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Overview
Having played his entire career for the Green Bay Packers for the better part of a decade, Paul Hornung’s collection of memorabilia and photographs span a large and important section of Packers history. Now, Hornung makes his private collection of memorabilia available to the public for the first time ever, and includes never-before-seen photographs. This scrapbook also features such photos as his original contract with the Packers and stories and memories from Hornung himself, making this one-of-a-kind collection the perfect keepsake for any Cheesehead.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781623689018 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Triumph Books |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 176 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
About the Author
Paul Hornung is a Hall of Fame running back who played for the Green Bay Packers for his entire career where he won four NFL titles and the first Super Bowl. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky. Chuck Carlson is an award-winning sportswriter whose work has been published in newspapers across the country. He has spent over a decade covering the Green Bay Packers and is the author of several books, including Tales from the Green Bay Packers Sideline. He lives in Battle Creek, Michigan.
Read an Excerpt
The Paul Hornung Scrapbook
By Paul Hornung, Chuck Carlson
Triumph Books
Copyright © 2014 Paul Hornung and Chuck CarlsonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62368-901-8
CHAPTER 1
A Home in Louisville
Louisville has always been my home. As much as I loved the excitement and the bright lights of cities like Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and, my favorite city of all, Chicago, Louisville has always been home and always will be.
The people here have always been good to me and they have been behind me from the beginning. Even when I was suspended, they were behind me and it has always been important to me that I represent the town. This place has always been important to me. It's important that they're proud of me and I think they are. I've tried to live the kind of life in which they will be.
The sports columnist Jim Murray once called my hometown "America's bar rag," and while a lot of residents took offense to that, I didn't. The Louisville I knew growing up was a city of whiskey distilleries, cigarette factories, and gambling at Churchill Downs, home of one of my favorite events in the world, the Kentucky Derby.
I was told that as a baby I loved to play with balls in my crib, so maybe that was the start of my love for athletics. And sports proved to be a terrific outlet for me because, growing up, life wasn't the easiest. My folks divorced when I was two or three, and my dad, who was never an athlete, left because of his alcoholism. He lost his job with the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., first in New York and then in Louisville, and left us. He took the car and she kept the furniture and me. I never knew my dad growing up. I was always raised by my mom.
She was born and raised in Louisville and in 1939 she got a job with the Works Progress Administration as a clerk-typist and we lived in a two-room apartment above my grandfather's grocery. She worked her whole life in Louisville.
And though I grew up in the poor part of Louisville, called Portland, my mom and I had a good life, but I always knew I wanted to compete in sports. I was bigger than most of the other kids my age so I ended up playing on the eighth grade football team at St. Patrick's School even though I was only in the fifth grade.
By the time I was in eighth grade, I was the starting quarterback. It was funny, our coach, Father William O'Hare, let me call all the plays because he knew nothing about football.
I also developed an interest in kicking because no one else on the team had much interest in it. I basically taught myself, kicking ball after ball at the playground near our house at the Marine Hospital in Portland. And once I started doing it, I liked it. Later, when I went to Flaget High School, I'd practice kicking the ball over the basketball hoops on a playground on Bank Street.
It's funny, I'd use my imagination while practicing my kicks, pretending there were just a few seconds left in the game and I had to make the field goal to win the game.
It was also around this time that someone entered my life who would have a profound impact on me. Bill Shade, one of the great athletes in Louisville history, gave me my start. He was a great city player.
The Louisville Colonels, the Class AAA affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, signed him to a contract and he seemed to be on his way, but then his wife got pregnant and they ended up having triplets. He was 23 or 24 at the time and just couldn't afford to be on the road playing baseball, so he gave it up. It was sad because he might have made it to the major leagues. He ended up getting a job with the union in Louisville and he always looked out for me.
He saw that I had some abilities athletically and that's what drew him to me. Once he gave up his baseball career, he began playing fast-pitch softball and he taught me a lot about how to play. He also kept me supplied in baseballs and gloves. He was a special guy.
I ended up being all-state in football and basketball but I also loved baseball. I had a shot to maybe get a tryout with the Cincinnati Reds but nobody ever let me pitch in baseball. This is a true story: the only game I ever pitched, I pitched a no-hitter and lost 10–9 because I hit 20 batters.
But both football and basketball were my favorite sports. I played four years of basketball and four of football in high school and I thought I could play both in college. But when colleges like Alabama and LSU want you for football, you kind of know that's your best sport.
And I remember Kentucky came after me really hard to play football. Bear Bryant was the coach there at the time and he really wanted me. And I really wanted to go to Kentucky.
Bear Bryant, being the sharpie he was, he went to Kentucky's basketball coach, Adolph Rupp, and asked if I could play for the team. And he gave it the okay. I didn't even know if I could make the team but, for heaven's sake, when you're a youngster you want to play two sports if you can.
