In his football coaching career, Jim Tressel’s teams pulled off some last-minute heroics.

That won’t happen with his Trumbull Town Hall program on Wednesday at Packard Music Hall. No matter how great his talk may be, the lecture series is calling it quits after 47 years.

Rising costs and dwindling attendance forced Trumbull Town Hall’s committee to make the decision last year.

“We tried really hard to hold on last year,” Chairwoman Sandy Mahaffey said. “We were sort of in trouble (financially), but we said, ‘No, let’s try one more year, so we did this year … When you’re talking $20,000 or $30,000 (for the best-known speakers) and you’re only charging $100 for four performances, you have to have a lot of subscribers to pay that big money.”

And it wasn’t just speaking fees. It was airfare, accommodations, limo service to and from the airport and other costs. Those costs all rose as the number of subscribers shrank

“It just got to the point where it was very, very difficult,” said Carol Olson, TTH’s treasurer. “We didn’t want to (quit), but it’s something that’s necessary.”

Trumbull Town Hall had about 600 subscribers before COVID-19 outbreak in 2020. Following the pandemic, which wiped out the 2020-21 season, that subscriber base was cut in half.

While the pandemic accelerated its downfall, the support for these types of lecture series has decreased nationwide.

“In talking to the (booking) agent, he said that it was his experience that the town halls were sort of going by the wayside all over the country,” Mahaffey said. “It certainly wasn’t just our area.”

Trumbull Town Hall started in 1977 with psychologist, author and television personality Dr. Joyce Brothers as its first speaker. Over the years, it hosted film and television stars (Shirley Jones, Rita Moreno, Jane Seymour, Cloris Leachman, Jamie Farr, Stefanie Powers, Larry Hagman), best-selling authors (Alex Haley, Mary Higgins Clark, Barbara Taylor Bradford, Frank McCourt), politicians, media personalities and speakers from a variety of fields.

There were a few divas over the years, but most of the speakers were personable and a pleasure, Mahaffey said.

In some cases, the most popular speakers were not the biggest celebrities. No one gave more Trumbull Town Hall lectures than college professor Elliot Engel, who appeared a dozen times, including as the first speaker for its final season.

“He would give presentations on a whole variety of different topics,” Olson said. “He had about 60 lectures that he could give, and he was always joking with us, ‘Are we going to have them for all 60?’

“His lectures were so interesting that he would get up and he would just go on for a solid hour. You never realized that the time was going so quickly. He didn’t use one note. It all came from the top of his head. He just had a delightful way of speaking and getting points across, and he always told you little things about the people he was talking about that you probably would not hear anywhere else, because he did such wonderful research on everyone that he spoke about.”

Not all of the committee members’ favorite memories were about on-stage events. Past chairwoman Sue Smith remembered taking former White House pastry chef Roland Mesnier to eat at Buena Vista Cafe in Warren because he said he wanted to eat at a family-owned restaurant instead of somewhere fancy.

“He had the best time visiting with everyone,” Smith said. “He was hysterical. He had all these funny stories, but he always had a line that he drew. There were some things you could ask him that he would not answer about what went on at the White House. It was always interesting with him.

“Then we had the guys from ‘Happy Days’ (Anson Williams and Don Most). They were so personable. They took their pictures with everyone. They had signed pictures that they gave out, and they were hysterical. … Almost all the speakers we had were like that. We’ve had very few bad ones.”

Olson remembered going to the airport to pick up singer and television host John Davidson, but he wasn’t there. He thought his appearance was the following week and wasn’t on the plane.

“We had to real quickly scamper and get a presentation for the next day,” Olson said. “We couldn’t cancel, because it was the next day.”

With just a few hours notice, former board member Kay Fisher spoke on her trip to Antarctica, and Davidson was rescheduled for later in the season.

Mahaffey told the same story about Davidson and also talked about a 2021 visit by Chris Lemmon. The son of Oscar-winning actor Jack Lemmon was making one of his first public appearances following a double lung transplant, and Mahaffey said she received several anxious calls from Lemmon’s wife, who was worried about him traveling alone and wanted to make sure he was OK.

Mahaffey recalled spending time backstage in 2016 with Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped at age 14 and held prisoner for nearly a year until being rescued by police in 2003.

“She didn’t want to be around the people in the foyer,” Mahaffey said. “She wanted to stay in the room. I remember when she gave that talk, she never had a piece of paper in front of her. And I commented when we were going to lunch that I just thought it was wonderful that she could stand up there and talk that long (without notes). And she sort of looked at me and smiled and said, ‘I’ve lived it. I remember everything.’ And I thought that was so poignant. But she was a very, very, very shy young lady.”

Those memories will be all that remains after Wednesday.

“I thought it was a great community event and a good way to educate people and be exposed to some speakers that you wouldn’t normally be able to hear,” Smith said. “This gave people who could get out during the day and didn’t want to go out at night, it gave them a chance to hear some interesting programs that were affordable and enjoyable, and they could do it with their friends. All these speakers coming in and listening to them was a wonderful thing, and I’m sorry to see it end.”