When Pride Still Mattered

by David Maraniss

  As Hornung later told the story, “I go back and pack and Kennedy calls Fort Riley and asks to speak to the camp commander, who is not there, so he finally gets the company commander. And he says, ‘This is President Kennedy and I’m calling on behalf of Paul Hornung,’ and the guy says, ‘Yeah, and I’m Donald Duck.’ But he got me out. A major came down and told me I could leave.” The details of the story most likely were enriched in the retelling, part of Hornung’s good-natured bluster, but there is one document that confirms the essence of the transaction. Lombardi later wrote a letter to Kenneth O’Donnell, special assistant to the president, thanking him for two things: First, an autographed picture of Kennedy and Lombardi at the football banquet, which the coach said he was “completely thrilled to have.” And second: “I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your help in obtaining leave for Paul Hornung so he could participate in the Championship game…”

  ONLY THE GIANTS stood between Lombardi and the world championship. With the reservists Hornung, Nitschke and Dowler all there in preparation for the title game, the Packers had their full team on the practice field for the first time in eight weeks. That is not to say that the team appeared in prime shape. Starr had been playing with a stomach pull since midyear, an injury that he kept from Lombardi. Jerry Kramer had been sidelined with a broken ankle. Jim Taylor was hobbling from a leg injury he had suffered in the Rams game. Hornung, with his sore shoulder and military duties, seemed to have lost something since that fabled game against the Colts. Ron Kramer and Fuzzy Thurston had conditioned themselves over the holidays in their inimitable style. “We were dissolute for two weeks,” Kramer said later. “We drank and ate every night. I went from 248 pounds to 264 in two weeks.” The weather in Green Bay was biting cold, almost as stinging as Lombardi. With his full ski cap drawn down to his brow and up to his lips, Lombardi was obscured yet unmistakable as he worked his boys on the frigid practice field. “Occasionally you’d hear his muffled voice through the ski cap,” noted Bob Kurland of the Bergen Record of New Jersey. “One player said, ‘It’s bad enough working out and seeing the man’s face, but it’s worse when you can’t see it.’ ”

  How could Lombardi not be driven? Winning it all, beating the Giants, two obsessions converging. Marie told the story about their first flight to Green Bay, back in February 1959: Vince had been silent for the first leg, not a word. Then as they were making the turn in Chicago, boarding the Blue Goose for the flight north, he turned to her and declared, “The New York Giants will never beat my Packers!” He was determined that they would never outwork them or outclass them, either. Giants Week for Lombardi’s teams was different from the rest: sharper workouts, cleaner locker room, new practice uniforms. “It meant a lot to Lombardi when the New York people came out to Green Bay,” said Willie Wood. “Coach Lombardi wanted them to see a pretty picture up there.” It was more cold than pretty when the New York delegation arrived at the airport on the western edge of town and rode the bus to the Hotel Northland. Ten degrees. Safety Em Tunnell, who lived at the hotel, greeted his old teammates with cutting humor. “You guys got here for the heat wave,” he said, and he was right. It had been subzero earlier.

  The Giants thought they had a chance, even though Gifford had been out all year with an injury. Their rookie coach, Allie Sherman, had kept the old defensive gang together and reenergized the offense with one key addition: Y. A. Tittle, acquired that year from San Francisco, got most of the playing time at quarterback, ahead of Charlie Conerly. At a banquet in Connecticut, Andy Robustelli, the defensive end, stood on a chair and vowed that his Giants would clobber the Packers. The two teams seemed about even in New York’s narrow loss earlier in Milwaukee. There was nothing Lombardi could do to surprise them, they felt, since he ran the old Giants plays and even used the same terminology. But no one knew the two teams better than Lombardi, and he sensed something else. Two nights before the game, at Fish Fry Friday at Proski’s, he stunned his friend Jack Koeppler. “It was the only time he talked like that before a game,” Koeppler remembered. “He said, ‘You know, I hope that ball doesn’t bounce funny on Sunday.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘If it just bounces straight for both of us, if nobody gets lucky, we’ll kill them. They don’t have anything left. If it bounces bad for us and good for them, we’ll still beat them. If it bounces for us and not them, they can’t score.’ ”