But my mother really wanted me to go to Notre Dame. I was an Irish-Catholic kid and it had always been her dream for me to attend Notre Dame, even though I wanted to go to Kentucky and play football for Bear Bryant and basketball for Adolph Rupp. But she's the one who wanted me to go to Notre Dame so her choice was my choice. If I hadn't gone to Notre Dame, I think it would have broken her heart.
Of course, it ended up being a great decision because playing football at Notre Dame opened a lot of doors for me.
It also helped that my best friend, Sherrill Sipes, was considering going to Notre Dame as well. Sherrill was every bit the athlete I was. We met in eighth grade when his Christ the King team played my St. Patrick's team in football. He was from what I considered the "good" side of town, while I was from the tougher Portland section and I didn't like him at first because he complained about how rough we played.
But we both ended up going to Flaget High School and became friends — in fact, we were almost inseparable. We did just about everything together. I remember we used to be ushers every year at Churchill Downs around the Derby and after taking tickets for a while, we'd eventually let people in for 50 cents. We'd bet on some races, steal mint juleps from people who weren't paying attention, and generally have a great time. Sherrill was always a little more cautious than me but we were great friends.
In the early spring of our senior year in high school, a Notre Dame recruiter drove Sherrill and me to South Bend to meet with Notre Dame's coach Frank Leahy. Neither of us were impressed with what we saw, especially since it was still cold and the students were away on break. We had both made the decision to leave and not bother with it. Then we met Leahy.
I'll never forget this, he said, "Lads, Our Lady needs you here. Lads like you belong in a Catholic college. You belong to Notre Dame. You should matriculate at the finest university in the world. If you're going to play professional football, there's a back door and there's a front door. This is the front door."
And I remember he looked at me and said, "Not only will you get a good college education here, but I think I can make you the greatest football player in the country."
That's all we needed to hear. I had been planning to go to Kentucky but that speech, and my mom, changed my mind. I told mom she could stop praying on her rosary beads every night. Sherrill and me signed the same night with Notre Dame.
But I still had to tell Bear Bryant that I was not going to go to Kentucky and Bryant is not a man who takes no for an answer very easily. But then a year later Bryant left Kentucky to take the head coaching job at Texas A&M. I had heard he left Kentucky because he was mad that university officials did not fire Adolph Rupp after a highly publicized point-shaving scandal involving the basketball team. I'm not sure if that was true.
I actually got to know Coach Bryant very well over the years and whenever he'd return to Kentucky for speaking engagements, he'd tell audiences that he left Kentucky because he wasn't able to sign me. I know it was a joke but there was a part of me that wondered if there was a little bit of truth to that.
CHAPTER 2Under the Golden Dome
I'll admit it, it took me awhile to understand just what the mystique was that surrounded Notre Dame. And it took me just as long to figure out if I even wanted to be a part of it.
I had been recruited by a lot colleges coming out of high school. As I said, I wanted to go to Kentucky, but all the schools in the SEC really came after me — Tennessee and Coach Bob Neyland came after me really hard.
But in the end, my mother and Coach Frank Leahy really swayed me. The success that he had brought to that school was hard to ignore. Yeah, it was located in Indiana, which I had never been to and which I heard could be cold as hell, but in 11 seasons he compiled an 87–11–9 record and won five national titles. For a lot of people, Notre Dame was college football, and I wanted to be part of that. At least I thought I did.
I came to Notre as a freshman in the fall of 1953 with my great friend Sherrill Sipes. We had signed our scholarships the same night and went to college together, knowing that whatever we faced, we'd face together. And if Sherrill hadn't been there, I don't know if I would have made it.
It really did take us a while to warm up to Notre Dame and everything that went with it. There might have still been a part of me that wished I'd gone to Kentucky, in fact I'm sure there was. I was homesick and cold. Hell, I didn't even have a warm coat.
On top of that was the fact that I wouldn't even be able to play that first year since it was still the era when freshmen weren't allowed to play on the varsity.
During that time, Sherrill and I did something pretty spur of the moment, and looking back, it was pretty damned stupid. I think it was about two months into our freshmen year and we decided we'd had enough. This place wasn't for us — or so we thought then. So we wrote letters to the University of Miami in warm, sunny Florida saying that we wanted to transfer. Miami? I wasn't sure what they even had in the way of football program but I really didn't care. It would be warmer, there would be plenty of girls and I'd still get the chance to play football.
Of course, looking back now that was a pretty damned stupid thing for us to do. But we were kids and, of course, we never mailed the letters. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we had.
The saving grace was football practice, where I was often brought up by Leahy to scrimmage against the varsity. It was in practice where I could show what I could do and that helped a lot and I began to figure out that I could play at this level.
