NOTE: Enjoy this excerpt from The American Daily Reader, by CatholicVote president Brian Burch and Emily Stimpson Chapman. To order the complete volume, visit the CatholicVote store today!
In Green Bay, Wisconsin, and wherever else Packers fans reside, Vince Lombardi’s legend looms as large today as it did in 1967, the year he coached his final season with Green Bay.
Every loyal Packers fan can tell you that Lombardi saved the franchise from an almost certain demise when he became the team’s head coach in 1959.
They all know that he led Green Bay to five National Football League (NFL) championships in nine years (three of them consecutive). And they also know that Lombardi’s Packers won the first two Super Bowls, that Lombardi never had a losing season as an NFL head coach, and that he is the reason every Packers home game has been sold out since 1960.
Most Green Bay fans also can tell you a little about Lombardi’s past: he was born in 1913 to first-generation Italian-Americans, grew up in Brooklyn, and coached high school and college football before entering the NFL in 1954 as assistant coach to the New York Giants. But what many younger Packers fans -couldn’t tell you is that before Lombardi dreamed of coaching in the NFL, he dreamed of serving God as a priest and spent several years in seminary.
Later, while coaching football at St. Cecilia Catholic High School in New Jersey, Lombardi earned the bulk of his salary teaching Latin. Later still, when he made the move to Green Bay, he did so in large part because of the city’s reputation as a bastion of Catholicism.
Other lesser-known facts include Lombardi’s lifelong habit of attending daily Mass (which he did in Green Bay at St. Willebrord’s); his willingness, even as an NFL coach, to assist at the altar during the Liturgy; and his membership in both the Knights of Columbus and Knights of Malta.
Death came for the football legend on September 3, 1970. Felled by colon cancer, the 57-year-old Lombardi was survived by his wife of 30 years, Marie, their two children, and six grandchildren.
