It is 9 a.m. on another humid day in Florida, and Betty still has her sleeping mask on. She has a big day ahead, one that will keep her awake past 1 in the morning. Rest is key on a travel day like today.
"Don't mind her mask," Linda Fletcher says, pointing at the covered windshield. Betty, Fletcher's RV, has taken her across the country, to the West Coast, up the East Coast, and, this weekend, will take her to South Bend, Indiana, for No. 1 Miami's Saturday game at No. 11 Notre Dame.
Fletcher has driven nearly 60,000 miles over the past four years to watch each and every game her son, Miami running back Mark Fletcher Jr., has played in college. She drew national attention last year when Miami made the College Football Playoff. Sitting in the stands with her big sunglasses and even bigger smile, the camera would cut to her frequently as she celebrated Miami's run to the national title game. Her ground-bound trip from Florida to Texas, then Arizona and back became an unavoidable piece of the postseason.
Before she had Betty, Fletcher would drive a minivan or truck, putting up with all the difficulties that came with driving a normal car for hundreds of miles at a time. But just before the playoff began, she befriended Michael Irvin. Linda, with a contagious laugh and penchant for giving out hugs, had already decided she wanted to rent an RV to watch Mark for his senior season. Irvin wanted to help. So, he reached out to a friend with an RV dealership in Texas and came up with a plan. Irvin and his business partner met with Linda and proposed a weekly series, "Fetching Fletchers," documenting her travels during the season, all while driving a customized RV.
"I get to drive the RV?" Linda asked. "They said, 'Yeah, but the cameras would be following.' I was like, 'How bad could it be?'"
In August, the RV was delivered to her at the Miami campus -- "Fetching Fletchers" in bold orange and green letters, with home games listed on one side and road games on the other. An airbrushed picture of Linda's late husband, Mark Sr., is on the door. It was Irvin's idea. "To protect her on the road," Irvin said.
"Linda has never met a stranger," Irvin said. "She loves everybody -- a good old-fashioned mama, like what we grew up with. She's just a beautiful person."
On this morning in October, Linda is getting Betty ready for a trip to Clemson, South Carolina, with 10 passengers aboard -- including her oldest son, Keith, her daughter, J'Sha, and 3-year-old granddaughter, Bri Bri.
A social media sensation and local celebrity, fans line up at home and away games to get a hug, a photo and a "Let's go Canes!" She always obliges, reveling in their joy and love, a mom to both the Fletchers and the Hurricanes faithful.
Linda never knew how badly she needed the travel and hugs until she got quiet moments on the road, Betty humming along, each mile providing time for self-reflection and self-discovery.
"Sometimes you get in your own head," Linda says. "I start thinking about life. I start thinking about Mark (Sr.), and I just can't even hold back my tears."
12:15 p.m., leaving St. Augustine, Florida
Linda began the trek to Clemson the previous day, driving more than 300 miles north from Coral Gables to St. Augustine, where she and her crew did a haunted house tour and stayed in an RV park for the night. After breakfast at a local diner, the rest of the 430-mile journey to Clemson begins.
She turns up the music as she pulls out of the parking lot. The theme song to "Fetching Fletchers" plays and everyone in the RV sings along.
Linda loves to sightsee and lists the Grand Canyon -- which the family visited en route to the opener at Stanford -- as her favorite stop so far. Going to various zoos has become a tradition, so the planned first stop on this journey is at the Catty Shack Ranch Wildlife Sanctuary in Jacksonville, 52 miles away.
As she drives down A1A, downtown St. Augustine comes into view. The oldest city in America, Spanish style buildings with terra-cotta roofs dot the landscape. "Isn't this an amazing view?" she asks. "You can't see this from an airplane!"
Linda drives past the Castillo De San Marcos National Monument, an old Spanish fort built to defend Florida and the Atlantic trade route. Within minutes, the rain starts. Keith naps in the back, while J'Sha, Bri and Linda's longtime friend, Maria Cephus, quietly look at their screens.