My first real chance to play came in the 1954 Old-Timers Game, an annual rite that was the culmination of spring practice and pitted the freshmen against the graduating seniors and players from the past.
I think I did pretty well.
In one quarter as quarterback, I threw three touchdown passes, and Tommy Fitzgerald, a Louisville Courier-Journal reporter who was in town to cover me and the game, first called me "The Golden Boy." That name has stayed with me ever since. I guess I owe Tommy for that.
It had taken a little while but, finally, I got the whole aura that was Notre Dame football. I knew I could play at this level and was excited about finally getting a chance to work with head coach Frank Leahy on a daily basis.
But that off-season, a bombshell dropped: Frank Leahy was resigning as head coach for "health reasons."
I was pretty shocked and angry because he was one of the main reasons I had come to Notre Dame in the first place. I also didn't believe that health was the reason he was quitting. I knew he did have health issues because he'd collapsed in the locker room during a game in 1953 due to an attack of pancreatitis. They said the attack was so serious that a priest was called in to give Leahy the Last Rites, but no one really knew for sure.
And while I'm sure that was an issue, I think Leahy was shoved out the door by the Notre Dame administration because the school, which was really conservative, believed he had become bigger than the program. And, in their view, no one was bigger than the school. That was a stupid reason if it was the reason. Still, it was shock and I think the Notre Dame people probably regretted that decision.
But I was just a player and I played for whoever the coach was and, in this case, it ended up being Terry Brennan, who'd been the coach of the freshman team. I liked Terry Brennan. He was no Frank Leahy, but nobody was. But if someone had to come in and take over, I'm glad it was Terry. Looking back, he never got the credit he deserved. He took over an almost impossible situation.
In those days you played on both offense and defense, so I learned to play defensive back. I had good size (6[??]3[??], 195 pounds) and I could run so I wasn't too concerned about it.
I was also listed on the depth chart as the No. 4 quarterback and the No. 2 fullback. And I was the kicker and, for some reason, I was kicking the ball a lot farther in college than I did in high school. I don't know why that was.
Also, my uniform number had always been 20 all through high school, but when I got to Notre Dame all the quarterbacks had to have numbers in the single digits, so I took No. 5 in honor of my idol Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees. I always loved the way he played. When I told him that few years later, he really liked that.
Ralph Guglielmi was the quarterback that year and he was a hell of a player. He really helped me a lot. As the season went on, I played some fullback and defensive back but it was pretty clear Terry was grooming me to take over for Ralph at quarterback the next season.
Ralph was just a great player. He was a first team All-American and he could do just about anything. He gave me a great piece of advice at that time. He said, "Paul, whatever you do, get on the Dean's List your senior year, then you can just show up for class and it won't be a problem." So I majored in business and really worked at it and I made the Dean's List. Ralph was right.
We ended that season 9–1 (our only loss was to Purdue) and I was pretty happy with how my season went.
Most of the time from January on I watched the basketball team and I got more interested in playing basketball. I always thought I could have made the basketball team and I actually played for Coach Johnny Jordan my sophomore year.
He'd lost a lot of players from the previous season and he knew I could play a little bit so he invited me to come out. I ended up being the sixth or seventh man and I averaged about six points a game. It was fun. But Terry Brennan didn't want me to play basketball. He wanted me to concentrate on football and my studies. So I refused to go out for the basketball team as junior, but I did play as a senior.
One of my biggest thrills as a basketball player, I got a call from Abe Saperstein, the coach and owner of the Harlem Globetrotters, to play against the Globetrotters. So I played against them in Chicago and in Michigan City, Indiana. God was that fun.
That's right when the Globetrotters were really becoming famous and that's when I played. I remember in the game in Michigan City I made my first four shots of the game and the Globetrotters great center, Meadowlark Lemon, said to that great guard of theirs, Marques Haynes, "Goddamnit, get on that boy." I never made another one against them. They gave me $1,000 to play against the Globetrotters and I'd never seen that much money before. That was the highlight of my senior year.
That off-season, Ralph also introduced me to some interesting characters, including Julius Tucker, a Chicago trucking executive, and he introduced me to Abe Samuels and a nightclub owner named Manny Sear and between them they showed me some of the nightclubs in Chicago. I ended up spending a lot of time in Chicago. And through Abe Samuels, I also met some celebrities like Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin. That's when my name started appearing in newspaper gossip columns. And that was okay with me. I never lacked for confidence anyway.
But football was still what I was concentrating on, and I knew going into my junior year at Notre Dame that we could be pretty special. I had a hell of a 1955 season.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Paul Hornung Scrapbook by Paul Hornung, Chuck Carlson. Copyright © 2014 Paul Hornung and Chuck Carlson. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction,A Home in Louisville,
Under the Golden Dome,
Life in Green Bay,
Me and Lombardi,
Life in Limbo,
Life After the NFL,