As A Lifelong Packer Fan I've Never Been A Lover Of Da Bears

.....but what they did last week to honor the anniversary of the passing of Brian Piccolo was pretty cool...  







When Joy Piccolo O'Connell arrived at Halas Hall Thursday and looked out onto the practice field for the first time, she could hardly believe her eyes.

In honor of her late husband, former running back Brian Piccolo, every single player on the Bears roster was wearing a No. 41 jersey.

"It just blew me away, it really did," she said. "It means a great deal to all of us. It's just a very special tribute, it really is."

Thursday marked the 52nd anniversary of Piccolo's passing from embryonal cell carcinoma at the age of 26.














www.chicagobears.com/news/bears-honor-piccolo-on-52nd-anniversary-of-his-passing





























               1969 Topps Card - "Bryon Piccolo" On Card Front and "Bryan Piccolo" On Back

                                     (Two Tries, And They STILL Couldn't Get It Right !!)





   Brian Piccolo Fan Custom Card



















"Brian's Song" (1971)





sportsnaut.com/brian-piccolo-honored-by-chicago-bears/





Louis Brian Piccolo grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the youngest of three brothers. His Italian father Joseph and Hungarian mother Irene ran a deli. Irene was a hard woman and a domineering force in Brian’s life who loved her sports, and her beer.

Irene pushed young Brian hard. Being pushed brought out his best. When Brian played catcher in baseball, Irene stood right behind the screen so he could hear her instructions.

He was a natural in baseball and planned on being a major leaguer until Wake Forest offered him a football scholarship. His senior year in college, he led the nation in rushing yards and touchdowns and was named Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year.

His accomplishments weren’t impressive enough for an NFL team to select him in the 20-round draft, however. Brian was bewildered about not being drafted, but he didn’t lose faith.

Three days after marrying his high school sweetheart, Brian flew to Chicago to sign as a free agent with the Bears. Upon returning home, Brian sent Halas a handwritten thank you note. In a letter dated January 17, 1965, Halas responded, “Anyone with the attitude and desire that you have cannot help but make good and we are certainly looking forward to seeing you again after school is out.”

Brian spent his first season on the taxi squad. The following year, he made it on the field as a special teams player.

Brian was a popular teammate, and he gladly made many appearances in the community. He became known more for how easily he smiled than for how hard he played. And Brian played hard.

As the Bears reported to training camp in 1967, 159 race riots vexed the country in what became known as “the long, hot summer.” In Detroit, 43 people died, and 9,000 members of the National Guard were deployed.

In the Bears’ team picture that year, 16 of the 49 players are black. One of them is Sayers.

Halas’ son-in-law Ed McCaskey liked the idea of having a black player and white player room together, so he told Sayers he would be rooming with fellow running back Ronnie Bull. Sayers asked to room with Brian instead, and they subsequently became the first interracial roommates in the NFL.

More than roommates, they became brothers, and a symbol of what America could be.

Brian also became Sayers’ backup that season, and in 1968 he replaced him in the starting lineup after Sayers tore ligaments in his knee. In six games as a starter, Brian gained 450 rushing yards. At a point when most were skeptical about Sayers’ chances of playing again, Brian repeatedly told him how much he believed in him.

In 1969, Sayers returned and Brian went back to the bench.

One day Brian started coughing. Six weeks later, he still was coughing. On Nov. 16, after scoring a touchdown against the Falcons, Brian took himself out of the game, coughing and complaining of chest pain.

An X-ray two days later showed a spot on his lung. It was diagnosed as embryonal carcinoma, which usually occurs in the testes. On Nov. 28, a malignant tumor the size of a grapefruit was removed from his breastbone at Sloan Kettering. Chemotherapy was next.

Bears players dedicated a game to Brian, but they lost. (They only won one game that season.) When a group of them showed up at the hospital after losing, Brian, still spirited, told them, “What’s the matter with you guys? You dedicate the game to me and you can’t even win it?”

Doctors were optimistic at the time, and Brian, as was his nature, was even more optimistic. In a press conference at his home in the Beverly neighborhood in Chicago on Dec. 11, Brian declared he would return to the field.

Shortly after, the family arranged to be photographed in the Chicago studio of family friend Billy DeCicco. The picture turned out to be a family treasure.







Things were going well a couple months later until Brian noticed a lump on his chest near where his tumor had been removed. On Feb. 15, he was back at Sloan Kettering. Another round of chemo was prescribed.

He was released March 10, just in time for a birthday party for Traci. And nothing was better for Brian than a birthday party for one of his girls.