As she drives, Linda explains that she had a panic attack on an airplane four years ago and that she hasn't flown since. She likes the sense of control she feels behind the wheel. Linda remembers the first time she drove Betty back in August. She had been training to get her CDL, but she still felt nervous as she pulled away from the Miami campus. Now, she says she feels comfortable but she still takes particular precautions. She checks four or five times before she changes lanes. She takes frequent stops and never lets the gas tank get below half.
Rain is now pelting the windshield in sheets, but Linda keeps Betty steady in the right lane today, never going faster than 40 mph. She explains why she enjoys going to the zoo -- it's fun for all ages, and she says that the animals act differently in different states. But more than that, she wants to give her kids and grandkids experiences she never had as a child.
"My family didn't expose me to swimming, to fishing, to horseback riding, and the zoo, different things like that," Fletcher said. "For my kids, I wanted it different."
She goes back to her own childhood. She says that, for reasons Linda still does not understand, her biological mother planned to put her up for adoption after she was born. But her dad and his family got a phone call.
"[A] neighbor called my grandma and my dad, to say, 'You guys should get over here.' So, they ran over to Broward General Hospital to get me," Linda says.
Though she had family raising her, Linda says through tears, "I didn't grow up easy. Nobody was really responsible for me. I don't know what it's like to call somebody from home to say, 'I left my homework.'"
She grew up calling her grandmother "Mom" until one day she asked: "Why does Dad call you Mom, and I call you Mom?" Her grandmother sat her down and explained. From that point forward, Linda said she was obsessed with trying to figure out why she did not have a mom of her own.
Linda finally met her biological mother when she was 12, hoping that when they saw each other, her mother would realize she had made a mistake and take her in with open arms. That's not what happened.
"I never got what I was looking for from her. I think she had made up her mind that she couldn't be there for me emotionally, physically, mentally, no type of way. It just never turned out to be the mother-daughter thing that I was looking for. We never fixed it," Linda says.
To this day, Linda does not know why her mom gave her up. She says that question will haunt her the rest of her life. She knows she was the seventh child born to her mom, and that her mom was much older than her dad, and thinks that perhaps she was embarrassed by the circumstances of her pregnancy. Linda would look at pictures of herself as a 4-month-old baby, her chubby thighs and cute cheeks, and think, "How in the world did she leave me?"
"I think about her decision," Linda says. "I don't know how she did it. I can't imagine what her headspace was. I just couldn't understand her. I got to a point where it made me dislike her."
Linda never got the love she wanted from her dad and his family, either.
"I used to tell them they weren't easy," Linda says. "I wasn't with them long when I realized that life could have been better for me without them. I was raised in a situation where everybody could tell me what to do, but nobody was really responsible for me. I was just a young girl and I've got to figure out this big old thing called life."
Because she felt abandoned -- and lied to about her birth story for years -- she couldn't trust the adults around her. She felt anger and resentment, so she started writing letters -- to her mother, her grandmother, her aunts -- putting all her feelings down on paper. Linda never put them in the mail. She still keeps them.
"I just had to get it out of me," she says. "That helped."
She also had to do something to change her circumstances. Linda says when she was 14, she begged one of her teachers to sign a document that would allow her to work in an on-the-job training program through her high school. Students had to be 15 to participate. She explained her situation. "I'm having a hard time at home. I'm not getting the things that I need," she said to the teacher. "I need a job."
He signed the paper, and she moved out of her home into an apartment when she was 16.
"The people that I came from, the women that I came from, they didn't tell me, 'Linda, you gotta go to college,'" she says. "I was compelled to do better than them because they were so mean -- stiff people -- people that don't think about the generation that was coming up behind them."
All Linda wanted was to be loved. She found that in "Big Mark" Fletcher, whom she had known from church since they were 5. In his family, she found safety and stability. His dad was a preacher, and his mom was an English teacher. They were kind and wanted their kids to have better lives than they had.
When Linda had kids of her own, she tried to make sure they never had any questions about whether they were loved. First came Keith, then J'Sha, and finally Mark Jr. Determined to give them the life she never had, Linda gave them every bit of her time and energy. She held them in her arms, snuggled them, let them sleep in her bed, took them on vacations, made their lunches, helped them with their homework, drove them wherever they needed to go. Her life was for them.
