Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

The latest issue of The Coffin Corner is now available for immediate download from the PFRA website. The issue contains:

• PFRA-ternizing. The Board of Directors submits bylaw amendments for approval to the PFRA membership. A ballot is included with a deadline of May 1, 2022, for voting.

• Uncommon Valor on Iwo Jima: Lieutenants Chevigny, Johnson, and Lummus by Richard Bak. The story of three Marines with NFL ties who lost their lives at the Battle of Iwo Jima during World War II—former Notre Dame player and Chicago Cardinals coach Jack Chevigny, ex-Green Bay Packer guard/linebacker Howard “Smiley” Johnson, and Medal of Honor recipient and former New York Giant end Jack Lummus.

• The Death of Chuck Hughes and Its Impact on NFL Medicine by Denis M. Crawford. A remembrance of the Detroit Lions receiver on the fiftieth anniversary of his death during a game and the changes this medical emergency brought about to not just the NFL, but to competitive sports at large.

• Garo Yepremian Kicks Off Miami’s AFC Three-peat by Robert Stevenson. The undersized Cypriot kicker who never played college football before he tried out for the NFL may best be remembered for his errant pass that led to the lone Washington touchdown in Super Bowl VII, but he was a key cog in the Miami machine that won three AFC titles and two Super Bowls in the Seventies, as this short (no pun intended) biography shows.

• 2021 PFRA Bookshelf by John Maxymuk. The annual bibliography of pro football books published this year, including those by PFRA members Denis Crawford, Jeff Miller and Greg Tranter, and the late Rupert Patrick.

Wow, Garo Ypremian and Chuck Hughes---did this issue push this Lions fan (and my wife) back in time, back to 1971. We were just talking this morning about how, 50 years ago today as high school seniors, we had our first Christmas Eve together. I definitely recall the topper to the holiday was watching the Miami-KC playoff on Christmas night---it seemed like Ed Podolak was gonna pile up 400 yards running, receiving, and returning kicks before it was over! And just a few weeks earlier, she and I had been at the Lions-Bears game when Chuck Hughes died---an imperishable memory of our first sports outing together. Christmas 1971, that '71 season, all that seems like a distant dream with all that's happened over the last 50 years. Hard to believe that such things as Watergate and Franco's catch had yet to happen.

Well, enough with memory lane. Here's wishing all on this board a safe and joyful Christmas, with the hope that the new year will bring a return to some kind of normalcy in our daily lives.

Dec 25, 1971. At age 10 I was one of those kids who could rattle off the names of a dozen or so dinosaurs. The Dolphins-Chiefs game was on in the living room but I was too fixated on my new plastic dinosaurs to care. TV got turned off. Later that morning we went to our next door neighbor's to give them Christmas greetings. There was gruff old Dr Hanberry, sucking on his pipe in front of the KC-Miami game. "This game is still on?" I wondered aloud. "It's in overtime" he responded without looking over his shoulder. One other memory of the good doctor. It must have been a few days after the 1974 Sea Of Hands playoff because I was excited about the upcoming showdown vs Pittsburgh. Dr Hanberry was in our kitchen listening to me rave about the Raiders. He looked at me and stated flatly, "Pittsburgh is going to kick Oakland's ass". Turns out he knew his medicine AND his football.