  On Saturday night, Vince and Marie invited a group of New York friends to dinner at the Stratosphere Club north of town in the snow-covered farm fields. The Moore brothers from Englewood were there, Father Tim and Father Ken, along with the Fordham-trained Giants contingent, led by Wellington Mara, Vic Del Guercio and Ray Walsh—all from Lombardi’s class of 1937—and their wives. “There were four or five couples and a few priests and we had a great time,” recalled Mara. “And then at the end of the meal, Vinnie got up and said, ‘Well, that’s it. You’re on your own now!’ He made it sound like we’d have to get our own cabs into town.” The title match was looming, the courtesies were over, and these dear old friends were now the opposition.

  In the predawn darkness of New Year’s Eve, starting at five o’clock that Sunday morning, the ground crew began clearing the field at City Stadium, first shoveling off a layer of snow, then removing a covering of straw and finally rolling back a canvas tarp that had protected the grass since the last home game in November. The field was just as Lombardi had hoped: hard but not frozen, with sure footing for his running attack. No real break in the weather; by the one o’clock kickoff the temperature would still be in the teens. The stadium filled to the last seat, with the final tickets selling on the street for five dollars. Orange jumpsuits, red and black hunting coats, ski jackets and snow pants, raccoon coats, minks and heels, blankets, sleeping bags, flasks of brandy, bourbon and scotch—the citizen-owners of Titletown were ready to claim their due. There was no need for Lombardi to say much to his troops in the locker room beforehand. They had waited a year for this chance. Never again, he had promised after losing the 1960 championship to Philadelphia. “Usually,” Bob Skoronski reflected later, “players don’t realize what is happening to them when they are playing in a big game like that. They are sort of in a daze. We realized everything. We knew it did no good to get that far and lose. We had been so infused with Lombardi’s philosophy. We were loose and focused at the same time. It was a bit frightening.”

  For the Giants, it certainly was. As a record-breaking 55 million viewers watched on television, the Packers came as close to perfection as Lombardi could take them. Hornung was at his best again, running for eighty-nine yards, scoring the first touchdown from six yards out, and booting three field goals and four extra points for a championship record nineteen points. His housemate, Ron Kramer, showed no signs of his two-week holiday binge, instead playing the most dominating game of his career, blasting the way for Hornung and Taylor on sweeps, and bulling into the end zone on touchdown passes of fourteen and thirteen yards. Bart Starr did nothing to hurt the team. He called Lombardi’s game from beginning to end, threw three touchdown passes despite his sore stomach muscle and had no interceptions. Nitschke made one of the defense’s four interceptions. The Giants went nowhere all day, picking up only six first downs, one by penalty. They knew they had lost by halftime, when they were trailing 24 to 0. They were silent, dazed, eager to go home already. Sherman did not even try to change or fix anything. The New York sportswriters were tapping out their obituary columns.

  “The poisonous polish of the Packers was equaled only by the fortitude of the natives, who turtled down into their mackinaws and buffalo robes and parkas, and stayed into the bitter dusk, yelping and bawling for blood,” wrote Red Smith in the Herald Tribune. There would have been more blood, according to Hornung, “if Vince didn’t have a soft spot. They’d still be talking about the game if not for that. We could have scored a hundred points. We called off the dogs early. We could have set every record. But Vince loved the Maras and didn’t want to rub it
in. They didn’t want to play. We wanted to play. It was too cold for them. Not too cold for us. And everything went right.”

  In the final series, with the Packers leading 37 to 0, Lombardi began pulling his starters from the field one by one, each for a standing ovation. Hornung, Taylor, Starr, Ron Kramer, McGee, Dowler, Ringo … “One helluva thing,” said the Press-Gazette’s Art Daley in the press box. Red Smith took note of it in his column. At the final gun, Hawg Hanner and Dan Currie lifted Lombardi onto their shoulders and a swarm of Packers gathered around and ran joyously toward the clubhouse on the stadium’s south end, the coach’s bright yellow knit wool cap bobbing above the crowd. Fans swarmed the field and raced toward the goalposts, rocking, swaying until the heavy metal posts gave way to the weight of this gang of spectators drunk on the elixir of winning. The Packers Band strutted out and played “Auld Lang Syne.” Cheerleaders in gold sweaters and green skirts joined fans in party hats doing the peppermint twist on the fifty-yard line. Horns, noisemakers, confetti, streamers. The story had come full circle: little Green Bay had humiliated mighty New York. Titletown USA.