"Mothering is very important to me," Linda says. "I probably did a whole bunch of other things wrong, but being a mother, I won't let someone tell me that I'm not a good mom because I do my very best at it. You don't hurt your kids, you don't let anyone else hurt them, and you build them up. That's what I've been doing."
Despite the hurt she felt, Linda tried to build a relationship between her children and her mother. But that never worked, either. Her mother has since died, leaving Linda to work through her complex emotions alone. Though she says she had problems with her dad in the past, the two have maintained their relationship.
Linda never wanted for her hurt and pain to make her into a bitter person. She chose to "be nice, and be a lover."
Even after Big Mark died unexpectedly in his sleep in 2024, devastating the entire Fletcher family, Linda vowed they would push on with positivity and a smile -- the way he lived his life.
Linda often cries, not just for herself, but for her children. Big Mark played an outsized role in Mark Jr.'s life -- spearheading his football career from the time he was a child, attending every Miami practice and every game. His death shook Mark Jr. so badly that he said he wanted to quit football. But then he asked himself, 'What would Dad want me to do?'
"Keep going."
That motto is beside Big Mark's picture on the door of the RV. Linda often kisses the picture and says, "Mark, can you believe this?" Driving Betty may have been wildly unexpected, but so has the outpouring of love and support she has felt from so many. They have turned all her pain into purpose.
"I had love bottled up," Linda says. "That's why when I get the opportunity to scream, holler, jump, yell, I do," she says. "I will sleep when I'm dead, because it's about living, it's about loving, it's about being happy. It's about encouraging others.
"There's a little Linda in there who needs that love, who needs that support, who needs the encouragement. I used to say, 'Who cares for me? Who loves me?' I get an overwhelming amount of it now. So, I thank God for that."
Linda wipes her tears and keeps going, up I-95, crossing into Georgia.
"We're making it through. Me and old Betty," she says. "Betty's doing an amazing job pushing us on through."
3:12 p.m., Brunswick, Georgia
Buc-ee's, the promised land for many weary travelers, offers gas pumps and restrooms, yes. But this is more than just a rest stop. This is a slice of Americana -- from the kitschy home décor to the hundreds of Buc-ee's branded items to the jerky wall to the fresh brisket station at the center of it all.
Linda walks in with her friend Maria and the others in her traveling party and immediately heads toward what she calls the "inspiration section" -- a wall of clothes to see if there is anything she can turn into an outfit. She picks up a shirt that says "MAMA" and a pair of leopard print pants. "Isn't that cute?" she asks. Linda puts the items down and walks toward the fresh roasted nuts. She loves snacking on cashews, so she puts some in her cart.
After nearly an hour browsing around, Linda and Maria leave with snacks -- including the famous banana pudding -- and Beaver nuggets, caramel flavored corn puffs.
As Linda pulls the RV out of the parking lot, she puts the "Fetching Fletchers" theme song back on.
"South Carolina, here we come! We are 300 and something miles out."
Linda has another announcement as well. Rather than drive straight to Clemson, she is now headed further north to Greenville, South Carolina, to pick Irvin up from the airport and give him a ride to his hotel.
"Isn't that awesome!" she says.
Irvin is scheduled to land around 10:45 p.m., adding several more hours to the trip. Linda smiles through it all. Is she tired? "No! I'm feeling great!" she says. The trip to this point has been less than ideal -- no stop at the zoo, driving rain that lasted for hours, monotonous interstate travel without many sights to see or any music on the radio.
But this is what Linda loves, the control behind the wheel and the feel of the road underneath her. She first learned how to drive in big empty fields outside downtown Fort Lauderdale, Florida, when she was 10, and then when she got older, drove town cars for a living. Anybody who knows Linda knows how seriously she takes her driving. Nobody else is ever allowed to drive the RV, including her son, Keith, and most of the time, nothing plays through the speakers. No radio, no music. A process that many others may consider boring is what Linda Fletcher needs. And that's why if she needs to go hours out of the way to pick somebody up, she'll gladly make the trip, no questions asked.
