan Brennan, who flew in from San Francisco to join her sister. “It was incredible.”

The guests of honor were five Patriots players and team owner Bob Kraft, who brought along two Vince Lombardi trophies awarded for their Super Bowl victories. The sisters walked with a van sponsored by radio station WBLM-FM.

Football was like a religion in the Brennan household, so they weren’t about to miss Wednesday’s celebration viewed by 45,000 people.

Arthur Brennan edited The Foxboro Reporter, a local newspaper that campaigned for building the original stadium in Foxboro.

Before the Patriots had a practice field, Nee said, the players practiced near her home.

“My sister and I would go down and talk with the players after practice, we’d take pictures,” she said. “It was really nice to have a national football team as part of our town.”

The team wasn’t just good for the town of Foxboro, Nee said. It helped to bring her closer to her father.

“My father was not the most communicative man, so we didn’t have a closeness while I was growing up, except through football,” she said.

The last time she saw her father, he was living in a nursing home and sick with emphysema. He had stopped writing and playing the piano, but he was still a football fan.

“He turned to me with these big beautiful blue eyes and said, ‘Go Patriots,”‘ Nee said. “That was the last words he ever said to me. I think that’s why this has become so huge for me.”

Arthur Brennan was 67 when he died Jan. 18, 2002, the eve of the Patriots’ overtime victory against the Oakland Raiders in the “Snow Bowl” – the final game played at the stadium he had worked to bring to town.

Since her father’s death, Nee has sprinkled some of his ashes in the parking lot that was built over the old Foxboro Stadium.

She also sprinkled some ashes in the new Gillette Stadium during another snowy game on Dec. 7, 2003, when the Patriots won the AFC East title.

“When the whole stadium began to celebrate by throwing snow, I was throwing ashes,” she said.