How a mild-mannered suburban Chicago delivery driver transforms into Bearman

Face paint, shoulder pads, bear head hat and fake fur separate Don Wachter from the Bearman.

The costume, which Wachter has fine-tuned over three decades, changes him from a mild-mannered Plainfield truck parts delivery driver to someone widely considered the "face of Bears fandom" who leads thousands of fans at home games.

"I was a little bit of a shy guy years ago," said Wachter, 63. "When I put the costume on, I can change into somebody."

On Saturday night, he'll bring his Clark Kent-turned-Superman-like persona to the Bears playoff clash with rival Green Bay Packers.

"Chicago gets the moniker of blue-collar, hard working, tough, gritty. ... They can take adversity," Wachter said. "This team fights to the end, they don't care if they are down, we're gonna beat you somehow."

While Wachter's expectations of the team winning the Super Bowl are tempered, he feels good about the Bears' chances to beat the Packers. If they do claim their first championship in 40 years, Wachter said he'd "have to do something crazy."

"Someone should challenge me [to do something]," Wachter said. "The city would go crazy."

It takes nearly an hour for Wachter to get into full costume. He starts by applying a barrier spray on his skin that keeps the paint on when he sweats and mixes various colors to form the traditional Bears colors.

"[With] the face paint, my personality changes," Wachter said. "I yell more, holler more, growl more."

Wachter then puts on a shirt and NFL pants with sections of fur sewn on by a seamstress, shoulder pads he got from Play It Again Sports, mittens he bought online and altered with glued fur and foam and fur covered hiking shoes he got at Yellowstone National Park.

Wachter gets to Soldier Field hours before kickoff to tailgate, but also stops to take pictures with legions of fans who approach him as he tries to make his way to his seat.

He says the attention he has received as a superfan over the years "has been humbling."

He was inducted into the Visa Hall of Fans in 1999 and Ford Hall of Fans in 2019. Former Bears legendary linebacker Brian Urlacher personally came to Wacher's home to inform him about being a finalist for the Ford honor.

"It's fun being famous," quipped an unmarried Wachter. "I don't know if a wife would let me do all this stuff."

Ben Wachter, the superfan's second cousin, has seen both sides of Wachter at family reunions.

"When he comes to family reunions, we know him as Don and he'll sit there and talk to you but he's quiet," Ben Wachter said. "When he brings the bear costume, Don is a different person, like he's growling and doing the whole show."

"It's like his alter ego, it really transforms him," he said.

Shane Taube has gone to games with Wachter for years and describes the devout supporter as someone "who means a lot to the Bears community."

"I've seen so many instances where kids will follow him or chase him down," said Taube, 51. "You can see how many lives he touches."

Lena Duda, who goes by the moniker "Honeybear," was inspired by Wachter's dedication to the team and wanted to be the female representation of what a super fan looked like.

"I saw what he was doing and I wanted to be that for girls," said Duda, 42. "We do it so that everybody else can be crazy and loose and feel the joy that we feel when we watch football."

Wachter fell in love with the Bears after they drafted Walter Payton in 1975 but didn't attend his first game until 1983. His love grew after witnessing Payton break Jim Brown's all-time rushing record in 1984.

He became a season ticket holder in 1985 — paying $150 for a season's ticket for seats behind a goalpost.

He blew an air horn when the team scored a touchdown or field goal in the 1980s. In the 1990s, he waved a custom flag and wore punk wigs before he went to a taxidermist in 1996 and bought a bearskin rug so he could wear the head as a hat. He acknowledged that he was too embarrassed to tell store clerks his plans for the bear head.

"I was like, 'Would this work?," he said.

Wachter gained attention for his unique look. He was featured in a commercial for Miller Lite. He then spent a few years as a flag runner for the team at Soldier Field.

In the future, he said he plans to place a speaker into the mouth of the bear hat to include a growl.

While being a fan has been heavily ingrained in his DNA for decades, Wachter's Bearman alter ego has transcended into his personal life.

"I'm sure that he finds a sense of confidence that he doesn't always have," cousin Ben said. "I think he gets a sense of community with the fans that he doesn’t have normally, and he has a sense of confidence that he didn’t have growing up."

His cousin also noted that consistently going to games in character isn’t easy for Wachter.

"I know that costume is actually painful. That head is very heavy and very tight, that seat he sits in isn't comfortable," the cousin said. "There's a sacrifice of enjoying the game that goes along with staying in that character. It means so much to him or he wouldn't still be doing it."

Wachter has also made his home a gold mine of Bears memorabilia that span several decades. He estimates he has about 10,000 pieces of items, ranging from ashtrays, bobbleheads, plaques, pins to signed pictures.

"He's a good guy through and through and clearly he made his passion for the Bears a very large part of his life," said Roy Taylor, a close friend of Wachter's.

"Don is just a really non-judgmental guy. I've seen him interact with so many different fans and he treats everyone he meets the same," Taylor said.

Wachter said he was reared in a hard-working family with six siblings on a farm in St. John, Indiana.

Wachter received his bachelor’s and master's degrees in urban forestry at Purdue University.

"As far as being a bear goes, you know, [being] all grumpy and mean and stuff, I'm not that person," Wachter joked. "Even though I say maybe I'm becoming a bear, I'm not gonna act that way."