In any discussion regarding Elroy Hirsch, you could never forget his will to win and his come-through ability, which only these great ones have. You also must remember his warmth and friendliness. He never was so busy that he could not help one of our rookie players or sign an autograph for a little kid. Elroy now is an executive for the Los Angeles Rams, and he is also husband to his wife, Ruth, and father to his son, Wyn, and daughter, Patty. But to the rest of us, he is Elroy Hirsch, “The End.”
Elroy Hirsch
If any of you think this isn’t tough, I wish it were a kickoff and I were being clobbered, believe me.
Earle “Greasy” Neale
Philadelphia Eagles Coach
Class of 1969
Neale turned the Eagles into winners with three consecutive division crowns, as well as NFL championships in 1948 and 1949. Before that, he played outfield for the Cincinnati Reds, batted .357, and played in the 1919 World Series.
I played in 1917 with the Canton Bulldogs under the name of “Foster,” and the Detroit paper came out and picked an all-pro team and they picked Greasy Neale at right end. The reason I covered it up with the fictitious name Foster was because the Cincinnati ball club didn’t allow you to play professional football.
Now I’ll speak of Jim Thorpe. I saw him in 1919 when I wasn’t playing because I was in a World Series that year. I saw him punt three times, Jim Thorpe, in 1919. Each one traveled over eighty yards. He could run the hundred, in uniform, in ten seconds. He weighed 208 pounds, could block, and he played at Akron all by himself, the only man in the backfield.
How I got the T-formation was because I was playing bridge at the University of Virginia with a boy that was studying law, and he invited me over to a restaurant right off Eighth Avenue and Fifty-sixth Street, West Fifty-sixth Street. He had all the officials of Fox Films with him. So I said to him, I said, “I don’t understand how you get this play, this special play that you show on TV, on your pictures.”
He said, “We tape the whole ball game.” I said, “You do?” I said, “What would it cost me for a 16mm reel of the 73–0 game which the Bears had beaten the Redskins down in Washington?” They told me, “Oh, $168.” I said, “Get them for me,” and then I studied them eight hours a day for the next four months, and I picked out the best that Halas had. I was the first man in the National Football League outside of Halas that ever used the T-formation.
Hugh McElhenny
San Francisco 49ers, Minnesota Vikings,
New York Giants, and Detroit Lions Halfback
Class of 1970
McElhenny rushed for 5,281 yards, scored 360 points, and totaled 11,375 total rushing, receiving, and kick return yards.
Presented by 49ers President Lou Spadia
Before telling you of Hugh McElhenny, I would like to make one comment. Like all of us, I have had a great concern in the recent months and years about the future of our country. But I’ll tell you, after riding in the parade this morning and seeing the wonderful young people that you have here in Canton, my fears are no longer there. I’m sure this country is good for at least another two hundred years.
While we were leaving San Francisco to come back here, I asked our publicity director to give me a fact sheet on Hugh McElhenny. Well, he handed me four or five pages of records and statistics and looking at them, I was amazed at the accomplishments of this young man. But really, the statistics were hollow because there is no statistic that can describe the beauty and artistry of Hugh McElhenny running. He was simply the greatest runner of all time.
But the magnificent thing about Hugh is that he took this gift of God, nourished it, treasured it, and carried it on to his public. Now his knees don’t bend quite as easily, but those great characteristics that made him a fine football player make him today a great father, devoted husband, and real citizen.
Hugh McElhenny
I was asked several months ago what I would say here this afternoon and I felt that I did not need to prepare a speech, for I knew as I stand here before you, the emotional individual that I am, that this would happen to me.
This is the greatest honor that has ever been bestowed upon me, and my credit goes to the athletes that I played with and the second effort that they made to make my runs and my receptions the successes that they were. And I also must thank the teams in which we played, my opponents, for all the mistakes they made to make me look good.
My mother, father, wife, and children accept this honor as I do.
Norm Van Brocklin
Los Angeles Rams and
Philadelphia Eagles Quarterback
Class of 1971
Van Brocklin set a single-game NFL record, throwing for 554 yards in the 1951 season opener. He guided the Eagles to an NFL crown as league MVP in 1960.
Presented by Falcons Owner Rankin Smith
His companion through all these years, both good and bad, has been his wife, Gloria, who was his college biology teacher. He was indeed a straight “A” student in biology. No one has had a more stormy or more colorful career than this enormously talented, fiercely competitive, and inspired leader in his chosen profession. Ladies and gentlemen, the inimitable “Dutchman,” Norm Van Brocklin.
Norm Van Brocklin
I have in my football career so many things that I have to be thankful for: the people, the times, the events, the ups, the downs, but above all, in football—and some of my fellow inductees have touched on it—is the fact that out of all this we feel as one member of a football organization. And today I feel so insignificant to the great game of football and to all the men that have preceded me in the Hall of Fame.
Lamar Hunt
Kansas City Chiefs and Dallas Texans Owner
Class of 1972
Hunt was the driving force behind the organization of the AFL, and he then spearheaded the merger negotiations with the NFL in 1966.
Presented by Patriots President Billy Sullivan
It might be that there is a happier person in the world today than I, but I don’t know what his name would be. So today we salute a man who can neither kick, nor pass, nor block, nor punt. The AFL’s first enshrine—the incomparable Lamar Hunt.
It was just thirteen years ago today when he launched the AFL on its incredible way. And you know, they laughed when Lamar sat down at that sparsely attended press conference in Harry Wismer’s apartment and noted that he was commencing a new league which someday would be an appendage with the established NFL.
The laughter was subdued and has changed to applause only seven years later, when he sat alongside Commissioner Pete Rozelle and Tex Schramm and announced the celebration of a marriage between the fastidious tradition-laden old NFL and the brash upstart new American Football League.
Now that mirth wasn’t confined to the press conference room alone. From coast to coast, the new concept was ridiculed, downgraded, derided, and, worst of all, ignored. But since that time, a lot has happened.
Disbelievers became converts. Agnostics became devout American Football League fanatics. And the reasons were numerous for I humbly submit that the man who is being honored here today served more than any one individual in our time to rewrite the pages of sports history to indicate that where there is a will there is still a way. To show that those who are willing to pay the price can achieve success, and the price today as yesterday, and as tomorrow, is hard work.
It took a stern man to shrug his shoulder at the barbs, the scorn, the snobs, and the rebuffs, the scoffing and jeering, the taunting and the batter which were the handmaidens of the American Football in its early days and such a man we are honoring today.
We saw him at league meetings time after time when Plan A would help his team and Plan B would help professional football, and as the night would follow the day, you could always be sure that our honoree would vote for what was in the best interest of the game.
And soon the youngest man among our owners gained the greatest respect of all. The old wise heads in the National Football League—
men like Carroll Rosenbloom, who is here today, a man like the commissioner—recognized that when a man with the character of Lamar Hunt was involved, it was insurable and inevitable that the day of the merger would come.
So it seems entirely appropriate, therefore, that he was the first American Football League man to enter the Hall of Fame. He brought the first team that won the final Super Bowl game before the realignment took place. It was he who suggested names on the back of the uniforms. It was he who chose the title “Super Bowl.” It was also he who recommended, and wisely so, that the trophy given to the winner of the Super Bowl be named in honor of one of the great figures of the game, the late and revered Vince Lombardi.
Truly the great stars of the game will see the days when more passes will be thrown, more touchdowns scored, more ground gained. History has a habit of repeating itself. But I submit that there will never be a twenty-seven-year-old young man who will more effectively rewrite the story of sports in our times or in the time of anyone to come.
So there is a little word that I would use today. It is duende. That is a Spanish word. It means not just charisma, but it is charisma to the nth degree. It is something a little bit above a superstar. It is a man of abounding charm, a man of great character. And I say that Lamar Hunt is all duende.
Now it is my distinct privilege to present to this audience the architect and designer, the builder of the sports version of the impossible dream. A truly gentle gentleman, a modest person who has let his actions speak more loudly than his words, an individual who does the common things uncommonly well and who in his soft-styled manner still indicates that when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
I’m sure that the selection of no man in the history of this great shrine—past, present, or future—will be more widely applauded by his peers than that of our great founding father, our guiding light, our pleasant leader, the indomitable Texan, Lamar Hunt.
Lamar Hunt
Everyone’s life takes funny bounces and funny turns and it has been my privilege to be associated in football with men such as Bill Sullivan, Wayne Valley, Bud Adams, and Ralph Wilson. They had a dream on which we worked together and it was a very tough fight, this American Football League, and we were able to achieve a degree of success, and I consider them to be among my very closest friends on earth.
It has been remarkable luck for me to be involved with what some people call the game of our times. It’s been exciting to see pro football grow and develop. It is really an understatement for me to say that I’m proud to share this stage with this illustrious group that is up here with me today.
No one ever really benefited, I don’t suppose, from an association with others as much as I have.
Lou Groza
Cleveland Browns Tackle/Kicker
Class of 1974
Groza scored 1,608 points in twenty-one years. He was selected to nine Pro Bowls, was All-NFL six years, and was the NFL Player of the Year in 1954.
Presented by Browns Coach Paul Brown
Lou Groza embodies more of what I value in the combination of football player, husband, father, son, than any player that I have had. I think it sort of shows you about things when one of the first things he said when he found out he was elected to the Hall of Fame was, “Isn’t it wonderful that my mother will get to go to this?”
Lou Groza
As I am here with these wonderful gentlemen that I have become acquainted with, I’m impressed that these fellows are great because they come from wonderful families and they, too, are good family men. I always wanted to be a good son to my own parents, and I wanted to be representative of a good family. I’m pleased that my mother is here and my wife and my children, and really this is my life. This is what it is all about. Any goals that I have set in my life have always been in regard to what is best for them….