Just before the South Carolina border, Linda pulls into a gas station to refuel. A couple comes over to say hello. They happen to be Miami fans who spotted the RV and wanted to give her a hug. One of them has a giant Miami ibis tattoo on his left forearm that he proudly shows off.
When she gets back in the RV, Linda says visits like that happen often.
"At first, I found that to be so weird, like, really? and they go, 'Yeah, really!'" she says. "So I stopped doing that. I receive them a lot differently now. We're just spreading love both ways, and I'm enjoying it."
6:30 p.m., crossing into South Carolina, 244 miles to go
Linda is the only person insured to drive Betty, but that is the way she prefers it, no matter the inconvenience. Linda took her time to get out to California for the season opener at Stanford, but then, Miami had a midweek home game against Florida A&M in Week 2.
With five days to get back to her home in Fort Lauderdale and 3,000 miles to cover, the RV dealership offered to send her a driver to help.
Linda said no. She drove 10 hours a day to make it back in time.
"That would feel like defeat to me," she says of letting somebody else help drive. "I drove us out and I was bringing us back in. It was hard, but that's what makes it so sweet. The hard stuff I'm doing out here on the road is nothing compared to how hard my son works on that field. I'm going to match his energy and keep going."
"This is not a hardship for me because I enjoy it. At first, people were giving me such heat online about driving. You read the comments, 'Oh, she needs to grow up.' 'Oh, she needs to fly.'"
Linda says she had mental health professionals reach out to say they could "cure" her anxiety around flying. One even mentioned he worked with DJ Khaled.
"I'm like, uh-uh, you can keep it moving," she says.
An hour out from the airport, an SUV passing on the left honks at Linda and flashes the Miami "U." It is now dark on the road, but Linda says she is not tired. She is excited to see Irvin. She recalls how they first met. Last season, she had a front-row seat for Miami's game at Pittsburgh and flagged him down. Now she is driving an RV he arranged for and helped design, stars in a show produced by his company, and is minutes from picking him up at the airport.
"I never knew by just waving down Michael Irvin that this would come," she says. "You never know where life is going to take you."
11:03 p.m., Greenville-Spartanburg South Carolina airport
Linda waits in the RV until she catches a glimpse of Irvin.
"Oh, my goodness! We got the Playmaker, the Dream Maker! Welcome, welcome, it's so good to see you!" she says.
"You are amazing," Irvin says.
Irvin walks onto the RV and finds Bri. He picks her up and says, "Here's my star right here, bona fide superstar."
Linda asks Irvin what he thinks about the game the following day against Clemson.
"It's going to be a great game. It's going to be a tough game," he says.
"We got Mark Fletcher back on the field. Before we left, Darian Mensah came out and said a little goodbye to us," she says. "It was nice to see everybody. They've been working very, very hard."
Irvin sits with Bri on the couch, and she giggles while eating a packet of fruit snacks.
"There's nothing more beautiful than hearing kids laugh," he says.
Bri proceeds to tell Irvin all about the two days in the RV with her grandma driving, punctuating each sentence with a clap or a shoulder shrug. She heads off to sleep a few minutes later, and eventually Linda drops Irvin off at his hotel.
It's another 50 minutes to the RV lot at Clemson. Linda keeps going. After nearly 11 hours of driving, and 787 miles covered over two days, Linda drives Betty onto the Clemson campus. They pass the football stadium on the way to the lot. "Look at that! This is incredible!"
She turns left toward the baseball stadium and into the grass field where she parks Betty for the night.
"I did it!" she says. "That was an amazing trip! I felt really good."
It's 1:10 a.m. The game is set to kick off 18 hours later. Linda turns Betty off. The sleeping mask goes back on. Linda winds down for a bit before heading off to the queen-sized bed in the back of the RV for much-needed rest.
In the morning, she will walk barefoot in the grass to ground herself, sit in the sun and smile. These are the better days she prayed for.