  The Giants dressed hurriedly and fled to their charter plane. They “beat the New Year east,” wrote a columnist in the Times. “It was the only thing they beat today.” Ben Starr, the stern military taskmaster who had always told his son that he was too soft, found the quarterback lingering in the locker room after the game and hugged him and uttered words of redemptive apology that Bart never thought he would hear. “I was wrong, son,” said his old man. The other old man, Lombardi, declared that his team was the best ever. He called the title game the biggest thrill of his life. He said he was the only emotional one on the team. “I laugh, I cry, everything.” And he laughed and cried. Fuzzy Thurston had promised that if they won he would eat the sports page. So he did. “He ate it, I mean ate it!” said Ron Kramer. “Ate it. Aaarrgghh!” He and the boys were downtown, drinking the night away at the Spot and the Candlestick and across the river at the King’s X, while out on Washington and Adams a parade of honking cars kept inching by, a station wagon loaded down with fifteen celebrants dragging one of the goalposts behind, sparks flying in the winter night.

  Lombardi’s society crowd congregated in the party room in his basement, smoke drifting to the ceiling, glasses clinking, the coach’s grin lighting the room. Hornung was invited, Private Paul, one of the few times a player was allowed to mingle with this crowd. “Anything I can do for you, Paul?” Lombardi asked. “Yes,” came the reply, “a scotch and soda, please.” The coach’s smile momentarily disappeared. “Mix your own damn drink,” he huffed. But he loved Hornung. Red Smith was there and remembered how Lombardi would look across the room at the Golden Boy “with a great big grin pasted on his face that would not come off.” The phone never stopped ringing. One call was placed from Washington to EDison-61695. It was for Vin. He tossed his pack of Salems on the bar counter, put down his scotch, took a drag, picked up the receiver of his red telephone. It was President Kennedy, calling to offer congratulations. Later a telegram arrived that Lombardi cherished as much as his trophies: “Congratulations on a great game. It was a fine victory for a great coach, a great team, a great town. Best regards, President Kennedy.” It was almost as if Kennedy had been part of the victory himself.

  Later that night the Lombardis and Bourguignons and Canadeos and a few other couples and priests went to a New Year’s Eve dinner-dance at the Neighborly Club. They were seated at a long table and served a champagne brunch as midnight approached. The Pope sat at the end, and in the midst of the revelry a door flew open and a drunk stumbled in and collapsed to the floor. He staggered to his feet, turned around and strained to focus on the imposing figure glaring at him from a few feet away. “Oh, my God!” he announced, pointing at the vision. “It’s Lombardi!” Then, lights out, he keeled over again.

  16

  A Night at the Elks

  MYTH BECOMES MYTH not in the living but in the retelling. The Lombardi myth grew less on the field of City Stadium when his Packers won the NFL championship than at Elks Lodge No. 259 four months later, when Green Bay toasted its most celebrated citizen at a testimonial banquet. On the Monday evening of April 30, 1962, as patches of fog drifted from the warming Fox River across the flat streets and parking lots of downtown, more than seven hundred people gathered inside the cavernous new Elks hall near the corner of Crooks and Adams for what was billed as a tribute to Vincent Thomas Lombardi. Placed on the table at each setting was a souvenir program made from textured white card-stock paper and designed with regal simplicity. An elegant golden cord with a tassel at the bottom served as the binding. On the cover there was only a small Mercator globe in dark green ink set under a triple-pointed gold crown. Below and slightly to the right of the globe, and barely perceptible depending upon the angle and light, the letters VINCE were embossed in subtle white on white, like gentle lines of snow neatly arranged to spell his name on unswept winter ice. Nothing more was needed to make the point that from his little northern outpost Lombardi ruled the football world.

