Man claims he lived in ‘secret’ apartment inside concession stand in Veterans Stadium

‘I was like a kid with a Willy Wonka golden ticket,’ he says of time in stadium apartment

Man says he lived at sports stadium in secret apartment (Getty Images)

A Vietnam veteran who claims that he lived in a “secret” makeshift apartment hidden insidePhiladelphia’s Veterans Stadium has opened up about what life was like in the empty concession stand-turned home.

According to Tom Garvey, 78, who wrote about his experience living in the stadium in his book, The Secret Apartment: Vet Stadium, a surreal memoir, he lived in the concession stand from 1979 to 1981.

However, according to Garvey, it was much more glamorous than it sounds, with the war vet telling The Philadelphia Inquirer: “I was like a kid with a Willy Wonka golden ticket.”

Garvey first began working at the stadium, which was eventually torn down in 2004, while picking up a series of odd jobs after returning from the war, which included as a cashier supervisor for the stadium complex parking lots in South Philadelphia through a company that was owned by his uncles, according to the Inquirer.

Through the family connection, Garvey was eventually granted his own office in the stadium and a “set of keys to an obscure stadium entrance”.

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From there, Garvey began transforming a 60-foot-by-30-foot concession stand located out in left field into an apartment, which included “a bed, sink, fridge, stereo, coffee maker, hot plate, and seating for guests”. 

During his time living in the sports complex, which was used for both baseball and football, Garvey says he enjoyed taking hits in the dugout, roller-skating around the concourse, and running into sports legends such as Tug McGraw and Julius Erving.

The apartment also served as the location of “halftime parties”, according to Garvey, who claims that he allowed wives of Eagles players to wait in the concession stand after games.

“We’d put music on the stereo and have a drink,” he said. “The husbands would join their wives and have a beer, and then the lot traffic would pull out and we’d get their cars and have dinner.”

Although the apartment was technically a secret, Garvey alleges that he got away with it because people at the stadium got comfortable seeing him “almost anywhere at any time” and because he “just acted like it was the most normal thing in the world”.

He also never let anyone photograph the concession stand-turned apartment for fear of getting caught, although the Inquirer corroborated the story with multiple people, including Philadelphia Eagles Hall of Famer Bill Bradley.

Garvey eventually left his secret apartment in 1981, when his uncle’s contract with the stadium was up.

However, he looks back on his time in the makeshift home with fondness, telling the Inquirer that the hidden hideaway gave him the “opportunity to put things in perspective” when he returned home from the war.

“I’d been so busy for so many years when I came home and this gave me the opportunity to put things in perspective,” he said. “I found it to be healing. It was a place where I went inside myself and found some peace.”