Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

Piece of trivia I found while researching a 1947 Wilkes-Barre newspaper:

"Ed Cody, the Packer fullback, figures he should be a buddy of Jack "Lucky" Lohrke.
When Ed was at Boston College he passed up a visit to the Coconut Grove, the night
of the tragic fire there. Later he was watching a basketball game at Purdue when
he decided to go out for a smoke. He had just stepped off the bleachers when they
collapsed dangerously. "

(Coconut Grove nightclub fire occurred on 11/28/42 in Boston and killed 492.
Purdue bleachers collapsed on 2/25/47 killing 2 and injuring 150).

(Jack "Lucky" Lohrke was a major league baseball player from 1947-53 who survived
several close situations during World War II, was later bumped from a military
flight that crashed killing everyone on board and as a minor league player
was on a team bus where while he was en route was promoted to a higher
minor league team and got off the bus which subsequently crashed killing nine
and severely injuring the others.)

John Grasso wrote:Piece of trivia I found while researching a 1947 Wilkes-Barre newspaper:

"Ed Cody, the Packer fullback, figures he should be a buddy of Jack "Lucky" Lohrke.
When Ed was at Boston College he passed up a visit to the Coconut Grove, the night
of the tragic fire there. Later he was watching a basketball game at Purdue when
he decided to go out for a smoke. He had just stepped off the bleachers when they
collapsed dangerously. "

(Coconut Grove nightclub fire occurred on 11/28/42 in Boston and killed 492)

Cody's "luck" was that B.C.'s bid for a national title collapsed the afternoon of the fire when they were blown out by Holy Cross in a monstrous upset. That ended any chance of a celebration at the Coconut Grove, which obviously saved the lives of the players. So it's kind of a stretch to say that they passed up a visit.

I had a friend whose parents were killed in the Coconut Grove fire when he was very young. He was raised by an aunt and uncle.

Wondering: was Ed Cody visiting his alma mater the day the bleachers caught fire at Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill?