When Pride Still Mattered by Maraniss David

Author:Maraniss, David [Maraniss, David]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 1999-10-07T05:00:00+00:00

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

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