“There had to be at least two dozen balloons, all blown up, and tied everywhere around the room,” Jeannie Morris wrote in the remarkable book “Brian Piccolo: A Short Season.” “Joy’s responsibility ended when the actual party began. Brian ran the whole show – the distribution of cake and ice cream, the games, the opening of presents.”

Piccolo spent hours with Morris, the journalist and wife of former Bear Johnny Morris, during his ordeal, sharing his life story and his struggle with her. It was therapy for him, and the start of something bigger.

Two weeks after Traci’s party, Brian had a mastectomy.

“Losing his breast really took him down,” Joy says. “There was this huge cave. It was horrible to look at. … He realized it was getting close to the end. That was the low point for him. I think he could see the writing on the wall.”

As Brian’s hopes and dreams faded, desperate doctors who didn’t know any better pumped poison through his body. The chemo burned his arms around the veins where it was injected. His teeth and jaw felt like he had been hit in the face with a baseball bat. There was a lot of nausea and vomiting. And his hair kept disappearing.

Brian had begun to lose his hair even before chemo treatments, and he wasn’t happy about it. He started wearing a toupee. Then Ed McCaskey asked him to attend a fundraiser for pediatric cancer. Brian showed up with the hairpiece, looked around the room at the bald kids and had a moment of clarity. He removed his toupee and handed it to McCaskey.

“He realized then there were far more important things in his life than losing his hair,” Joy says.

People were good to the family during this time. Joy stayed in Manhattan with Max and Dorothy Kendrick, friends of the McCaskeys. Dr. Beattie would give Joy a hug and walk down the hall in tears.  [Tucker] Frederickson, who knew Piccolo from their childhood, came by with his color television set because Brian’s room didn’t have one. A steady stream of visitors included many Bears teammates, Cubs star Ron Santo, NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, restauranteur Eli Schulman, comedians Shecky Greene and Phil Foster.

But nobody could make this pleasant. “Oh God, I hated New York,” Joy says. “And I will always think of New York that way. It was such an ugly time in my life.”

On April 9, doctors removed Brian’s left lung, the final insult.

Shortly after, he told Joy, “I’m done, leave me alone.”

It was around that time when Sayers was given the George S. Halas Award as the most courageous player in the NFL. At a New York banquet, Sayers accepted the trophy and gave his memorable speech.

“You flatter me by giving me this award, but I tell you that I accept it for Brian Piccolo,” he said. “It is mine tonight. It is Brian Piccolo’s tomorrow. … I love Brian Piccolo, and I’d like all of you to love him too. Tonight, when you hit your knees, please ask God to love him.”

Brian needed to see his daughters, whom he had been separated from for nine weeks. So just before Memorial Day, he and Joy flew to Atlanta, where the girls were staying with Joy’s parents. The trip was hard on Brian. He couldn’t stop coughing, and his chest felt like it was on fire. But he was able to hug his girls one more time.

Before they left Atlanta, he asked Monsignor Michael Regan, the priest who had married him and Joy, if he could receive holy communion one more time. They set up a makeshift altar in a bedroom at his in-laws’ home, and as the priest performed the sacrament, Lori, Traci and Kristi sat around their father on the bed.

Brian and Joy returned to Sloan Kettering, and soon the very real stench of death was in the air.

“The elevator door would open, and you knew someone was dying from the smell,” Joy says. “It’s something you can never forget. It was a foul smell.”

Friends and family were told to come if they wanted to see him one more time. Ed McCaskey couldn’t fly from Chicago because he had a severe ear infection, so he took the train.

Brian was struggling to breathe the night of June 15. At about 2 the next morning, Joy walked down the hall and broke down.

Then Ed McCaskey told her the nurse wanted to see her.


Brian wasn’t suffering anymore.....


















The month before Piccolo's death, Gale Sayers accepted the George S. Halas Award for Most Courageous Player and told the crowd they had selected the wrong person for the award:

“You flatter me by giving me this award, but I tell you that I accept it for Brian Piccolo. It is mine tonight. It is Brian Piccolo’s tomorrow. I love Brian Piccolo, and I’d like all of you to love him too. Tonight, when you hit your knees, please ask God to love him too…”  - Gale Sayers






June 19, 1970 - Bears Teammates Carry Brian Piccolo's Casket At Christ The King Catholic Church Funeral Service In Chicago, And Was Buried At Saint Mary Catholic Cemetery In Evergreen Park, Illinois.






theathletic.com/1449311/2019/12/12/50-years-after-playing-his-last-game-for-the-bears-brian-piccolos-legacy-lives-on/



www.chicagobears.com/news/remembering-piccolo-50-years-after-his-passing



www.chicagobears.com/photos/brian-piccolo-remembered#c442c179-a61e-41eb-8922-e9f9729d90e8




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