Gisele Currier was one of the few truly sweet and kind souls on this earth. You will never meet a more caring, warm, friendly, and truly wonderful person. Gisele passed away late Sunday evening, and the Portland Timbers community has truly lost someone who by all definitions was the heart of the passion for soccer in Portland.
Gisele and her sister Paula were teenagers back in 1975 when the original NASL Timbers came to town, and they were there right from the start, knew the players well, and Gisele used to babysit for Timbers player (and later assistant coach) Jimmy Conway, including taking care of future USL star (and briefly a Portland Timber) Paul Conway. Clive Charles knew Gisele well, and he once famously told her “Gisele, I knew you lived for soccer!”
Gisele could be found at just about any soccer game taking place in the Rose City, and was a big Winterhawks fan as well. She also usually had several pieces of her favorite Timbers memorabilia with her when she sat at the top of 107, including her famous Timbers booster club jacket from the NASL days, and she loved to give out necklaces and buttons, never charging a cent for them, and she single-handedly kept the Timbers Army scarves going for several years.
I wasn’t in Portland for the NASL years, but knew Gisele and her sister Paula well starting in 2001. When Paula died in 2003, it was quite a shock as she was the first Timbers Army “regular” who had passed away, and when the Timbers honored Paula at the next game by putting roses on Paula’s chair next to Gisele, I was so overcome with emotion that I had a hard time keeping my composure. And after General Timber Howie (Bless) died in 2009, Gisele was really the last of the truly hardcore, 100% filled with passion Timbers supporters that had been here from the start. She could tell you stories from just about every game she’d ever seen, and it wasn’t so much about the games themselves, but the people who were on the pitch and in the stands back then, and you could always feel her passion for the team that had been so much a part of her life, that the two were almost inseparable. Gisele was as much a part of the Timbers as their iconic logo or Civic Stadium/PGE Park/Jeld-Wen Field, or Timber Jim and Joey, or the sawing of the log after every goal.
When the Timbers were re-born in their fourth incarnation this year as the MLS Timbers, back in the top league for the first time in almost 30 years, you could tell this was something she had been looking forward to all her life. When I arrived at the newly renovated stadium six hours before the game, and over four hours before the doors were set to open, Gisele was already there, in her stadium chair right up against gate for entry to 107. Of course I would have expected nothing less. She said she had only been there a few hours, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d said she’d been there all night.
For just about every game over the past 11 years, I always made a side trip to the top of 107 to say hello to Gisele. Even if it was just a short visit, it was a stop that I had to make. I guess to me I couldn’t feel like I had truly experienced a Timbers match if I didn’t talk to Gisele. And thinking about the next match this Saturday against Real Salt Lake, I’m not sure how it’s going to feel not having her smiling face and pure love for the game and the team and all its fans emanating from the top of 107. As I told an Oregonian reporter that interviewed me about Gisele on Monday, she was the smiling lady at the door to 107, and you couldn’t enter or exit that aisle without passing Gisele on the way, and in many ways she was the cornerstone that anchored the Timbers Army and all the supporters going back to 1975 to the stadium and its history. And though I know it’s a general admission section and the goal is to fill every seat, in my opinion her seat should never be occupied again, even if it means having to buy an extra ticket myself to make it happen, and I know I’m not alone in those sentiments.
At the final game Gisele attended, against Dallas on April 17, I visited her as usual before the game, and we talked about the historic opener that had taken place just three days before, and I could tell how happy she was to have been able to experience it. But I’m sure to Gisele, it wasn’t so much a new start as it was a culmination of her commitment and connection to the Timbers, the stadium, the city, and the fans that extended back 36 years to those first games in 1975.
There is something very special about the city of Portland and its fans and how they are connected to this team that means so much more than the current starting 11 or the logo or the name of the stadium. But without the very, very few people like Gisele who kept that passion for the game and the team going all those years, never asking for anything in return except to be part of the experience, it likely never would have built to the historic moment on April 14 when the whole world saw why this city and their fans are truly unique in their love for this game.
Which brings me to one final thought that at least puts a little bit of happiness into this story: The April 14 opener vs. Chicago was the culmination of so many years of all Timbers fans knowing what could happen if the Timbers were ever to go back up to the top league, and in a stadium worthy of such a special team, city, and fan base, that it lived up to every expectation that we all knew that it could, and much more, and changed support for professional soccer in the United States forever.
I think we all can give a little bit of thanks that Gisele lived long enough to experience that moment, and I doubt there are many who appreciated it in such a way that I’m sure Gisele did. If she had not lived to experience that moment, it would have been a tragedy on a scale I don’t even want to imagine.
Thank you Gisele. You were truly one of a kind and your seat at the top of 107 will always be there if your spirit wants to settle into it now and then.
-Allison Andrews, April 26, 2011-