I had the ability to go ahead to Ohio State, where Paul Brown invited me to join his team, and how thankful I was that he thought I was good enough to be a part of his football team. However, I couldn’t compete scholastically at college. I had to go to the army for three years and there I really grew up. I learned the fundamentals of living because I was in the Ninety-sixth Infantry Division, and I went to Okinawa, and when I got out of the service, I signed a professional football contract and I was part of Paul Brown’s team for many years to come.
And there I learned not only that football was important but many other things. And the thing he taught me, I think, was to hold myself out always as a good representative of pro football and to be something that the youngsters would like to be themselves. And I didn’t know if I always accomplished that, but I did try to set a good example. And I hope that I have done it.
My future, the kicks I will get out of my future, will be involved with my family. I may have not become familiar with a lot of you fans, but really basically, I think this is what makes a football player work, what makes him want to be good, because he likes to hear you say, “Nice going,” to get a pat on the back, but most of all riding up here in the parade today.
I just can’t tell you how overwhelming it was to hear the people clapping. Sometimes I wonder when something like this happens to you, “Are you really man enough to say what you want to say so it is all encompassing?” I don’t think I have. But I do want you to know one thing. This is what memories are made of. Thanks for the memories.
George Connor
Chicago Bears Tackle/Linebacker
Class of 1975
All-NFL at three positions—tackle, defensive tackle, and linebacker—Connor was All-NFL for five years and played in the first four Pro Bowls.
Presented by Bears Coach George Halas
He seems to be physically as massive today as he was in his eight NFL seasons. He towered at six-foot-three and hasn’t shrunk over these years. He came in at 240 pounds, and I’ll leave it up to him on whether he has added any poundage. The sight of this solid, muscular athlete in action inspired the late sportswriter Grantland Rice to observe, “Connor was the closest thing to the Greek god Apollo…. He was Chicago born and bred—he was a premature birth and weighed only three pounds—but he had a lot of growing up to do from the tiny acorn to a mighty oak.”
George Connor
I played in the early days and we didn’t have reruns. But they have reruns now and I have done some work on television, and I know what one is. The last five months have been a rerun of my life.
I have been so fortunate to hear from former friends and teachers and coaches. Dave Conlin from the Chicago Tribune has said that George Connor has had more parties before going to the Hall of Fame in Canton, and that all his relatives are now broke.
My lovely wife comes from a nonathletic family and it has been tough for her to understand all these parties. She thought I should be out working, selling corrugated boxes. But I always try to combine them both.
Dante Lavelli
Cleveland Browns End
Class of 1975
Lavelli caught 386 passes for 6,488 yards and sixty-two touchdowns. In six NFL title games, he caught twenty-four passes.
Presented by Browns Coach Paul Brown
I first met Dante Lavelli when I recruited him to go to Ohio State from Hudson, Ohio. His father was a local iron welding working gentleman there. We met the family, and he had great foot speed. At that time, I did not know what a super catcher of the ball he would turn out to be.
He was a running back in our national championship game in 1942 and then went to war like all of us did at that time. As a result, he missed two or three years of his college existence. He was gone long enough that when he came out, five or six years had lapsed, and he was ready to make a living. We took him into professional football with the understanding that he would get his degree, and he did.
He was probably the ultimate all-American boy. The young man didn’t drink or smoke. He was the epitome of the kind of person you want to raise to be your son, and he became very special to me.
Dante Lavelli
An honor of this magnitude is never achieved without the help of so many others. I would like to take time out to thank my mom and dad for catching the boat that brought them to this wonderful country of America. I would like to thank my sister, Edith, who played catch with me in my younger years. My wonderful wife, Joy, and my three children, who gave me my inspiration and who sacrificed when I was not home much in my playing days.
Now to let you in on a little secret: I want to thank Paul Brown for sending someone up Highway 91 in Twinsburgh, Ohio, where I was working cutting grass, for changing my mind from going from Notre Dame to attending Ohio State. Paul Brown is the man who made this day possible for me.
Alphonse “Tuffy” Leemans
New York Giants Fullback
Class of 1978
Leemans rushed for 3,132 yards, passed for 2,318 yards, and had 422 receiving yards. In 1936, as a rookie, he led the NFL in rushing.
Presented by East High School (Wisconsin) Football Coach Peter Guzy
Tuffy never forgot his high school coach throughout his New York days, occasionally sending me a play or two along with many words of encouragement, and he remained the gentleman that he is in spite of his popularity and success.
So today the dream comes true for Tuffy, which he so rightly has earned and deserved. And for me, the high school coach, whose dream it was to see one of his players so honored, it is a person whom I respect and idolize. It is with great pride I present Alphonse “Tuffy” Leemans to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The Class of Football Page 10
