I’ve never met Penny Russell, but after a 15-minute phone conversation I found out what most people already know.

Penny is a cheesehead inside and out.

Her classic Kodiak rough-cut house is a shrine to the Green Bay Packers. It resembles a man cave more than a place a 47-year-old woman calls home. Russell wouldn’t have it any other way.

From her 60 Packer hats, to the jerseys hanging on the wall, to the Packer curtains that cover her windows she has it all. It is the perfectly decorated.

“It looks like a guy lives here,” Russell said, who has a Packers’ logo tattooed on her left forearm.

So when iconic Packer quarterback Brett Favre called it quits after 16 seasons 18 days ago, Russell was shocked, to say the least.

“I actually got on the Packers Web site for the first time in a week — it was terrible,” Russell said. “It felt like losing a pet, just a horrible sense of loss.”

She expected Favre to hang it up a year ago, but not now. That’s what made it shocking.

“I wasn’t expecting it at all,” Russell said. “That was the hardest thing. Last year — sure. A year before that — sure. This year, we were one game away from the Super Bowl.”

To commemorate everything Farve meant to Green Bay, Russell and a group of Packer Backers threw a celebration in honor of the Mississippi gunslinger last Saturday at the Rendezvous.

The Clarkston was going to attend, but passed up free brats because Favre did in the Seahawks season.

Trivia time. What other legendary quarterback’s last victory came in a playoff game against the Seahawks?

Answer: Dan Marino, in a 20-17 wild-card victory at the Kingdome in 2000.

Back to remembering Favre.

I was told more than 50 people — 30 of them Packer fans — showed up to reminisce about Favre.

Of course, Russell was leading the way as she was asked to give a speech before cutting the cake, while Farve’s retirement press conference played in the background.

Russell, who was born in Moses Lake, Wash., and transplanted to Kake, Alaska ,when she was 2, got her first glimpse of the Packers when she was 8.

“I was in Nebraska,” she said. “They were playing the Broncos and my dad was a die-hard Broncos fan.”

As an 8-year-old, Russell was intrigued by the Packers’ gold helmets.

“I liked the look of their helmet,” Russell said.

Since then, she sees only green and gold. However, it’s now limited to her right eye. Glaucoma caused blindness in her left eye and it may soon shut down her right eye. She has had seven eye surgeries to help prevent that from happening.

For her 40th birthday, Russell visited Green Bay for the first and only time. She wanted to see Lambeau Field before she lost all of her vision.

It was the thrill of a lifetime for her.

“They let me walk in the grass, since I didn’t ask for any autographs” Russell said of the tour guides.

She has seen No. 4 play in person four times in Seattle, Chicago, Jacksonville and San Francisco.

Russell’s fondest Favre moment came in 2003 when he played against Oakland a day after his father died of a heart attack. Favre passed for four touchdowns and 399 yards in a 41-7 victory on Monday Night Football.

“The Raider fans didn’t boo him,” Russell said. “It’s the only time Raider Nation hasn’t booed anybody.”

Russell ranks Favre as the greatest quarterback to ever play the game ahead of Joe Montana, Marino, John Elway and Johnny Unitas.

She gives Favre the nod not because of all of his record-setting numbers, but because he started 275 consecutive games.

“Every game we knew Brett was going to be playing,” Russell said.

She didn’t mind that the last pass he threw was an interception. Ironically enough, the first pass Favre threw was a pick six while playing for the Falcons.

It’s what happened in between the interceptions that had Russell and the rest of the people at the Rendezvous celebrating for nearly five hours.

“Everybody is laughing that his last pass was an interception,” Russell said. “But, that’s who Brett Favre was.”

Mirror writer Derek Clarkston can be reached via e-mail at sports@kodiakdailymirror.com.