Legendary Leo Carlin, the Eagles' last remaining link to its last championship season, will retire at the end of April, the team announced Wednesday.
Carlin, who joined the Eagles during the 1960 season as a part-time ticket office employee, spent 53 years with the franchise under five owners.
He was promoted in 1964 to ticket manager, in 2007 was nominated for the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a pioneer in the sports ticket industry and in 2012 was inducted into the Eagles’ Hall of Fame.
Carlin grew up in North Philly, served in the Marines, worked briefly selling tickets at the Walnut Street Theater and oversaw Eagles ticket sales at Franklin Field, Veterans Stadium and the Linc during his remarkable career.
He’s been with the Eagles since 1960 other than a two-year stint during the 1980s when he worked for the USFL Philadelphia Stars.
“I’ve been meditating on how much things have changed in my time here. Fifty-five years. That just blows me away,” Carlin said in an interview posted on the team’s website on Wednesday.
“I was just a kid out of college and fresh out of the Marine Corps and had just gotten married and all of a sudden I’m with the Philadelphia Eagles and we’re on our way to winning the NFL Championship. People ask me who my favorite Eagles team has been and it’s always the 1960 Eagles. They got me hired.
“I feel like, yes, in many ways I touched every person who had a ticket to an Eagles game in the last 55 years. They all sort of became familiar with me, some of them who go back to the days of Franklin Field, and even if they don’t know me personally they tell me how much it meant to their parents that I got them tickets. I may not know who they are, but it is so wonderful that they are happy.
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“The very fact that a fan would walk up to me and want to shake hands with me so that they could thank me just blows me away. It always has. I take all of that to heart. I really do. If I had to leave a message to the fans, it would be that I cared, and that I tried for each and every one of them. That’s what matters.”
Carlin is an avid runner who loved his daily run through Roosevelt Park across the street from the NovaCare Complex and the Wells Fargo Center.
One interesting note about Carlin: In all the years he’s worked for the Eagles, he’s never watched a home game.
He’s too busy working on game day.
But now he’s retired and has seven kids and 22 grandkids. Maybe he’ll try to actually relax on an autumn Sunday afternoon at the Linc and watch football?
“I think it would be very hard for me to do that,” he said. “But I might try. I have some time now.”