  This was a night for tales, and the dais was arrayed with storytellers, foremost among them Jim and the two Tims: Sleepy Jim Crowley, Lombardi’s old coach at Fordham, Father Tim Moore, the priest from St. Cecilia, and Tim Cohane, sports editor of Look and historian of the Lombardi myth. Also up front were native son the Reverend Ben Masse, now an academic at Fordham; George Halas, coach and owner of the rival Chicago Bears; and Pete Rozelle, commissioner of the NFL, who had flown in through a noonday rainstorm. Cohane served as toastmaster, his sharp Connecticut Yankee voice rising above the background din of clinking dinnerware and china. He opened the evening with his favorite theme of circular football fate.

  “The threads of the quill of life, so to speak, run in some very strange repetitive patterns,” Cohane said. “And I’m thinking of the fact that Curly Lambeau in 1918 went to Notre Dame. Came back. Coached East High in 1919 and 1920. Founded … the Packers in 1920. Was instrumental in sending Jim Crowley down to Notre Dame. Where Crowley was for four years, becoming a member of the Four Horsemen, of course. And after that Crowley went to coach at Fordham. And he was to deliver as his most famous pupil the man who came back to save the old homestead, Vince Lombardi. And that’s a story that hasn’t been emphasized as much as it should be. It’s surely a romantic story—and a true one.”

  Cohane then introduced Father Tim and stepped aside to let the jocular Carmelite priest take the stage. Moore began, “Mr. Toastmaster Tim, it’s a real distinct pleasure to come from the East and the New Jersey-New York section where we have second-rate pro football teams”—the hall rocked with hoots and cheers—“and come to a city that has the world’s best football team, the world’s best coach and the world’s best fans. Yeh. Heh, heh. If I wanted to tell you tonight what I really did to help Vince it would take two and a half hours. And that would be the preface to my talk. Vince coached football at St. Cecilia when I was athletic director. We won six state championships in a row. He always goes down two hundred, but he was making seventeen hundred a year. He coached football with my help. I was an assistant coach and gave him all those plays. He taught chemistry, physics, Latin. We had a baseball team. We won a state championship in basketball. And off and on when I had something else to do, he would hear confessions. …”

  An explosion of laughter, starting with Lombardi and rolling through the hall, the sounds of men wishing life could always feel like this, suddenly contented, warm, tingling from the confluence of alcohol and hail-fellow bonhomie.

  Soon Cohane moved to the mike again, introducing Father Ben Masse, a Green Bay native who edited America magazine and taught at Fordham. On cue, the Elks Orchestra fired up a round of the Ram fight song and the Fordham men at the head table—Masse, Cohane, Crowley and Lombardi—belted out the final refrain, vigorously, if off-key …“We do, or die!”

  “Tim, Vince and fellow citizens of the greatest small town not merely in the United States but in the whole world,”
said Masse. “This is a painful experience for me, because coming back as a native son on such a glorious occasion a man would have to have a soul of putty if he couldn’t strike from it a few sparks of inspiration. … I saw a picture of Vinnie in the New York Daily News some time ago. This photograph made the mistake of showing him shoveling snow. This might have fooled the people living along the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, but it couldn’t fool an old native of Green Bay who shoveled. And I’ll say this, Vince’s stroke was all wrong. He was too stiff in the knees and there was no follow-through.”

  The guffaws of men who had shoveled through a long winter and could not be sure that it was over, even though midnight ushered in the first of May. It had rained all morning, clearing away a lingering crust of snow, and temperatures by three o’clock had soared into the sixties. Spring might be here at last. The smelt were running on the shores of Lake Michigan.

  Cohane came forward again with his long and serious face. “For perhaps forty-two years, Green Bay children upon reaching the age of speech and reason were taught that the devil himself walks the world in many forms. …” A few chortles on the dais, where they knew the order of speakers, then peals of laughter bouncing from table to table, growing louder with the momentum of recognition of the track down which Cohane’s train of thought was rolling. “The most evil form in which he walks it is vested in the person who is known as the Papa Bear. The Papa Bear in [the] fairy tale connotes something entirely different than that image connoted to the children of Green Bay. I have always felt that it is an unfair attitude. My perspective of Uncle George, admittedly from the distance of New York most of the time, is that I have never felt he was particularly concerned with the scoreboard in football, nor with the box office. I have always felt that he was impelled primarily by his very deep aesthetic appreciation of the game.”